Kosmos Journal Spring | Summer 2015
By Nancy Roof, with Stephanie Shorter

Life clothes itself in many forms. These many forms of life are gifts, if we are open to receiving them.

What comes to mind when you hear the phrase ‘Living Earth?’ How do you personally feel when you observe and honor the aliveness around you? Do you feel enveloped and enlivened by a nurturing life force that perhaps even defies words to describe it? How do you cultivate a more vibrant sense of your own inner aliveness? How is life calling you to evolve and with what degree of receptivity do you answer that call?

The story arc of Kosmos Journal, for 15 years, has been the ongoing narrative of life expanding and contracting at the global level. It is the record of how we are learning to live together as a global family.

Kosmos Journal Spring | Summer 2015
By David Fideler

In our consumer society, we are taught to see the world as a collection of objects to be transformed, sold, used, and, ultimately, to be thrown away. Perhaps that is one reason the enduring vision of the ancient Greeks still speaks to us today, because it was based on a deeper vision of nature in which the world itself was not a collection of objects but a living expression of life, beauty, and harmony. We can see this beauty, vitality, and harmony reflected in Greek works of art, sculpture, and architecture, and also in the work of the greatest philosophers.

The earliest Greek philosophers, the Presocratics, saw the world as alive and ensouled. The world and the heavens were seen as a living activity because they are in constant motion. All throughout nature we perceive the deployment of order and form in living structures, and those structures reflect strategies for problem solving. Anything that has a strategy also possesses a kind of intelligence.

Kosmos Project Director, Dot Maver participated in the Alliance for Peacebuilding Conference:

‘Around the globe, the struggle between civil society voices and government repression is giving rise to violence, extremism, and toxic politics. The peacebuilding and governance/democracy communities recognize the need to work together in order to address the issues of governance, legitimacy, fragility, and disenfranchisement that underlie many violent conflicts today. The Alliance for Peacebuilding conference brings together members of the peacebuilding community with leading policymakers, members of the military, private sector professionals, and civil society representatives to build bridges in both theory and practice between these fields. From repression of civil society in Russia, to the protests over Ferguson here at home, the conference will highlight the impact of social movements on peace and democracy.’

By Will Scott

I used to think the feeling of being fully alive only came in exceptional moments: A near-death experience, a triumphant achievement, an orgasm, a time of great loss, an instance of inexplicable synchronicity, a moment in love, being in the ‘zone’ or on the edge of some great something towards which you know you must move… Or that one time, when the thunderstorm and the sunset intermingled in the high desert air and all things became electric and inspirited and the purple-gold light seemed to emanate from within things rather than resting upon them.

I chased those sorts of moments. I courted them. I even tried to corner them—navigating my life into places where I was most likely to be zapped by something that lifted me beyond the monotony of me.

by Mick Collins

Our actions in the world at this time of great transformation mean that processes of co-creation are not only about what each of us does to make a difference in our own lives, but also take into account what we do together – with others – to live with a new understanding of responsibility. The idea of co-creating an improved future will require a new mind-set, where we work deeply on ourselves and also work productively together to bring about transformation.

The poem, It Is I Who Must Begin, by Václav Havel is included in the collection, Teaching with Fire: Poetry That Sustains the Courage to Teach, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner. It is a wonderful anthology of eighty-eight poems by well-loved poets and brief essays by teachers.

Teaching With Fire was written in partnership with the Center for Teacher Formation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Royalties from this book will be used to fund scholarship opportunities for teachers to grow and learn.