Category Archives: Blog

I enjoyed taking my family last week to the Sultan Qaboos Grand Mosque in the Sultanate of Oman to share with them its mesmerizing majesty…

I made some unexpected new friends this week-end, while exploring the Sultanate of Oman from many different angles…

I’ve been away on retreat without internet in the desert of Oman, and I will recommence blogging when I return soon…

I was so sad to hear that award-winning poet C.D. Wright died unexpectedly this week. I feel very grateful and humbled to have known her while studying creative writing as an undergraduate and graduate student at Brown University. On the necessity of poetry, she once wrote: “Poetry is a necessity of life. It is a function of poetry to locate those zones inside us that would be free, and declare them so.” Every year, as the semester was about to begin, she and her husband Forrest Gander would invite us to their beautiful home (nestled in a cemetery) to read poetry and party — I have such treasured memories of those late summer gatherings in Barrington. Here’s a link to a moving tribute to C.D. in the New Yorker penned by my old Brown classmate Ben Lerner. Tonight, as I’m remembering C.D. and re-reading her poetry, I’m cherishing her words: “Poetry is the language of intensity. Because we are going to die, an expression of intensity is justified.”

Over the week-end, my Iranian friends in the Sultanate of Oman surprised me with my favorite Persian dish — vegetarian ghormeh sabzi (قورمه‌ سبزی). While I’d dined before on this delicious green stew in Iran and America, my friend’s version this week-end in Muscat was the best I’ve ever tasted — and I savored every bite of it.

A delicious mix of parsley, spinach, leeks, coriander, dried fenugreek leaves, and beans, ghormeh sabzi is served over rice that has been intentionally crisped on the bottom of the pot (tah deeg / ته دیگ‎‎). After lunch, we enjoyed another Persian treat for desert — sholeh zard (شله زرد — Persian saffron rice pudding). If you’d like to try cooking gormeh sabzi at home, here’s a recipe. Enjoy and noosh-e jan / نوش جان (bon appétit / may your soul be nourished)!

I was so happy to see Providence, Rhode Island listed as one of the top 52 places to visit in 2016 by the New York Times. Since I have four degrees from Brown University, I spent a decade living in Providence — and I can’t recommend it highly enough as a place to visit and live. Whenever I return to Providence to visit mentors and friends, I stay at the Old Court Bed and Breakfast — a charming inn filled with 19th century antiques (like this lovely stove in my guest room there last winter)…

Since I had the joy of seeing Anoushka Shankar perform tonight in the Sultanate of Oman, I thought I’d share this beautiful tribute of hers to her late father, Ravi Shankar…

It was a pleasure tonight to see Anoushka Shankhar in concert at the Royal Opera House in Muscat — she gave a stellar performance. In the beginning of the concert, she expressed her excitement at performing her first concert in the Sultanate of Oman…

Wishing a very Merry Christmas to all of my Orthodox friends celebrating today in Russia, Egypt, Ethiopia and beyond!

While studying spirituality, gender, and graffiti in Mongolia, I had the opportunity to explore nomadic life in different parts of the country. A new film, Nomads of Mongolia, showcases the daily life of Kazakh nomads in the remote mountains of Western Mongolia — one of my favorite places in the world…

I have fond memories of my time exploring Mazar-i Sharif in Afghanistan — so I was sad to hear about tonight’s attack on the Indian Consulate there…

While studying Advanced Russian at St. Petersburg State University and getting in touch with my Russian roots, I had the opportunity to learn first-hand how Russians see the world. A new documentary (Miroporyadok/World Order) that recently aired on Russian state television explores (as narrated by Vladimir Solovyov), “what is happening with us [Russians], what sort of world we have inherited from our parents, and what sort of world we will leave to our children.” In this cinematic glimpse of the world according to Russia, American foreign policy endeavors and military interventions are blamed for the current chaos in the Middle East. Last week, Putin went a step further and named the U.S. a threat to Russian security for the first time…

When I was drifting through the desert of Oman, I noticed that my hair mirrored the light and ripples of the dunes…

My hopes for this new year, like the last, are focused on the plight of Syrian refugees. It’s not possible to convey in writing the levels of suffering I have witnessed when spending time with Syrian refugees in Lebanon as a professor, yogini, mentor, volunteer, and advocate. Every time I talk about my young Syrian refugees friends in Beirut, I cry tears that are too heavy to be funneled into words…

Missing limbs. Untreated wounds. Catatonic toddlers. Arrested education. Punishing poverty. Child labor. A generation lost. Twelve people to a room. Weeping widows. Every meal: a potato. Begging for a blanket just to stay alive. An inferno of despair — with no end in sight. Will 2016 be a better year? I hope so — because how much more suffering can the Syrians be expected to bear? How much more time does the world community need to wake up and say enough?