Atul Gawande: What Matters in the End
Atul Gawande practices general and endocrine surgery in Boston, is a professor at Harvard Medical School, a writer for the New Yorker, and author of "Being Mortal." Through his work Dr. Gawande opens a new conversation about what dying has to do with living, and his role as a medical doctor in ensuring not only health and survival, but enabling his patients' well-being. In this interview, Dr. Ga... posted on Jan 11 2018, 29,234 reads

Burundi Genocide Survivor on How Running Helped Him Heal
In 2013, Gilbert Tuhabonye spoke with Celeste Headlee on National Public Radio about running, forgiving, and healing. On the 20th anniversary of the genocide of the Tutsis, he recalls how he, his classmates, and teachers were beaten, locked in a burning building and left to die. He was the only survivor. An Olympic class runner before this tragedy, running became his physical and emotional therapy... posted on Jan 10 2018, 3,949 reads

How Gratitude Contributes to World Peace
If you look the sales person in the eye and express genuine gratitude for the service you have just received, where will that ripple of gratitude go? Can the words we use towards and about others in our small day-to-day interactions really matter on the planetary scale of world peace? Read this article from gratefulness.org to learn just how far your next "thank you" might travel.... posted on Jan 09 2018, 14,983 reads

The Courage to Feel: E.E. Cummings on Art, Life and More
In the face of pressure to conform, expressing oneself is not only an art, but an act of bravery. "To be nobody-but-yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting," wrote poet e.e. cummings, who eschewed literary form, bunked tradition, and created his own style of poe... posted on Jan 08 2018, 11,271 reads

Cheryl Angel: Water Is Life
Cheryl Angel is an indigenous leader, wise (Sioux) Lakota elder woman, mother of five children, and lifelong devoted water protector who helped initiate and maintain the Standing Rock camp since April 2016, and who was vital in the nonviolent resistance to the Dakota Access and Keystone XL pipelines. Her voice among the water protectors is one of integrating deep prayer with nonviolent direct acti... posted on Jan 07 2018, 1,469 reads

Fleeing the Mouth of the Shark
Bill Dienst, MD, is a rural family and emergency room physician from north central Washington who has been volunteering for humanitarian medical missions since 1982, when he was a young man in medical school. His first experience profoundly changed his life and he was "hooked," he says, volunteering repeatedly for medical exchange programs in Veracruz, Mexico, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Mo... posted on Jan 06 2018, 9,499 reads

The Brush Maker
Lorna Crane is an artist, but more importantly she is an explorer. Combing the Australian beach, Crane hunts for feathers, leaves, fishing wire-- any items that she can fashion into painting brushes. As she paints with these found objects, she finds joy in the unexpected: "The freshness and spontaneity you can't get with anything else." Her creations are both "of the landscape as well as from the ... posted on Jan 05 2018, 3,234 reads

The Songs of Trees
We look at trees every day. What if we paused long enough to "listen"? Could you hear a song if you put your ear to the bark? If one tree can sing a solo; what kind of symphony would come forth from a forest of trees? Dive into these questions on a long cold day with a warm cup and Maria Popova's review of the book "The Songs of Trees" by David George Haskell. Give yourself the gift of lingering s... posted on Jan 04 2018, 16,265 reads

Spotlight on Redemption
With the dawn of each new year, we vow to make changes, usually little things--lose a few pounds, eat better, exercise more, be more patient. Sometimes those changes stick; sometimes by February we are wondering where our resolutions have gone. But what of the big changes--atoning for a life of crime, or giving up destructive or selfish pursuits, for instance? Are those sorts of big changes possib... posted on Jan 03 2018, 7,425 reads

Five Habits of the Heart
In Habits of the Heart, Parker Palmer describes ways of seeing, being, and responding to life that involve our minds, our emotions, our self-images, our concepts of meaning and purpose that are critical to sustaining society. These five habits are: an understanding that we are all in this together; an appreciation of the value of "otherness"; an ability to hold tension in life-giving ways; a sense... posted on Jan 02 2018, 23,426 reads