Kosmos Journal

09/30/2025

The new issue of Kosmos, published on Nancy Roof's 96th birthday is an homage to her vision for transformation in harmony with all Life. Nancy was able to savor elements of this issue on her birthday and in the hours prior to her passing two days later.

'Serving Life' honors Nancy and gathers voices across science, spirituality, activism, and chaplaincy. From consciousness studies to ecological wisdom, from AI’s ethical horizons to intimate reflections on aging and death, these essays converge on one truth: to serve Life is to embrace transformation, coherence, and love.

Click here to read the newest issue of Kosmos. Serving Life honors Kosmos founder Nancy Roof and gathers voices across science, spirituality, activism, and chaplaincy. From consciousness studies to ecological wisdom, from AI’s ethical horizons to intimate reflections on aging and death, these essa...

09/30/2025

With deep love and gratitude, we honor the passing of Nancy Roof—visionary founder of Kosmos Journal and tireless advocate for global transformation. Her light continues in each of us.

Nancy Roof, Kosmos Founder and Editor Emeritus passed away the morning of September 29th. 2025. Her passing was peaceful and serene, in her home, with loved ones present. She is survived by three children, six grandchildren and three great-grandchildren. Nancy was 96.

“We are not isolated individuals. We are cells in the body of humanity, and what we do to one another we do to ourselves. The new story is one of interdependence, shared purpose, and sacred relationship with all Life.” — Nancy Roof

Visit www.kosmosjournal.org

08/06/2025

The Master keeps her mind always at one with the Tao;
that is what gives her her radiance.
The Tao is ungraspable.
How can her mind be at one with it?
Because she doesn’t cling to ideas.
The Tao is dark and unfathomable.
How can it make her radiant?
Because she lets it.
— Tao Te Ching

Image | Casey Horner

08/06/2025

In the new issue of Kosmos

PERCEPTION
Negotiating Fluidity
By Bridget A. Lyons

In this immersive and vividly detailed essay, a visiting artist joins a team of wildlife biologists in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to study common eiders amid a rapidly melting seascape. What begins as a fieldwork adventure unfolds into a deep contemplation of perception, mirage, disorientation, and ecological unraveling.

In this immersive and vividly detailed essay, a visiting artist joins a team of wildlife biologists in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to study common eiders amid a rapidly melting seascape. What begins as a fieldwork adventure unfolds into a deep contemplation of perception, disorientation, and

08/06/2025

NEW from Kosmos

Preparing for the Darkness and Holding the Light
By Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

Mystic and Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee offers a deeply personal and prophetic reflection on the spiritual dimensions of ecological collapse and civilizational decline. Rooted in both visionary experience and ecological witness, he names this time as the Darkening of the Light—an era in which the sacred recedes and humanity must prepare not just externally, but inwardly, for a long winter of the soul.

Mystic and Sufi teacher Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee offers a deeply personal and prophetic reflection on the spiritual dimensions of ecological collapse and civilizational decline. Rooted in both visionary experience and ecological witness, he names this time as the Darkening of the Light—an era in whic...

08/06/2025

Welcome to a new issue of Kosmos

In a time of unraveling—personal, planetary, spiritual—'Reweaving the Light' explores how coherence is reestablished not through control, but through deeper presence. These essays, images, and poems bear witness to rupture, while trusting the slow mending. Light here is not triumph over darkness, but the quiet radiance that emerges when we dare to feel, to stay with the shadow, and to weave again.

Click here to read the newest issue of Kosmos. In a time of unraveling—personal, planetary, spiritual—'Reweaving the Light' explores how coherence returns not through control, but through deeper presence. These essays, images, and poems bear witness to rupture, while trusting the slow mending. L...

07/20/2025

Fly like a bird, beautiful teacher. Eternal peace.
Joanna Macy has passed.

Dear friends in the Work That Reconnects community,

With full hearts, we share that Joanna Macy, our beloved root teacher, mentor, and friend, passed away peacefully at home on July 19th, at 3:56PM Pacific Time.

Over these past weeks, Joanna continued to inspire us through her presence, clarity, and deep love for life. She chose to remain at home, where she was held in love, as she gently let go.

Joanna gave us a profound understanding of the gifts of grief and a vision for resilience. She offered the Spiral and the larger body of the Work That Reconnects not just as a framework, but as a way to move through the world with courage and tenderness. She reminded us, again and again, that the world is alive and we belong to it.

Though her body has left us, her work pulses in every one of us. In every moment of truth-speaking, in every gathering that dares to feel, in every act of sacred activism - we will keep her message alive.

