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Alms. Giving.

Alms. Giving. A year ago yesterday I sat in a basement room in another country and stared at a screen. In a moment the lights would go up, I'd lift my face and begin talking to a hundred or so people who'd been invited to witness a kind of vernissage, a kind of coming clean that I...

Paths and empty halls

Paths and empty halls -by Nathalie Roy Whichever way I walk, I would come upon an empty hall. There's a path to the front door of my house that leads down a slope to the river, The River of Abundance and Time. She's frozen over now, in most places. Coyotes cross over in the night. Ice feathers cling to Her. Rising early, I can...

Only the Living Die

Only the Living Die: A Year of Reckoning Live in Joshua Tree: March 7 & 8 In time of yore, most people went to the desert reluctantly. Ekvballai, 'driven out': that's what it took to get there: a God at your heels, or in your rafters, just apounding. Or a vision. Or crying after one, for want of reasons why a life does...

Only the Living Die

Only the Living Die: A Year of Reckoning Live in Joshua Tree: March 7 & 8 For most village people, for many centuries or most, the desert was a place you went to for extremes, when your life was calling out for some kind of edge by which to find its centre. The desert was a place of drastic clarity, where...

He’s not done yet … 2025

Nathalie's dream is coming true. We're creating a Scriptorium around Stephen Jenkinson’s collected work. The Boreal Sessions will be in-person scriptorium labour. We are hard at it, creating an online Library and Colloquium and, in good time, we may be able to offer a collection of hand-crafted books based on decades of Stephen's talks, including Orphan Wisdom...

WINTER ATTENTION

Paying attention: there’s a reason we use the word pay. It’s hard to have a sort of chronic attention span. It asks a lot. But being asked much of helps. Your feeding the place you call home, and your recompense, may be a consequence of your being asked a lot of. Stephen Jenkinson speaking about...

WINTER HOUSE KEEPING

  December 19, 2024 Dearest greetings to you, These cold, clear, dark days have inspired a bit of Winter house keeping. Many of you will have received a newsletter, sent out back in April of this year introducing me, Khadija as a new member of the Orphan Wisdom team. The correspondence and the conversations with you all have been...

IN THE WAKE OF THE FIRST NEVER LAND / SEVER LAND SESSIONS

"From the ground up, that's a good description of civilization.  From the ground in, that's culture.  Civilization and culture head in different directions." Stephen Jenkinson We have now completed the firs two sessions of Never Land / Sever Land with Stephen Jenkinson & Kimberly Ann Johnson. On our end we gathered with Stephen in the Great Hall while...