cwj header small.png

Support The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal by supporting our advertisers!

To Crazy Wisdom Community Journal’s Readers and Advertisers –
In the spirit of responding in a practical way to what is happening, we have postponed the publishing of our Spring/Summer Issue (May thru August 2020 – Issue #75) due to all the reverberations and fallout from the Covid-19 Pandemic. Our editorial content is all set to go, but so many of our advertisers are closed for business currently, and they’ve asked to postpone their advertisements. Additionally, so many of our 235 local/regional distribution spots are closed that we wouldn’t be able to distribute most of our 11,000-copy print run.

Features from our Winter 2020 Issue

Featured
Spiritual Mentorship for Death and Afterlife Orientation
Spiritual Mentorship for Death and Afterlife Orientation

We were blessed that Mom felt safe enough to share her experiences in the months and hours leading up to her transition from this world. Hers was the fourth close family death in four years. I felt that sharing the sacredness of these journeys—the before, during, and after—could help others refine their anxieties about passing and what it means to be alive. So, let us explore endings, beginnings, and continuations of soul connectivity.

Read more →
Direct Primary Care: Putting the Care Back in Healthcare
Direct Primary Care: Putting the Care Back in Healthcare

I don’t have health insurance, but I bet I receive better health care than many people who do. Friends and family often understandably express concern about my lack of insurance, but I marvel at how often they then proceed to share with me the troubling experiences they have with the healthcare system: waiting months to get an appointment with their primary care doctor, not being allowed to share all their health concerns during a doctor’s appointment, and the most troubling of all, life threatening circumstances that result from overlooked diagnoses. Though well-meaning, these loved ones don’t seem to understand the relationship health insurance has to the health care—or lack there of—they are receiving.

Read more →
Advertisers Highlight, September 2026, Week #1
Advertisers Highlight, September 2026, Week #1

We are so appreciative for our advertisers in each issue, and you should be too! They help keep The Crazy Wisdom Community Journal FREE in print and online. Please support them by clicking on their ad below to find out more about their services.

Read more →
Kindred Conversations with Hilary Nichols: Matthew Keating and the Embrace of Tango
Kindred Conversations with Hilary Nichols: Matthew Keating and the Embrace of Tango

Matthew Keating discovered tango at twenty-one and fell hard. At once both sultry and stern, playful and serious, tango evokes a powerful theatrical expression. He recalled riding his bike home from work when he first encountered a milonga (a place or event at which the tango is danced) He heard the music drifting around a corner. “Like the scent of Grandma’s pies cooling in a window, I was drawn.

Read more →
A Place to Breathe: How Emily Adama Found Herself at EarthWell Retreat Center
A Place to Breathe: How Emily Adama Found Herself at EarthWell Retreat Center

As far as the eye can see, there are acres and acres of a great nature preserve. Allow yourself to be consumed by it for a moment. Let it envelope you. Let it return you back to the beginning. Maple trees stretch far overhead--taller than any worry could ever be. Streams meander through the land—a burst of movement happening in this otherwise still place. There is a quiet, here, but a quiet that causes introspection. A quiet that feels intentional. A quiet that feels connected to something bigger if only one is willing to stop and listen.

Read more →
Discerning the Pearl from the Glass Beads: Gifts and Challenges of Spiritual Community
Discerning the Pearl from the Glass Beads: Gifts and Challenges of Spiritual Community

Never in human history has the pull to wholeness and spiritual awakening been as strong and omnipresent as it is today. There is a growing appetite for freedom and truth, and a longing to experience oneness. This hunger for liberation has many sources of fulfillment. Even a cursory look at the internet will reveal the plethora of options yet, it requires powerful discernment and wise and loving support to guide an aspirant through the trials and joys of awakening to True Nature.

Read more →
Three Season of Grief: A Personal Essay on Losing a Sibling
Three Season of Grief: A Personal Essay on Losing a Sibling

I was surprised to see Jane sitting up when I arrived. I hadn’t seen her out of a hospital bed in the four years since she’d moved into the nursing home in Sutton’s Bay. Though her health was generally good, she could no longer walk. At well over 500 pounds, she’d developed neuropathy and recurrent infections in her legs.

Read more →
Green Living: A River Runs Through Us: The Huron River
Green Living: A River Runs Through Us: The Huron River

Giwitatigweiasibi. Nottawaseppi. Huron. There are many names for this river birthed in a swamp, meandering south through the center of Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti and onward to Lake Erie. Cos-scut-e-nong, sebee,“burnt oak river,” connecting upstream and down, invites us to a wider sense of self, neighborhood, and community. I spoke with Rebecca Esselman, Executive Director, and Jason Frenzel, Director of Community Engagement, both of the Huron River Watershed Council, about our local river.

Read more →
Book Review: Life on a Little Known Planet ~ by Elizabeth Kolbert
Book Review: Life on a Little Known Planet ~ by Elizabeth Kolbert

Elizabeth Kolbert has spent decades reporting from the fault lines of our planet—melting glaciers, vanishing species, rising seas, shifting microbial worlds. In Life on a Little-Known Planet: Dispatches from a Changing World, she gathers essays that feel at once intimate and planetary, investigative and philosophical. The title itself is telling. For all our satellite imagery and data modeling, Kolbert suggests we are still strangers here.

