The V-Word

It is a few minutes into Christmas. I am often up this late, waiting for some kind of divine inspiration after the rushing around and wrapping is through. Many years ago I received this poem for Christmas. I so loved it that I turned it into a refrigerator magnet and sent it out to all of my friends the next year. I still have it up and thought it was the nicest thought that I could share...

So I promised to keep you posted on my vigil in the dark. Suffice it to say that it continues despite all my protestations and multiple calls to all the powers that be… no electric solutions, no alternative power solutions, just the dark and cold of the longest nights of the year. 

This is one of my main weaknesses, accepting powerlessness, in both the literal and emotional sense...

We are having a wind storm here that has knocked out the power almost everywhere. We live in the country so when the power grid is shut down, days can go by without restoration. A couple of storms later we decided to diversify our power and installed a generator and propane system. On both the first and second occasion that we could have felt the benefits of our energy strategy, the system failed....

Some days nothing works. Worse still it seems like everything I touch loses possibility. Options close. What to do… Crying is a legitimate response. More legitimate than turning the events into a story line of failure and despair. Staying out of this place is the work of sustainability. It happens, there are these runs of breakdown, everything from bursting cooking elements in old stoves to...

I believe in love. I believe that love can prevail even in the worst of situations. I believe that the force of love can create a forgiveness and trust that can heal the deepest of conflicts. I believe that love is the light for which we all wait, hands outstretched, wanting to feel part of, wanting to create. This is the motivation we have when we begin relationships. Few of us believe these...

The sun is the only passive source of energy in the universe. All the light and all the heat that exists without our effort begins there. The idea of transforming that light into usable energy is at the center of the circle in sustainable thinking. The fire and heat that exist in a love relationship is also a renewable form of energy. Thinking of our sexuality as a form of solar energy for our...

It always seems to catch me off guard, the re-entry into family life. I am just back from a five days trip to the Bioneers conference. I worked hard there, talking to many people about my beliefs about love and the importance of sustaining and valuing our intimate relationships as the core of our activism. There was one conversation I had in particular that struck me, a guy from another booth...

Well, after thinking about my previous post of “just do it,” I decided at the risk of sounding like an infomercial, that I wanted to share some facts about how important your sense of smell is in the act of love. It is odd that we so often overlook scent when we think about finding a mood for love because the limbic part of our brain that registers scent is also the part of the brain that controls...

A recent study (2000) using brain scan technology, performed at the University College in London, showed that people who were “madly in love” have brains that look very different from people experiencing other strong emotions such as anger and fear. The brains of people in love have the same appearance as people who have euphoric experience on drugs like cocaine. In fact, the process of falling in...