Resources
“Each flower, each bird, each suffering, great and small, each eroded stone and crack in that stone, each question rising from each crack—every aspect of life holds some insight that can help us live. we can learn and deepen from anything anywhere. …no one can see or comprehend all of it. Thus, each of us must discover the teachers that speak to us, the ones we can hear”
— Mark Nepo from “The Exquisite Risk”
I offer you here, some of the humans who have spoken to me, because of their depth, their sincerity, their clarity, their skill, their connection to the Earth, and their kindness. But first, for me, my lifetime teacher, guide, solace/ resource has been the Earth.
“Every day I see or hear something that more or less kills me with delight, that leaves me like a needle in the haystack of light. It was what I was born for -to look, to listen, to lose myself inside this soft world – to instruct myself over and over in joy, and acclamation. Nor am I talking about the exceptional, the fearful, the dreadful, the very extravagant – but of the ordinary, the common, the very drab, the daily presentations. Oh, good scholar, I say to myself, how can you help but grow wise with such teachings as these – the untrimmable light of the world, the ocean’s shine, the prayers that are made out of grass?”
— Mary Oliver’s poem “Mindful”
Kim Rosen
Kim Rosen, M.F.A., has awakened listeners around the world to the power of the poetry to heal and transform individuals and communities. She is the author of Saved by a Poem: The Transformative Power of Words.
Animas Valley Institute
Animas Valley Institute — founded by Bill Plotkin in 1980 — offers multi-day immersions into the wilds of nature and psyche for the purpose of retrieving the unique, mysterious identity hidden in the soul-waters of each life.
A special thanks to Geneen Marie Haugen who beckoned, tilled, and watered my emergent green, to Peter Scanlan, Rebecca Wildbear, and Bill Plotkin.
Robert Gonzales
Center for Living Compassion
Founder. Author. Certified trainer for the Center for Nonviolent Communication. Robert’s passion is in the spirituality of compassionate communication. He sees compassionate communication both as a process that helps us connect more authentically with ourselves and others, and as a spiritual practice and a way of living. Robert writes, “Compassion is the living awareness that every act that I take, every expression, is an expression of my humanity. That means that, at any moment, we are always doing the best that we know how.”
Cedar Barstow, M.Ed., C.H.T.
Right Use of Power Institute
Cedar Barstow’s primary passion and focus is spreading several practical and relationship-centered ideas. Power can and must be used with compassion. Power, as simply the ability to have an effect or to have influence, can be used to heal past harm, resolve conflicts, repair relationships, and evolve situations.
The “Right Use of Power Institute” is a dynamic, inspiring and relational approach to professional and personal ethics and empowerment. Power directed by heart. Heart infused with power. This is key to right use of power.
Tree Sisters
A living example of being the change you want to see in the world.
We are a grassroots network of women planting over two million trees a year in the tropics, crafting unique resources and courses that bring women together to nourish the roots of collective action.