Crossing the Empathy Wall in Divided Times
"Everyone has a deep story," says Arlie Hochschild. "Our job is to respect and try to understand these stories." Hochschild is one of the most distinguished sociologists of our time. Considered the founder of the "sociology of emotion," she examines some of the most urgent challenges our societies face: work-family balance, shifting gender roles, alienation, globalization, and the ever-widening po... posted on Sep 23 2020, 5,339 reads

What Women's Suffrage Owes to Indigenous Culture
"It's been 100 years since the ratification of the 19th Amendment secured voting rights for womensort of. In She Votes: How U.S. Women Won Suffrage, and What Happened Next, author Bridget Quinn and 100 female artists survey the complex history of the struggle for women's rights, including racial segregation and accommodation to White supremacy. They celebrate the hitherto under-recognized efforts ... posted on Sep 22 2020, 3,208 reads

Spirituality and Social Action: A Holistic Approach
"No one who met her [Vimala Thakar] could fail to be moved.For she was a great spiritually enlightened revolutionary and activist; a notable Indian figure of the 20th Century who boldly forged a radically independent approach to spirituality and the search for truth. Freed from all religious tradition, she brought the timeless wisdom of the East to the modern egalitarian West without the baggage o... posted on Sep 21 2020, 3,644 reads

When the Source Ran Free: A Story for Our Times
"Watching the sun rise over the wetlands, the mist fading, even here in the midst of nature there is the strange stillness of a world in lockdown waiting, wondering, anxiety, and fear its companions. I am writing these words in the time of the great pandemic, when for a few brief months our world slowed down and almost stopped; when as the stillness grew around us there was a moment to hear anoth... posted on Sep 20 2020, 7,160 reads

Mark and Doug: The Power of Friendship
Mark Redding survived a devastating traumatic brain injury in an auto accident when he was in his early 20s. Almost 30 years later, Mark met Doug Kline through the PALS (Providing a Link for Survivors) program at Brain Injury Services, a program that enables clients and community volunteers to connect in a mutually enriching friendship to build skills and combat isolation through community integra... posted on Sep 19 2020, 2,224 reads

Living Medicine: On Plant Intelligence and Natural Healing
"Every time some new evidence of plant-based intelligence intrudes on my awareness, it confronts perspectives about the world that I inherited from my culture or my family or my schooling, and some portion of that received worldview crumbles, and something new takes its place. The world is a great deal different than we have been led to believe. In fact, we know very little about what goes on here... posted on Sep 18 2020, 5,778 reads

Unconditional Presence: Letting Yourself Have Your Experience
"The journey from self-hatred to self-love involves learning to meet, accept, and open to the being that you are. This begins with letting yourself have your experience. Genuine self-acceptance is not possible as long as you are resisting, avoiding, judging, or trying to manipulate and control what you experience. Whenever you judge the experience you're having, you're not letting yourself be as y... posted on Sep 17 2020, 4,630 reads

Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "Where Do We Go from Here?" sermon at the annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The country was at a crossroads. The "evil triplets" of the times, militarism, racism, and poverty called for what King called a "radical revolution of values." Will we move in the direction of chaos or community? The qu... posted on Sep 16 2020, 3,352 reads

The Big Bang of Equity + Systems Change
"How can we reimagine and rebuild our current society? At what point do we let a broken system fail? How can we protect vulnerable or disproportionately impacted people who might fall between cracks as we let go of what no longer works? How might we include more people not only at the receiving end of these systems, but in the designing of them? How can we build systems that truly serve and work f... posted on Sep 15 2020, 6,112 reads

Barbara Kingsolver on Knitting as Creation Story
"It starts with a craving to fill the long evening downslant. There will be whole wide days of watching winter drag her skirts across the mud-yard from east to west, going nowhere. You will want to nail down all these wadded handfuls of time, to stick-pin them to the blocking board, frame them on a twenty-four-stitch gauge. Ten to the inch, ten rows to the hour, straggling trellises of days held f... posted on Sep 14 2020, 20,280 reads