Journey of the Heart

    Learning to Lie Still by Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer It isn't easy. Good, then, to have a cat come lie in the curve of my arm with her full weight on my weight, her warmth against my side. If she purrs, so much the better. How could I rise and disrupt her low gravelly song? So I lie still. Awake, but not scrolling. Not speaking. Not running to fix. It comes to this—my great hope for learning to lie still is to become a cushion for a cat. It’s a noble hope—to lie still as a cat in the curve of my arm, still as a pool of daylight on the sill, still as the sun itself, holding the center as the whole world moves around it.  Rosemerry Wahtola Trommer  co-hosts  Emerging Form  (a podcast on creative process), Secret Agents of Change (a surreptitious kindness cabal) and Soul Writer’s Circle. Her poetry has appeared on  A Prairie Home Companion ,  PBS News Hour,   O Magazine ,  American Life in Poetry,  on   Carnegie Hall stage, and ...

Slow Down, Mind          by Vidya Chetan   We drift faraway from old ideals:  Have we lost our core values? This world runs behind wealth virtuous qualities seem obsolete.  Searching for  something , we tread unknown paths, sans concern for others.   With our gadgets, day & night: Connecting with far ones,  while snubbing those close by. Engrossed in this materialistic world we forget our own caretakers. Respecting elders—obeying them— has become a rare scene. Inconsideration and apathy empower us, our thoughts machine-driven, overindulgence in sense gratification slowing turning us into zombies and slaves.   We can’t live without our gadgets  but could manage without parents. Time spent with parents, siblings, friends: nothing but mere dreams now. We hurriedly meet and leave them.   Smart phones dumbing us down: having forgotten to play, read a book, chit chat with neighbors. Endlessly tied do...