This Editorial precedes Volume 25, Issue 5 of Kosmos. Scroll down to access featured content.

featured image | Noah Ridge

September 27, 2025 is the 96th birthday of Kosmos Founder, Nancy Roof. That’s in four days as I write this and it is possible Nancy will pass away before that milestone. As many of you know, Nancy has been in and out of hospice care for three years. The veil is very thin now and she rests in a deep sleep.

As I stepped out on the balcony this morning, the creamy pastels of dawn clung to the mist rising from the Berkshires. Such beauty. In this very moment, outside the window there is a pink rose opening herself to the light. I want to be that way for Nancy – available, present. I breathed with her this morning and sang her songs from the tradition of my teacher:

“I have arrived; I am home; In the Here; and in the Now. I am solid; I am free: in the Ultimate I dwell.”

For the past years her family, caretakers and I have cycled in and and out of her bright octagonal room, which always reminds me of a lighthouse, where she rests in a cloud of linens and soft blankets. This is the room where Kosmos was born and where Nancy worked for two decades, reminding us by her example what it means to live in service to Life.

From the earliest pages of Kosmos Journal, Nancy held a steady faith: that beauty, awareness, and love of nature are not luxuries in tumultuous times, but essentials. For Nancy, to serve Life is to acknowledge its sacredness in every moment – in the wisdom of sunlight, a flower’s smile, or the long arc of consciousness reaching toward coherence.

This issue bears her imprint. Its contributors speak in many voices—scientist, activist, philosopher, mystic, chaplain—but all converge on one truth:

Life is not a backdrop to our politics or technologies. Life is the central reality we are called to serve.

Serving Life requires us to stretch beyond boundaries, both inner and outer, until even that binary dissolves. From the stars that birthed us, to the communities that sustain us, there is only one continuous and eternal moment of our experience. When the boundaries dissolve, love remains – vast, unchanging. To serve is to love, and to love is to transform.

Nancy often said that Kosmos was never about her voice, but the energy of love and beauty unfolding all around us, even amid the turmoil. In that spirit, this issue opens with wonder, honors the interdependence of science and spirituality, holds the realities of what is unraveling, and circles back to wisdom traditions that remind us we belong to the whole web of being. It closes with intimate stories of death and rebirth, reminding that to serve Life is also to serve its thresholds.

As you read, I invite you to hold Nancy and her family in your heart. Soon, I will return to my family in Philadelphia. It will take me a long while to constellate my thoughts and feelings about Nancy into more words. For now, let this issue be a celebration of her vision, a continuation of her service, and a reminder that even in an age of deep unrest, Life calls us to coherence, to compassion, and to courage. This is the transformation she helped us prepare for.

To Nancy, and all who carry the flame of service, we dedicate this issue: Serving Life.

r.fabian, for Kosmos

Kosmos Journal publishes a diversity of voices that reflect the complexity of our time and the depth of our shared inquiry. The views expressed by individual contributors are their own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Kosmos editorial team, Board of Directors, or affiliated partners. We honor the freedom of expression as a path to deeper understanding, and we strive to hold space for perspectives grounded in compassion, truth-seeking, and the well-being of all Life.