When Love Rescued Christmas
At the tail-end of a year full of disasters, Laura Grace Weldon experienced a breakdown moment as she considered her children's empty Christmas stockings. Read on to hear how her 11-year-old daughter's heartfelt and hilarious response restored her perspective, and inspired a beautiful, anonymous act of generosity towards another family in crisis.... posted on Dec 25 2020, 6,415 reads

Top 10 Insights from the Science of a Meaningful Life
"This year's top insights speak to the moment, from concrete tips about how to bond with a friend to broader truths about how societies respond to diversity over time. All of them point toward strengths and solutions amid isolation, illness, and conflict. The final insights were selected by experts on our staff, after soliciting nominations from our network of more than 300 researchers. We hope th... posted on Dec 24 2020, 9,130 reads

Winter Solstice: Blessing for the Longest Night
"This week, in addition to preparing for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day services, many congregations will offer a "Longest Night" or "Blue Christmas" service. Usually held on or near the Winter Solstice, this gathering provides a space for those who are having a difficult time during the holidays or simply need to acknowledge some pain or loss they are carrying in the midst of this season of cele... posted on Dec 23 2020, 28,288 reads

Learning to Love Winter's Night
"I have put on good attitudes before and found ways of accepting situations --thankfully, I found ways out of some--while creating the semblance of normalcy. But for me, a change of attitude wasn't enough. It didn't go deep enough. It wasn't always reliable. In order to live happily in Toronto, I needed to be able to love deeply, loving the people who live here and the place where I live. And espe... posted on Dec 22 2020, 3,431 reads

A Case for Wonder
"Karl Barth once described theology as 'necessarily the logic of wonders,' and the same 'logic' should suffuse education. If we can cultivate the capacity for wonder in ourselves, and if we can foster it in others, then we might step into a more compelling and magical world. Inhabiting such a place would grant us a particular kind of grace, in which the familiar would never grow old, the unfamilia... posted on Dec 21 2020, 4,348 reads

The Land Has Memory
"The denial and fear of death makes possession, possessiveness, and overconsumption possible. If we would just pull back a bit, slow down, and ask the "why" of each of our actions, based on the utter assurance of death, we would all be better off environmentally." Playwright, poet, and essayist Cherrie Moraga sees the world as a place where the body knows and "the land has memory." "Her writings h... posted on Dec 20 2020, 3,350 reads

Lydia Fairhall Amplifies Love
"Lydia Fairhall has lived many lives in this one life. She is a Worimi woman, born on Bundjalung country, now living between the Kulin nations and Gubbi Gubbi country. From experiencing trauma in early life to an art-filled, soulful adult life as a mother, producer, executive, singer/songwriter and custodian of ancient wisdom, Lydia is the embodiment of compassionate resilience." More in this inte... posted on Dec 19 2020, 4,346 reads

Time Confetti and the Broken Promise of Leisure
The autonomy paradox: "We adopt mobile technologies to gain autonomy over when and how long we work, yet, ironically, we end up working all the time. Long blocks of free time we used to enjoy are now interrupted constantly by our smart watches, phones, tablets, and laptops. This situation taxes us cognitively, and fragments our leisure time in a way that makes it hard to use this time for somethin... posted on Dec 17 2020, 4,988 reads

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, 3,770 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, 17,227 reads