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Living Grief, Finding Connection As climate disasters, species extinctions, and the relentless unraveling of the Web of Life on Earth become ever more impossible to ignore, eco-anxiety becomes ever more widespread. There’s now a name for this unique mental anguish – solastalgia – a term created by environmental philosopher Glenn Albrecht in the early 2000s. Unrelenting hurricane seasons, devastating forest fires, smoke- and smog-filled air, prolonged drought, extreme heat, clear-cutting – all these can trigger solastalgia. Buddhist deep ecologist, eco-philosopher and activist Joanna Macy expresses this well in The Bestiary:

On Loss (May 2023)

That Spark of Connection Back in the days of my Dark Night Journey, I worked hard to define what I meant by “spirit” and “spiritual.” What my reasoning mind came up with was an analogy: Just as our eyes are physical organs of sight, designed or evolved to detect certain frequencies of electromagnetic radiation, our spirits are as-yet-unidentified organs of relationship. (I hear Isaac Penington raising a Friendly alarm against this rationalistic formulation.)

On Normality (July 2022)

Desire for Connection in Guatemala It is so hard to escape teenage-land when you’re on a trip with nineteen other teenagers. Our Junior Friends Service Trip to Guatemala was full of silly dramas and crushes and a lot of very loud laughter. In my head, I was culturally sensitive, inquisitive, and open. But I’m not sure that’s how I appeared to the Guatemalans I met. We dressed respectfully, and I used my broken, beginner’s Spanish. We loved it all – and we didn’t quite know how to interact with any of it.

On Heritage (July 2016)

Body-Mind-Spirit Preparation Over the last few years, I have been clarifying a spiritual practice that has been a part of my life for some time, but which I have only recently been able to articulate. My time as clerk of my monthly meeting these last couple of years has helped me to understand it as a necessary part of what I do to keep myself spiritually balanced and present.

On Flesh (November 2016)