There is a lot of talk about dopamine these days – most of it negative, and most of it lacking important context. We hear a lot about how the dopamine release connected with everything from social media to junk food to alcohol is driving indulgent and addictive behavior. The missing part of the story is the purpose dopamine serves in our nervous system: generating motivation, meaning, and pleasure. What if our problem is not that we like dopamine too much, but that we are experiencing a deficit of meaning, and reorienting rather than diminishing our dopamine response is the answer?
We are living in frightening and overwhelming times – but there is hope to be found in the wild world around us.
"Wild hope" is the hope that emerges when we let go of our certainty about what comes next and trust the process of life unfolding, the inherent creativity of the living world.
We can connect with wild hope by connecting with our wild kin – the animals, plants, and fungi who are our ancestors and our relations. They live in this same world...
Melting its way through the ice with its own internal heat, Eastern Skunk Cabbage is the first plant to emerge in the swamps of New England as spring approaches. Bears feast on the roots as they emerge from hibernation.
These same roots can be a profound medicine for us as well – helping to clear cold and damp from boggy lungs, and to address the roots of deep grief. Join Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue as he shares his personal experience of this Otherworldly harbinger of Spring.
Many of us live far from the places our ancestors called home, but hunger for authentic connection with the living world around us. In this class, Seán Pádraig O'Donoghue will share some of his own journey of rewilding his spirit through weaving together elements of the rituals and worldview of his Irish ancestors with his direct experience of connecting with the land and plants and animals of Maine. He will also offer guidance for how you can begin or deepen your own connection with the other-than-human world wherever you live and wherever your ancestors are from.
When my Irish ancestors were living under occupation, their language, their stories, and their history were outlawed. How did they keep their culture alive? The keepers of the seanchas, the old ways, gathered children under hedges and on the banks of streams to pass on the knowledge and fragments of an oral tradition reaching back to at least the Bronze Age. These gatherings were called Hedge Schools. We, too, live in a time when the language that speaks most deeply to our souls is forbidden. It is imperative that we remember the language, culture, etiquette, and stories of the wild.
Starting this March,Seán will be offering weekly live online classes exploring the ways we can connect with wild plants, ancestral traditions, and the land to heal ourselves, our community, and our world.
Sessions will be infused with Seán’s unique blend of science, history, folklore, magic, spirit, and poetry.
Classes will be held Sunday evenings at 7:00 EDT and Thursdays at Noon EDT.
Details about each webinar are on the registration page. Classes will be conducted via Zoom. Recordings will not be available at this time.
When I was acutely ill withCOVID-19,one of the strangest and most troubling symptoms I experienced was the feeling that my lungs were made of hot, dried-out leather that was stretched too tightly. What I was most likely experiencing was the inflammation of the pleura -- the fascial tissue associated with the lungs. (The pleura arealso closely associated with the pericardium, the fascia that surrounds the heart.) One of the herbs that was most helpful to me at the time wasSolomon's Seal.
Public discussion of COVID-19 has focused primarily on deaths and hospitalizations -- and with over 4.25 million dead worldwide, and hospitals in many places, including Maine, overwhelmed, it is easy to understand why. However, this has obscured the disease's other toll -- the chronic illness that can plague people who have been infected even if their initial symptoms are quite mild. The National Institutes of Health have released a study that suggests that the virus can linger in many organs and tissues for at least eight months. It may be able to linger longer.
When I left the Catholic Church for the second time, I had vowed never to take part in a mass again. I was angry at the way the Archdiocese I had grown up in was investing tremendous resources on condemning people for who and how they loved while giving only lip service to standing up against war and economic violence.
Then, on All Saints Day, I found myself at the cathedral in San Salvador where Saint Oscar Romero was murdered for speaking out against the repression of his people. He was a prophet and a martyr in their true and original senses...
