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The “Art” of Being Human: Mindful Connection and Compassion

Ah, not to be cut off, 

not through the slightest partition 

shut out from the law of the stars.

The inner- what is it? 

if not the intensified sky, 

hurled through with birds and deep 

with the winds of homecoming. 

                           – Rilke, via Parker Palmer’s The Courage to Teach 

So, I believe this post is about human’s desire to connect and the many and varied ways we fail and succeed to do so, but I found myself winding and weaving through various sources of inspiration I have recently encountered, so bare with me!  It will be an interesting and (slightly?) tangential ride. (I hope.)

I recently joined a book club, and due to some procrastination on my part, I went on a three-day reading binge this weekend to finish Delicious Foods by James Hannaham for my first meeting.  I am an empathetic reader, so engrossing myself in the world of a book that begins with a teenage boy escaping an unknown but clearly terrifying situation in a car he is trying to drive without his recently dismembered hands was not an easy read.

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