Time can seem to come to a standstill when we are waiting. During my grade school days, I would stare at the clock above the classroom door silently pleading for the bell toll to release me. Sometimes, I would avert my eyes, hoping that more time would pass between my longing glances. I’d spot birds outside the window, and my jealousy grew as I sat in a hard plastic chair and ached to stretch my limbs. When I’d look back at the clock face, I was often disheartened to see how little time had passed since my last glance. I wondered whether the clock was growing too tired to make it all the way around the dial, or perhaps whether it had fallen asleep to the lull of my teacher’s voice.
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Beyond Kirtan and Sound Bowls: Live Music for Wellbeing
Art has always been vulnerable to public concerns, stemming from its ability to raise complicated feelings. Music is especially targeted because it’s everywhere. A 2021 Harris Poll found that among American adults under 30, 72% reported listening to music by choice and among those, 77% reported choosing music listening as a daily activity.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
The Keys to Awareness: The Wholeness Work
Across many traditions, spiritual teachers have taught that the “ego” is not an entity, but an activity. What we call ego is ongoing psychological activity—memory, comparison, fear, desire—generated moment by moment. It is something that we are doing and not something we fundamentally are. Ego/self is a pattern of self-attention and linguistic framing—a contraction created through self-referencing.
Astrologically Speaking--Far-Out! The One and Only Uranus, a True Original
Uranus! It’s a funny-sounding name to go along with a quirky planet. It’s preferable to pronounce it with the stress on the first syllable. As you’ll see, this planet’s physical nature and astrological significations all go together.
When Awakening Becomes Avoidance
There seems to be this point on the spiritual path when we realize that the very practices meant to free us can quietly become ways of hiding. It often begins with sincere devotion, the desire to grow, to heal, to remember. Yet somewhere along the way, the quest for awakening starts to take the place of living.
Spirit Seeds: Spring 2026
Using Reiki to heal trauma, advanced visulaization techniques for astral travel, integrating plant medicine into spiritual journeys for deep healing
Book Review: ~Unfiltered & Unapologetic~ Judy McCutcheon's Powerful Call for Women to Reclaim Their Voice and Lead Fearlessly
In Unfiltered and Unapologetic, Judy McCutcheon writes with the urgency of someone who has spent years watching women shrink themselves to fit expectations that were never designed for them in the first place. The book positions itself as both a guide and a challenge: an invitation for women to examine the habits, beliefs, and social pressures that encourage quiet compliance instead of confident leadership.
Kindred Journey School: Ypsilanti’s Newest Opportunity for Alternative Education
As children emerge from the cocoon of toddlerhood and begin their journey into the world, the 21st century parent must decide where and how their child should be educated. Public school is often the obvious choice, but other families may choose private, charter, or alternative schooling. A small number choose to homeschool. More wish they could, but find it unrealistic due to employment or other extenuating factors. In Washtenaw County we are blessed with a myriad of options. One such option, Ypsilanti’s Kindred Journey School (KJS), sits in the happy medium between private and homeschool. KJS is perfect for families who relish the individualized curriculum and close personal relationships that homeschooling offers but are unable to do so themselves. Serving Kindergarten through fourth grade and growing every year, KJS seeks to nurture the individual child and foster connection between peers, educators, and the local community.
Out of My Comfort Zone: Three Scary Statements
The words were out of my mouth before I’d spent even a single second considering them. Appalled, I gazed, eyes wide, at the woman in front of me, a new acquaintance whom I knew to be highly intuitive, an accomplished spiritual healer. I couldn’t fathom where that statement had come from. It was almost as if the words had been spoken to me, as much as through me.
Kindred Conversations with Hilary Nichols: Featuring Alex Thomas
Alex Thomas has returned to Ypsilanti to care for his hometown. He is a West Willow Community advocate, and a Transformative Strategies Specialist, and he is Assistant to the Sheriff of Washtenaw County,
