When I Wrote My Mom a Thank-You Letter
"In the waning days of 2015, I decided to mark a milestone birthday by simply saying "thank you." My plan was to write one letter each week of that year to someone who had helped, shaped, or inspired me on the road to the person I am today. Nothing fancy: just one gratitude letter at time. I later called this letter-writing spree my Thank-You Project--and it would change my life in a profound, pos... posted on Dec 09 2019, 8,661 reads

Earth as Goddess
Baba Mandaza Augustine Kademwa, from Zimbabwe, was born a Svikiro (in Shona, his native tongue), a carrier of many earth and water spirits, and a Mondhoro (Lion), one who is in constant prayer on behalf of others.Mandaza is an African traditional healer and voice for Mother Nature, he carries with him, in his heart, the Central African spiritual tradition of healing and peacemaking. In the followi... posted on Dec 08 2019, 5,932 reads

How Place Can Connect Us to Gratitude
"Certain places can evoke a profound experience of gratitude for us. Have you ever noticed how your favorite bakery, or neighborhood park, or familiar church, or your own living room, can bring you profound gratitude that you feel in your body?...Place connects us to gratitude, and gratitude connects us to place. And this gratitude also finds its place in our bodies. As we find gratitude in a sens... posted on Dec 07 2019, 6,454 reads

Spirit Bathing for the Worried and Beleaguered
"As expressed in a thousand ways in the Brussats book "Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life", the Spirit resides not only in formal religious rituals and spiritual practices, but in everyday life -- nature, a cats eyes, a beautiful painting, a colorful salad, a lover's embrace, a new place. This means that I can Spirit Bathe anywhere, anytime. I can be in my kitchen or kneeling ... posted on Dec 06 2019, 7,162 reads

Milo Runkle: Expanding Our Sphere of Concern
After witnessing the brutal handling of a live piglet brought into school for dissection, Milo Runkle discovered that the current legal system offered no recourse for him to press charges on behalf of the animal. The experience spurred him to found Mercy for Animals when he was 15 years old. Over the last 20 years, that organization has become an important group to assist in the move away from fac... posted on Dec 05 2019, 4,881 reads

Why We Need Darkness
Diane Knutson is a former National Park Ranger and the creator of the Lights Out Movement in Rapid City, South Dakota. Light pollution not only impacts our view of the universe, but our environment, our individual health, and energy consumption. Not long ago, the starry night sky was clearly visible -- now, songbirds mistake city skylines for the rising sun, eight out of ten children will never se... posted on Dec 04 2019, 2,768 reads

Time Out of Joint: Shakespeare in Prison
Rehabilitation through the Arts brought a screening of three films based on Shakespearean works to an upstate New York prison with powerful results. The timeless themes of Shakespeare's writings, themes such as what it means to be a man, to be human, to live in a society with many ills which also provides possibilities for growth and transformation, are discussed after the films are viewed by the ... posted on Dec 03 2019, 1,846 reads

Mark Tredinnick Heals with Poetry
Poet Mark Tredinnick is the recipient of multiple international poetry prizes, who experienced a period of depression or "spiritual catastrophe," when he lost his moorings. In this interview he explains how poetry helped him find himself again through his "welcoming of the wholeness of my life, including the sorrow and the pain."
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Slow Media
Jennifer Rauch took a six-month break from the Internet, iPhone, email and ebooks. Instead of unplugging she says, "I was replugging into relationships, into nature and into my community." She argues that Carlo Petrini's (Slow Food) principles "good, clean, fair" also apply to digital media. In regard to "clean"-- is the production of electronic products environmentally sustainable? With regard to... posted on Dec 01 2019, 1,781 reads

Breath of the World
Who among us does not depend on fresh air as the source of our life and well-being? As one Ecuadoran elder said, "It is from the Amazon that the breath of the world comes; without the amazon the world would not breathe.". Our rain forests are all that stand between us and catastrophic climate change. Watch this video and then share it with everyone you know who likes to breathe fresh air.... posted on Nov 30 2019, 1,908 reads