Read more →
Cooking With Lisa: Roasted Shallot and Garlic Hummus and Easy Grilled Asparagus and shallots with Maple Balsamic Sauce
Cooking With Lisa: Roasted Shallot and Garlic Hummus and Easy Grilled Asparagus and shallots with Maple Balsamic Sauce

Roasted Shallot and Garlic Hummus is a creamy, savory spread made by blending chickpeas with caramelized shallots and sweet roasted garlic. Easy Grilled Asparagus and Shallots with Maple Balsamic Sauce is a quick, vibrantly colored side dish that epitomizes spring and warmer weather

Read more →

Posts from our Blog

Blog
A Conversation With Harambe the Gorilla
A Conversation With Harambe the Gorilla

Harambe was a 17-year-old 450-pound male gorilla at the Cincinnati Zoo. On May 28, 2016, a three-year-old boy climbed under a fence and fell into the gorilla enclosure’s moat. Overwhelmed and distressed by the uproar from panicking humans, Harambe tried to move the boy to a more protected part of the enclosure. Because of Harambe’s size and strength and the potential for accidental harm, he was shot and killed by zoo officials. The incident was caught on camera and became a major viral meme and cultural phenomenon. It also sparked intense international debate over zookeeping, animal rights, and parental responsibility in public spaces.

Read more →
Wildflowers: Childhood Spaces
Wildflowers: Childhood Spaces

As my great Aunt Wanda braided wildflower stems together, her hazel eyes sparkled and a mysterious, yet playful, grin danced across her lips. She told me stories of wood fairies, who were shy and hidden just out of our sight, yet deeply inquisitive and always listening. She described them as gentle yet volatile, delicate yet strong. They were connected to the woods and nurtured plants and forest creatures. Their protective nature also came with quick tempers; they would play tricks on those who were greedy or destructive.

Read more →
A Conversation With the Oversoul of Omaha Beach
A Conversation With the Oversoul of Omaha Beach

“Omaha Beach was one of the five main landing areas during the Allied invasion of German-occupied France on June 6, 1944 (D-Day). It was the most heavily defended and deadliest of all landing sites, with roughly 2,400 U.S. casualties out of 34,000 troops. Today, it is a place for reflection with memorials and the nearby American Cemetery.”

Read more →
Seeking Guidance
Seeking Guidance

When I was in my mid-20s, I had a brush with cancer. The diagnosis led to a series of tests and seemingly endless appointments with various specialists. I sat in waiting rooms, awaited results, scheduled further appointments. My art at the time reflected my feelings of being poked, prodded, and reduced to a numbered specimen. I’d never before faced surgery, and the night before the procedure, I laid awake, contemplating my mortality.

Read more →
A Conversation With “Ginger Pie,” A Feral Cat
A Conversation With “Ginger Pie,” A Feral Cat

Recently I went to the PTO Thrift Shop on South Industrial in Ann Arbor, and parked way in the back next to the railroad tracks. Returning to my car, I spotted a feral, long-haired orange cat perched on a piece of discarded concrete. We were only eight feet apart, but there was so much brush and junk between us that she felt safe enough to stay where she was.

Read more →
Mothering
Mothering

The first person who called me “Mom,” was born over half a century before me.

His name was Raymond. Deemed unable to make his own decisions, he became an adult ward of the state after his parents and close relatives passed. Unlike a child who learns whom to call mother, Ray asked my permission. When I paused, he explained with choppy speech and teary eyes that he missed his mom and knew it was pretend.

Read more →
Parable of the Sweet Pea
Parable of the Sweet Pea

Then came the day when I got home from work and found just a few shreds of mangled stems and leaves. One of the groundskeepers had managed to find the only healthy green plant in sight on that early spring day, and he decided it must be a weed. (Even though it was inside my patio fence at the base of a trellis for the vines to climb on!)

Read more →
Rituals of Care
Rituals of Care

One type of activity I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is something I’ve decided to start calling “Rituals of Care”—those activities we do that include a certain care component—that is some aspect of the labor that feeds into something greater than what it does, in a practical, applied sense, for you.

Read more →
Renewal
Renewal

As I turned back to my book, I heard a tap on the window. I stiffened, imagining an ominous creature lurking outside, knocking on the pane. Just as I relaxed, assuring myself the wind was blowing rain against the glass, there was another tap. With caution, I approached the window and peered out into the storm. Lightning flashed, illuminating the face of my friend. Smiling, I opened it to let him in. Instead, he encouraged me to follow him out, into the storm.

Read more →
Grace
Grace

While delicate and beautiful, ice is powerful and merciless. Trees bent under the increasing weight, resembling our own huddled bodies as we snuggled under quilts. We gasped at the sound of wood groaning and splitting, and we watched a large branch fall to the frozen ground below. Tiny twigs snapped and tumbled toward the arms of their mother branch, scattering ice across the yard. Raising our gaze to the top of a giant cherry, we studied the space where the large branch let go, looking for other branches that might follow.

Read more →