Paul Farmer on 'Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds'
"In November 2014, Partners In Health Co-founder and Chief Strategist Dr. Paul Farmer was in Freetown, Sierra Leone, breaking bread with a group of Ebola survivors as the world's largest epidemic of the virus raged across the country. "It was the night I met Ibrahim," Farmer recalled, referring to one of the survivors. "We started talking and he told me he'd lost 23 members of his family to Ebola.... posted on Dec 16 2020, 3,705 reads

Wislawa Szymborska: Life-While-You-Wait
From Nobel Prize winner Wislawa Szymborska's poem, "Life-While-You-Wait" is "-- a bittersweet ode to life's string of unrepeatable moments, each the final point in a fractal decision tree of what-ifs that add up to our destiny, and a gentle invitation to soften the edges of the heart as we meet ourselves along the continuum of our becoming." BrainPickings offers Amanda Palmer's captivating reading... posted on Dec 15 2020, 16,502 reads

Gazing Into The Heart of Perfection
"Getting people to receive...to see the gifts they've been given...life itself! Life along the roadside, with the flowers and the weeds, and the pebbles and the trees, and the sounds of birds! And looking up and seeing the clouds, the light and the shadows. We're surrounded! Were in it! And did you know that the Persian word for paradise means "an enclosed garden?" We're in paradise, and we don't... posted on Dec 14 2020, 9,838 reads

The Alchemy of Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times
Matt Licata's new book is titled, 'A Healing Space: Befriending Ourselves in Difficult Times.' Here he speaks with Tami Simon about what it means to "be a healing space, that is to hold space for ourselves and others, as well as how we can feel held by something greater than ourselves during challenging experiences. They also explore our inner wounds and self-abandonment, spiritual bypassing and t... posted on Dec 12 2020, 5,870 reads

Fools and Dreamers: Regenerating a Native Forest
This 30-minute documentary about Hinewai Reserve, on New Zealands Banks Peninsula, is an incredible story of how degraded, gorse-infested farmland, has been regenerated into beautiful native forest over the course of 30 years. Once considered a plan expected only of fools and dreamers, manager, botanist Hugh Wilson, is now considered a hero locally and across the country for bringing back 1,500 he... posted on Dec 11 2020, 2,088 reads

The Hero/Heroine's Journey: Responding to the Call of Our Times
"I believe we have entered a sacred and very difficult time, a time in which the Hero/Heroines Journey is for all of humanity, not just individuals. How will we engage the forces of destruction the whole world faces?"John Kinyon has dedicated his life to the work of conflict resolution and nonviolent mediation. Here he shares more about the call of our times.... posted on Dec 10 2020, 6,110 reads

William Segal: The Force of Attention
"Attention is an independent force which will not be manipulated by one's parts. Cleared of all internal noise, conscious attention is an instrument which vibrates like a crystal at its own frequency. It is free to receive the signals broadcast at each moment from a creative universe in communication with all creatures. However, the attention is not "mine." In a moment of its presence, one knows t... posted on Dec 09 2020, 5,965 reads

Sustainable Social Change and Philanthropy
As a professional grantmaker and manager with some of the world's leading foundations, David Bonbright sought innovative approaches to strengthening citizen self-organization in place of prevailing bureaucratic, top-down models. While with the Ford Foundation, David was declared persona non grata by the apartheid government in South Africa for helping fund the liberation struggle. In 1990, in the ... posted on Dec 08 2020, 3,787 reads

COVID: Etymologies of the Word that Changed the World
What is in a word? Writer Becca Rose Hall creatively explores that question using the word that indelibly entered the collective consciousness of humanity this year: COVID. Breaking the word down in different ways she searches for meaning in its roots, and uncovers different facets of a changed world. ... posted on Dec 07 2020, 4,225 reads

Snack Attack
Waiting to board a train, an old lady just wants to eat her cookies in peace, but hijinks ensue when a teenager on the bench next to her seems intent on sharing them, too. This delightful animation was directed by Andrew Cadelago, with music by Roberto Murguia.... posted on Dec 06 2020, 4,671 reads