The last time I felt excited about a job interview was in 2003 when, after  living as a volunteer in a tent at The Ojai Foundation for some months, I initiated an entry point onto the staff there. Questions in the interview included, but were not limited to, “How do you deal with your anger?” and “How do you get your need for alone time met?” I felt excited about the practice of hiring people based on who they were intrinsically (not necessarily by pedigree or credential) and on how well they seemed to know themselves.

The Ojai Foundation was a place, in 2003, where I felt at home and recognized. I felt stimulated intellectually by the minds there and also spiritually by the mysteries that lived alongside those minds. Nature was the container for it all. Lush, green, and everywhere. I suppose it was a school, of sorts. A boundless one.

I spent a great deal of time in stone circles on that land. I learned from many teachers about what the circle could be, could mean, could teach, could hold. I learned the way of council, speaking and listening from the heart. I learned what it meant to live that way -- the way of the heart, the way of nothing wasted. I also learned what it looked like to teach it, yet not live it fully. Everything has a shadow, after all. I still keep watch for that one in particular.

Here, in our small, communal courtyard in the desert, I continue to live the way of council. I continue to spend a great deal of time in stone circles, even on snowy mornings like this.
 
 
 

Excerpt:

If everything in the land body has a purpose, like the wolf or the juniper, then what is ours — our human purpose — collectively, as a species? Leopold dichotomizes between the land body and the human body, yet he also speaks of ecology and the relationships of all things in the context of a system.

For instance, of what use is it that humans go into nature to excavate our own psyches? We do it. We are unique in our ability to do it. How does that contribute to the ecological whole?
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Leopold also says that, “Man kills what he loves,”
and that, “An ecologist lives alone in a world of wounds.”

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Excerpt:

​Synthesis
Each of us who is not seen in this world, who is not invited to be present in our full eccentricity, in ownership of our truest gifts, is abandoned.
In an economically driven world, we are orphans, forever in need of love and nurturing, holding and listening.