What's on my mind?

Drawing on a rainy-day reflection after decades in psychotherapy, education, and the arts, this post asks why institutions keep choosing order and measurement over inspiration. It explores a next inflection point: aligning human development with AI, restoring STEAM and SEL as lived practice, and imagining a “digital cathedral” for a more humane, sustainable story.

Dr. Jacqueline Harding was kind enough to ask what's on my mind on this rainy fall day in the northwest, My answer:

So much after almost 60 years of doing psychotherapy, education, community mental health, publishing, and arts-in-education... oh, & writing, writing, writing... kids books, poetry for kids and adults, articles about education.

What's on my mind?
How do we over come institutional habits that value order over exploration? Measurement over inspiration?

How do we wake educator's up to the fact that healthy human development through education relies on inspiration not just teaching and testing?

That aligning the sciences of human development with computer science is our next inflection point and that AI is the tool to enable this.

That beautiful ideas & people inspire each other.

That the universe (cosmology if you will) aligns with theology and biology--evolution may be purposeful beyond merely surviving.

That the secular and the holy my be one.

That the arts never should have been removed from STEAM to make STEM and STEAM should somehow embrace SEL--though that's a clumsy acronym.

That SEL is not a subject outside of ourselves; it's not academic, there are no tests. Sel is the science of self-observation, of breath, of witnessing without judging, of balancing the Vagus nerve, of acceptance & belonging.

Most importantly: How do we collectively build the digital cathedral that holds our next holy story of humanity that integrates sustainable ecologies and economics--of light, non-judgment, forgiveness and the discovery that we can make our lives heaven on earth--which is our secular and holy purpose, calling, & duty.