Rev and Professor Roberta Lavin (Daihō Rofū)

My newest project is being the guest editor for a special edition of the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on Global Nursing Leadership for Climate Resilience and Health Equity. I hope many of my nursing and other friends who are interested in climate resilience and health equity will consider contributing. mdpi.com/journal/ijerph/spec…

Times Beach: The Town Beneath the Park bearingwitnesstoawoundedland…

My Bearing Witness to a Wounded Land storytelling visits are underway. This week, I sat down with Richard and Amy. Richard was the pastor of the Joplin Church of Christ during the 2011 tornado. If you are in Joplin and need a church home, this is certainly a church with heart and a deep sense of community. Today, I drove to Pacific to talk to someone who had lived in Times Beach; more to follow on that, and tonight I sat with the Missouri Zen Center. It was a treat to sit with the sangha and my teacher, Rosan Daido. Reading the Trees in Joplin bearingwitnesstoawoundedland…

Temporal Trends and Geographic Clustering of U.S. Weather-Related Disasters (1989–2019): A Foundational Baseline for Healthcare Preparedness. My latest publication (Temporal Trends and Geographic Clustering of U.S. Weather-Related Disasters (1989–2019): A Foundational Baseline for Healthcare Preparedness) was with an amazing team. A big thank you to the best teammate ever, Mary Pat Couig, for taking on the role of corresponding author when I was absolutely buried in work. Also, a huge thank you to my graduate research assistants. They are the best thing since having LTJGs working with me. mdpi.com/4004904 #mdpiijerph via @IJERPH_MDPI

This is my talk from this morning. My teacher did the graphics and the Japanese translation. buddhism869196463.wordpress.…

When I began the Chaplaincy Program at Upaya, we were all asked to write our "North Star." I try to read this on a regular basis: My North Star is to serve as a bridge between the evidence of suffering and the wisdom of healing, vowing to remain intimate with the world’s pain through the practice of not knowing and the action of compassionate presence.

I’m spending the 4th of July at the Santa Fe Opera to see the Magic Flute. I love the opera, the fact they tailgate before the opera, and the beautiful view of the mountains

"Leadership is a relationship of trust."

The Integration of Zazen and Ritual: Reconsidering Dōgen’s “Just Sitting” curseofanurse.com/2026/06/29… via @robertalavin

This morning’s desert hike reminded me that beauty is often a matter of perspective. While many people only see shades of brown, I see a vibrant landscape teeming with color and hidden flowers. See the brown desert Flowers bloom if they are seen If only eyes see

A hand on black rock, Heat radiates; the land speaks In it, not on it.

This morning, I had the privilege of spending time at Petroglyph National Monument with a research colleague and his students from Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute. I arrived about 30 minutes early, which gave me time to sit quietly with the land before we began to walk. In that stillness, I tried not just to observe this place, but to feel it, to be with it, and in some sense, to be it. In the Buddhist sense, all things co-originate: we are not separate from the land; the land is us, and we are the land. Sitting there in the morning silence, I felt that deeply. The rocks, the wind, the heat, the long memory of the desert, none of it felt apart from me. For a little while, I was quiet enough to sense what it means to belong not above the land, but within it. As we walked through the desert, the park rangers explained the geology of the area and the petroglyphs carved into the dark volcanic rock. But what made the morning so powerful was being with Indigenous students and community members whose knowledge carried far more than information. They brought memory, relationship, continuity, and care. They spoke not only of the petroglyphs, but of the people who likely made them, and in doing so made the landscape feel even more alive, less like a site to be studied and more like a presence to be encountered with humility. Being with these young people, so thoughtful, so dedicated to the environment, to their cultural history, and to asking important questions, left me feeling full of reverence, grounded, and grateful. Inspired is too small a word. What I felt was closer to awe. A full heart. A deep awareness that some places ask something of us: not just that we look, but that we listen; not just that we learn, but that we remember our place in the web of things. We walked for two hours in the desert heat, and honestly, I would have walked for two more if there had been time, and if it hadn’t already been 90 degrees, with no shade and black rock absorbing every bit of the sun. One person asked a question that has stayed with me: why is it called Piedras Marcadas Trail? Why, if these petroglyphs were made 500–700 years ago by local Pueblo people, does the trail bear a Spanish name rather than a Native one? Piedras marcadas means marked stones, which describes the place, but it also reflects one chapter of history laid over a much older one. The name itself is a reminder of whose language was recorded, whose presence was formalized, and whose names for these places were too often displaced, ignored, or erased. It was such a good question. And I think we all know the answer. In these photos, you can see some of what we were lucky enough to witness today: the petroglyphs, the valley below, the Rio Grande, and the three volcanoes. Days like this remind me how blessed I am to do this work and to spend time with people who carry knowledge with such generosity, seriousness, and heart.

