Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world

Why does wealth have such a tight hold on people’s imaginations? Today we look at the origins of inequality in Western cultures, going back 5000 years to the carvings on an alabaster vase from Mesopotamia. The show a harvest ritual that was also a wedding, a culminating event that brought together heaven and earth. Looking closely at the images on the vase shows how hierarchy, when it gives a few...

People often think nature spirituality is about love and inspiration, and politics is something else entirely. So today we explore how connecting with nature means connecting with nature’s ways—aligning our lives, including our social and political lives, with the natural world. And how this means honoring and respecting the spirit in each person so that they may live as sovereign beings, free of...

The bougainvillea around my kitchen window many years ago showed me something so precious that it changed me for good. It helped me work my slow way beyond the dualistic world of Descartes and toward a world of kinship. Today, some reflections on the decades it can take to step into a relational worldview, a world where every being and element in nature is alive, everyone is speaking, and everyone...

A morning filled with hope and joy on Maui as volunteers gather at a greenhouse to care for the plants who will help to restore the native dryland forest at the top of Haleakalã. Reflecting on what it means to live in a sacred way. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Wading into the troubled waters of election integrity. There's a new field of study called election forensics that applies statistical analysis to public election data. Careful analysis of the 2024 election is raising some serious questions. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

To stand up to fascism, the most important thing we can do, every day, is to plant ourselves firmly in the truth. We talk today about how we recognize what is true—by finding the place of the heart. Guided by Ilarion Merculieff of the Unangan people of the Pribilof Islands and by my own teacher, we reflect on the differences between linear thinking and the awareness arising in the heart. We talk a...

Third in a series on living in authoritarian times. Today: staying seated in the firmness of our own knowing, our own heart. We look at three daily practices for support: Touching silence, touching joy, and touching Earth. Each of them helps us declare daily independence from those who would try to control us, building a foundation of resistance from the inside out. And a close look at my own dail...

Tara Westover’s memoir, Educated , grabs me hard because her story resonates so deeply with mine. So today I use both of our stories to explore mental abuse or epistemic abuse—attacking the mind of another, trying to control how and what they think. It’s key to authoritarianism. And we explore the 2000-year-old form of authoritarianism in Western history and how it rests on a religious idea that t...

When the failing avocado tree in our yard suddenly puts out perfect creamy fruit, and I find out it was because the compost I made healed the tree, I feel a kind of joy that has something a lot bigger to say about thriving. What the avocado tree teaches about right relations—between people or between countries—and how to build the kind of world where everybody can flourish. Get full access to Natu...

Do we have everything within us to make good decisions? When Abraham Maslow lived among the Blackfoot people, he learned their answer was yes. Today we hear from Indigenous voices on knowing from within, or “sovereignty of mind.” And we look at the long habit in Western history of defining knowledge instead as the ideas handed down from outside authorities—a habit feeding the rise of authoritarian...

That time a tree came to talk with me and I started to really learn. How spirits are different from ghosts. And how a Yurok man’s thoughts about talking with the spirits of trees provides the foundation for living in balance with our more-than-human kin. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

As a child I recited the Christmas story of the baby born in a manger, but the story comes to life in deeper ways when you read it in light of Mary's Song, a freedom song that she sang while pregnant with her son. She celebrated the upending of the social order, when the hungry are filled and the rich sent away empty. In her birth story, poor people get the positions of honor: the poor young singl...

A lesson from fifth grade lasts a lifetime—and makes me wish I'd learned about honeybees instead! What honeybees know about fair and democratic decision making. And how the story of human origins held in this society—that we are selfish and violent by nature—keeps us from imagining better ways of relating with nature and each other. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world a...

Have you ever been grabbed by a poem so hard it wouldn’t let go? I recently found “Closing Time; Iskandariya,” by Brigit Pegeen Kelly and couldn’t put it down. Living with it over days revealed layer after layer of wonder and meaning—a thrill for someone trained in close reading of texts. At least one of those layers outlines a pathway for making peace with Earth. Cello music with the poem today i...

Young people in Hawaiʻi just won a huge victory in a climate lawsuit that will end carbon emissions in the state’s transportation. But why are the children doing this work? Today we listen to Indigenous voices from communities around the world that are losing their homelands because of climate change, and we reflect on land and kinship and identity. We ask, Am I doing everything I can to work for...

A path of listening, learned first in the yoga class of a beloved teacher in Boulder. For five years I attended her class, five years of book writing and coming to terms with my older brother's death. Wendy taught us how to move by listening—listening first to the body and breath, which is listening to the Earth. Here is a story of listening in Wendy's class. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit —...

Why is there a price on land? When land is the living source of all our food—and of us—why do we think we can own it? We take a look at how private landownership got put into law in England in the 1600s to justify the landlords’ seizing of common lands. And how we might imagine our way to a different system. With inspiration for our imaginations from Dr. Lyla June Johnston (Diné) and Greek economi...

On rivers, the secret river, and what one very early project from 1400 BCE to drain a lake can tell us about both. Plus, what losing spiritual connection to the irrepressible flow of life looks like: reaching for power and control over ourselves and others. How can we stay open to the life-giving currents, even those we don't understand? Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living wo...

Looking up and opening the heart at the Solstice. We delve into the stories told by people through the ages about Venus and Orion and share some cool facts about red giants and blue giants. In a season for cultivating peace and goodwill, we turn to the stars to evoke wonder and awe and to cleanse the heart for a new year.  Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscill...

In a recent university talk Robin Wall Kimmerer, author of Braiding Sweetgrass, reflected on how Indigenous understandings of what she called our “shared responsibility for Mother Earth” can help us heal our relationship with the land. “What does the Earth ask of us?” she asked. She suggested that Indigenous principles for relating with land might help guide Western science so that all can thrive....

After my first book came out I hit a wall, feeling churned up inside. What was going on? I turned inward to find out, crossing right over the sharp line that the Western world draws between matter and spirit. I began to talk in spirit with an animal helper: a bear. Some thoughts on the limits that the matter-spirit split imposes on Western thinking, and how most Indigenous traditions regard realit...

Here on Maui we’re in crisis since the fire that destroyed Lahaina two weeks ago. But some of the same patterns of using and abusing water that contributed to this crisis are all too familiar from a history of colonizing people and land—including the land where I grew up in Ohio—that extends all the way back to ancient Mesopotamia. Today we look at a few of those historical connections and ask: Wh...

Getting tripped up in the early stages of writing my next book leads to some reflections on the process of writing the first two. More about how life led me to listening from the heart instead of following thoughtful plans and chapter outlines. On being open to the moment—in writing and life. Get full access to Nature :: Spirit — Kinship in a living world at priscillastuckey.substack.com/subscribe

Opening the gift of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s question: Why is the world so beautiful? How awe and wonder make us better people, as shown by the findings of psychology researchers into the science of happiness. But how can we feel awe at a time like this, when the Earth is wounded and so much life is endangered? An example from Maui’s degraded dryland forests, and how people are coming together to hel...

How do we learn to trust the knowing that arises without words? Some thoughts on growing more sensitive to the messages we pick up through our many human senses. How to pay attention to our inner knowing, with ideas for simple ten-minute quiet times we can set aside each day to listen to the subtle whispers of the heart. But following the heart can be risky, so is it really worth it? Exploring the...