On This Our World Turns
"Imagine that you are born into poverty.Imagine that, during your grade school years, a teacher recognizes your artistic talent. Imagine that the teacher enrolls you in a government-funded art class, held weekly at a local museum.
Imagine that, every Saturday, your mother puts you onto public transportation. She trusts that you'll be safely delivered to the museum, where an art instructor w... posted on Apr 18 2021, 5,538 reads

Fabiana Fondevila: The Many Flavors of Wonder
Fabiana Fondevila is an Argentinian writer, speaker, teacher, and all-around wonder activist. She began her career as a journalist and war correspondent, working for the main outlets in her native country. Returning to spiritual questions, she then spent years interviewing some of the world's top thinkers, mystics, scientists and philosophers in search of a map. And then, life transpired: her olde... posted on Apr 17 2021, 6,054 reads

Crisis Kitchen
Crisis Kitchen is a mutual aid group that has emerged during the coronavirus pandemic in Portland, Oregon, as a means to help people thrive. It was begun by laid off restaurant workers as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened and caused more and more people to become food insecure. High quality, delicious meals are prepared and delivered by volunteers, utilizing donated space and are available for free. ... posted on Apr 16 2021, 1,762 reads

Instructions on Not Giving Up
"It was a hard winter. My whole body raged against it. But right as the world feels uninhabitable something miraculous happens: the trees come back. I wanted to praise that ordinary thing as a way of bringing myself back to." Listen to Ada Limon share her poem "Instructions on Not Giving Up."... posted on Apr 15 2021, 7,933 reads

Four Winged Poems
"This time of year, the birds catch my attention and hold it. The robins are back, or maybe they're just bolder. I see them most in this early spring season, when the worms are warming up out of the soil. The goldfinches are muted still, their diets not yet offering the delights that turn their plumage bright. And the mourning doves are crying all day long...I love the way that watching them helps... posted on Apr 14 2021, 4,052 reads

Left Behind: Surviving Suicide Loss
In the spring of 2017, Nandini Murali, a South Indian journalist and author, returned from an out-of-town assignment to an eerily quiet home. Typically, her husband would greet her at the front door, but that morning he hadn't answered her phone calls. It was Nandini who discovered his body, and confronted an unfathomable reality. T.R. Murali, one of the most prominent urologists in India, and her... posted on Apr 13 2021, 6,930 reads

Merry Clayton: Beautiful Scars
"When the Rolling Stones released "Gimme Shelter" in 1969, everyone recognized Mick Jagger. But at the time, no one knew who that voice -- you know the one -- belonged to.It was Merry Clayton, one of the most in-demand back-up singers of her day." In the decades that ensued she rose to prominence, but her ascending trajectory was put on hold when a car accident resulted in the amputation of both h... posted on Apr 12 2021, 4,881 reads

Thirteen to One: New Stories for an Age of Disaster
"Whenever an earthquake strikes Japan, the myth of the giant catfish Onamazu reminds people that the living world is full of complex meaning. In the face of repeated natural disasters, Marie Mutsuki Mockett looks to her mother's homeland to recall stories that could change our relationship with what we call 'nature.'"... posted on Apr 11 2021, 3,773 reads

The Way of the Heart
"According to the great wisdom traditions of the West (Christian, Jewish, Islamic), the heart is first and foremost an organ of spiritual perception. Its primary function is to look beyond the obvious, the boundaried surface of things, and see into a deeper reality, emerging from some unknown profundity, which plays lightly upon the surface of this life without being caught there: a world where me... posted on Apr 10 2021, 8,966 reads

Before You Know Kindness: A Poem by Naomi Shihab Nye
"Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth." Thus begins Naomi Shihab Nye's poem Kindness, animated poignantly by Ana Perez Lopez for the On Being Project. The poem, first published in 1980 and read softly here by the poet, contrasts strikingly with the typographical approach to the animation done during the pan... posted on Apr 09 2021, 3,352 reads