Current Events

Is it ok to look at a homeless person? Seeing homeless people on the street is just uncomfortable. Feelings just come up when you see someone so desperate like that. Who are they? Why are they in this state? Will it embarrass them if I look at them? Are they dangerous? This sweet video opens up the conversation with some of the reality for the person on the street. Hope you enjoy it. Please share it if you can. It’ll make future conversations about homeless people easier. Why Eye Contact With Homeless People Matters

Vermont in July and Hawaii in August. It’s clear to all but the most resistant that when it comes to climate, we’re not in Kansas anymore. Climate change is real, and resistance to the idea is futile. Even though Northwest Arkansas hasn’t felt the worst effects we see it all around us. Tornadoes have hit in every part of our state, rain by the barrel comes regularly, we’ve had 2 killer arctic vortexes in the past 3 years and right now we’re sweltering in a heat dome. But the disturbing insistence by some of our “leaders” that it’s not real […]

Dear OMNI Friends, Our planetary climate crisis calls for all possible creative responses. It calls us to turn and tap into the catalyzing intelligence of Nature. Leslie’s and my new book is titled Attunements for the Earth. It includes Leslie’s photographs and my writings. It’s part of our turning, part of our response, and I would greatly appreciate any support you can offer for sharing it with as many people as possible. Attunements for the Earth is now available on Amazon as an ebook, and in soft and hard bound book form.  Above are the front and the back cover, […]

Sunday August 6 – 7:00 pm Omni Center Omni and our predecessors have held Hiroshima Nagasaki commemorations since 1971, but covid caused a deep cleft in our practice. For the first time in 3 years Omni will be hosting an event to honor the deaths of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and remind ourselves of the terrible consequences of using weapons of mass destruction. It’s especially relevant as nuclear nations are facing off over the Ukraine war and multiple other hotspots around the globe. Covid isn’t the only big change that’s happened though. Climate change has caused a near-certain increase in August […]

Medicine Hat is part of Built for Zero Canada, a national movement of 39 communities working to end chronic and veteran homelessness as a first step to ending all homelessness, powered by the Canadian Alliance to End Homelessness. If Alberta Canada can end chronic homelessness, surly Fayetteville Arkansas can do SOMETHING to end this crisis.

Long long ago before covid, a friendly homeless guy named Jerry started camping in the yard of an old white apartment house on Government Street. It was a quiet place, next to the National Cemetery and across the street from the sale barn where the neighbors were mostly cows. One of the tenants asked the landlord if Jerry could stay, and they all struck up a friendship. They were friends for a long time, until the tenant got sick and died. But Jerry and the landlord are still friends. Then covid came. With it came a lot of wild and crazy things. Nobody could go […]

Community First Village 2020 Video Tour This week’s video is a backgrounder about the beginning of Community First Village. It’s been around for over 20 years and is now getting ready to expand again. The nonprofit that runs Community First Village is Mobile Loaves and Fishes. MLF started a food truck project to feed the several thousand of Austin homeless 20 years ago and then got into the housing business. Founder Allan Graham says “We want to empower the community around us into a lifestyle of service with the homeless. We achieve this vision through Community First! Village by taking […]