May we carry forward her love of life. May we grieve with open eyes. May we continue the Great Turning she so faithfully named.

The Network is organizing an online gathering to celebrate her life, with the date to be announced soon.

With reverence,

The Work That Reconnects Network Weavers

Image: Brooke Porter (courtesy of Jess Serrante)

07/06/2025

Holding Joanna Macy in the light of love.

Dear friends in the Work That Reconnects community,

We want you all to know that Joanna Macy, our beloved root teacher, is now on home hospice. She is being lovingly cared for by her children, grandchildren, and a few dear friends.

A couple of weeks ago, Joanna fell at home and broke her hip. After undergoing surgery and spending over a week in the hospital, she returned home to recover. Just two days later, she developed pneumonia - and with her characteristic clarity and courage, expressed her wish to remain at home, surrounded by love. Her care team shifted to hospice, and since then, Joanna has been gently letting go.

In this bittersweet moment, we hold many things at once: deep gratitude for her life, sorrow at her impending departure, and awe at the grace and presence she brings even now. One friend shared today - “Joanna truly loves every drop of life.”

May we join her in that love. Let us use this time to live more vividly, more gratefully - to walk with open hearts, to say what matters, to cherish the sacred ordinary.

With love and gratitude,

The Work That Reconnects Network Weavers

Image: Jess Serrante

06/24/2025

In Kosmos: New writing by Vanessa Machado de Oliveira, from her forthcoming book, ‘Outgrowing Modernity’!

Smart As a Rock | Reframing Our Relationship to Intelligence

“Let us linger on the wisdom of rocks—not as inert masses but as carriers of time, witnesses to cycles far beyond human comprehension. The rocks are not “wise” in the human sense of decision-making or judgment; their wisdom lies in their capacity to hold the paradox of permanence and change, of silence and endurance.
They remind us that intelligence is not a possession but a resonance, emerging not within beings but between them. This shifts the question from “Who is wise?” to “What relationships cultivate wisdom?”
It challenges the hierarchy that modernity suggests, where wisdom and intelligence belong to a singular entity—be it human or machine—and instead invites us to see wisdom as a field of interactions. Rocks, humans, fungi, and AI are all participants in this field, offering their unique frequencies to the symphony of existence.
Wisdom could be better described as a practice of becoming rather than a state of knowing. This definition underscores the insufficiency of frameworks that prioritize predictability, measurement, and control. Intelligence, seen through the lens of subject-subject entanglement, thrives in the in-between—the messy, relational spaces where certainty dissolves and something alive takes its place. This contrasts sharply with the extractive, anthropocentric imprint of modernity, which seeks to tame intelligence and define it within narrow bounds.“

This deeply embodied essay invites readers to shift from a human-centered, extractive model of intelligence toward a wide-boundary, relational understanding rooted in entanglement. By engaging AI, collapse, and the wisdom of rocks through a posthuman lens, it calls us to metabolize modernity’s del...

06/06/2025

Animals, minerals, plants and waters too...

"The Language of Understanding"
Chief Dan George once said,
"If you talk to the animals they will talk with you and you will know each other. If you do not talk to them you will not know them and what you do not know, you will fear."

In these words lies a timeless wisdom — the bridge between worlds often separated by silence and misunderstanding.

When we open our hearts to listen — not just with ears but with respect — nature responds in kind.
The howl of the wolf, the rustle of the leaves, the flight of the eagle—they speak a language older than words.

But when we close ourselves off, when we choose ignorance, fear takes root.
Fear of what is different, fear of what is unknown.

This is not just a call to animals, but a call to humanity:
To speak, to listen, to understand.

For in understanding, we find connection.
And in connection, we find peace.

05/27/2025

Reality tunnels!

“The issue isn’t necessarily the deluge of information itself, but our limited ability to make sense of an apparently chaotic expanse of seemingly contradictory or unresolvable potentialities, especially when exacerbated by the internet-intensified vortex that now shapes reality.

Our brains attempt to solve this problem by adopting simplistic stories or reality tunnels, in large part because the default mode network prioritizes the mental construct of a separate, individual self, which then serves as the central reference point for all conscious experience. Filtered this way, our picture of reality is, well, essentially a selfie, hyperfocused on organizing the limited set of past experiences, present beliefs and future expectations that defines our self-identity.” - Austin R. Pick

This expansive essay explores the multiverse as both scientific theory and cultural metaphor, weaving together threads from quantum mechanics, psychedelic neuroscience, religious cosmology, and pop culture. Pick argues that the multiverse—a model of infinite, interconnected realities—mirrors the...

05/27/2025