Browse Topics

Centering

I grew up in Portland, Oregon, went to public school, and was educated to be an intellectual of the verbal kind. When I was four and a half, I had a library card. Because I could read I was thought to be a person who would follow a certain line of development having to do with verbal skills. They didn’t notice that the books I took out were picture books. I grew up, as many of us do, thinking that there are two kinds of people in the world — intellectuals and artists, or rather intellectuals, artists and women! It is difficult if you are a woman trying to find your way; it’s difficult to choose a path to follow.

Things I Make

Re-entry women, Clay Day, community meals

On The Word “Witch”

The word witch was invented to describe those who claim to be spirit before form, to be independent of flesh while in the flesh, and the witch on the broomstick flying through the night is a distorted image . . . intended to instill fear and therefore control people, to keep them small, containable.

Parents, Now And Then

A bowl of faded rose petals, a wooden extension ladder, a photograph

Editor’s Note

Selected Stories

She grew up and retreated into a tower, where she lived for 20 years. No one understood this. Her friends thought perhaps she’d gone mad. When she emerged, she could fly. Everyone was very impressed, watching her fly over the sea.

Sunbeams

The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe.

Joanna Rogers Macy

Excerpts From Seuphor And Natalie And The Word Accomplished

Above all: If you feel the need to create you must put it before all the rest. Not abandon the rest, this would be a serious mistake. But make all the rest serve the essential.

Brothers And Sisters

Forgiveness, gratefulness, an uncomfortable dinner

The Over-Soul

We live in succession, in division, in parts, in particles. Meantime within man is the soul of the whole; the wise silence; the universal beauty, to which every part and particle is equally related; the eternal ONE. And this deep power in which we exist, and whose beatitude is accessible to us, is not only self-sufficing and perfect in every hour, but the act of seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object, are one. We see the world piece by piece, as the sun, the moon, the animal, the tree; but the whole, of which these are the shining parts, is the soul.