Inaugural Letter from the Editor

March 31st, 2004

The Open Center's award winning magazine has returned in a new incarnation as an on-line publication. Instead of the old paper format in which we produced fifteen articles every four months, we are now publishing a new article every week.

Lapis has always expressed the aspect of the Open Center that is deeply engaged with social and ecological issues. But, rarely among magazines, it also gives equal attention to spiritual and esoteric matters. In fact this commitment to a balanced and engaged spirituality is at the core of Lapis' mission. It is a magazine where informed coverage of the contemporary world mixes comfortably with an ancient sense of soul to create to create the kind of awake and penetrating media so deeply needed today.

We are in process of archiving the back issues of the magazine so that readers will be able to access the many outstanding articles published between 1995 and 2001 by such outstanding writers as Bill McKibben, Joscelyn Godwin, John O' Donohue, Fritjof Capra, Jeremy Rikfin, Terry Tempest Williams, William Irwin Thompson and Kathleen Raine.

While the major media are becoming increasingly homogenized and timorous, alternative media are exploding with fresh insights and perceptive social analysis. The response to the Iraq War has truly revealed the power and value of on-line media as a place for original, fresh and courageous writing. So please enjoy the current articles while we build the site. Just click on the titles to find recent work by Jerry Mander, Robert Sardello, Andrew Kimbrell, Christopher Bamford, Andrew Samuels and many others.

- Ralph White