I spent Thursday in Mountain View, Albuquerque on a tour led by community members, researchers, and activists — not a presentation, a walk/driving. We stopped, we sat with the land, we listened. Each time we do that, we learn. But it also takes time to just see and to ask, why do we let this be? It takes time to be culturally humble and truly hear without trying to interpret. Mountain View is home to about 6,000 people, seven miles south of downtown, a predominantly Chicano community that lives alongside the state's largest sewage treatment plant, chemical manufacturing, asphalt and concrete plants, auto salvage lots, bulk-fuel terminals, two Superfund sites and more than 40 other EPA-regulated industrial sites. The neighborhood has been giving versions of this tour for years — refuge partners called it a "Toxic Tour" back in 2015 to show visitors the unvarnished reality. One stop stuck with me: a crosswalk with a button to push, but no paint on the street at all. The new sidewalk and bike path were built on the opposite side of 2nd Street from Mountain View Elementary School, where families actually asked for it. I watched bikers speed by and the trail and huge truck clearly exceed the speed limit going past the school. The bikers were happy with the smooth path, but I tried to picture a six-year-old trying to cross there to get to school. I can't. We sat in the parking lot of the only small corner store in that stretch of the neighborhood, then went by the South Valley Superfund site where EPA has been working for decades to clean volatile compounds from the aquifer, and the three brownfield lots the community is still tracking. We saw the place where the city stages concrete, and what the guides called "the gas station for gas stations", those bulk fuel terminals lined up along the tracks. And then we ended at the beautiful Valle de Oro National Wildlife Refuge/ Regugio Nacional de Vida Silvestre Valle de Oro, Homeland of the Tiwa People. It feels like a different world, but it's not separate. Valle de Oro was built in partnership with Mountain View to create green space in an area that had been zoned for more industry. This contrast is the point. Beauty right next to burden. A refuge made possible because neighbors knocked on doors for years, while at the same time, a child still doesn't have a safe painted crosswalk to get to school. I'm still sitting with it. Grateful to our tour guides, the researchers, the Mountain View Neighborhood Association folks who keep telling the truth about this place, not for shock value, but so we stop normalizing it. Listening is the easy part. The harder part is asking why we let it be, and then staying long enough to help change it. Harder still is listening to the story and not superimposing my own interpretation. If you've never taken this walk, go. Bring water, bring questions, and leave time to just stand still. #MountainViewABQ #ValledeOro #EnvironmentalJustice #SouthValley

I had a beautiful time at Upaya Zen Center this weekend. This weekend, I spent time in that field. I was out in the garden digging holes to plant squash, working manure and mulch into the earth. And as I worked, something happened; my mind simply fell away. There were no distracting thoughts, no lists of things to do, no stories about the past. There were only my hands and the earth. In those moments, it was so easy to be one with the earth. There was no me digging in the soil; there was just the digging. When I think about that, I’m reminded of Dōgen’s teaching that when you find your place where you are, practice occurs, actualizing the fundamental point. In the garden, finding my place was simple. The fundamental point was the squash, the manure, and the shovel. But as I sat later, I found myself thinking, if only it were so easy in zazen. Why is it that we can find that seamless oneness while digging in the dirt, yet when we sit on the cushion, the mind often feels like a wild, uncultivated thicket? Perhaps it’s because, as Wendy Johnson says, “out of this stillness, the real nature of your garden soil is exposed.” And I found a great tree to sit in and read Gardening at the Dragon's Gate.