A Feast of Flowers
What do you feel when you gaze at a flower? Or better yet - a field of wondrous, lush, vibrant flowers? Our senses become engulfed in beauty, and as writer Lucia Ferrara Bettler explains in her article 'A Feast of Flowers', they truly are nourishment for the sprint. In one single flower we can feel the life-giving abundance that nature affords. Flowers teach us to behold the small, natural wonders... posted on Jun 13 2017, 11,368 reads

Give That Which is Organic To You: A Recipe to Avoid Burnout
"When I give something I do not possess, I give a false and dangerous gift, a gift that looks like love but is, in reality, loveless - a gift given more from my need to prove myself than from the other's need to be cared for." Parker Palmer from his book, "Let Your Life Speak", reflects on giving from a place of fullness. In this passage we are invited to give by moving outward from our true natur... posted on Jun 12 2017, 12,779 reads

Bringing Fresh Produce to the Underserved
Building Roots is a Canadian charity that "believes all neighbourhoods need places to grow, cook, share and buy healthy food." In the summer of 2016, Lisa Kates and Darcy Higgins of Building Roots created the Moss Park Market, a double-wide shipping container in the Moss Park area of Toronto, in order to bring fresh produce to what they consider to be a "largely ignored" neighborhood. Mr. Higgins,... posted on Jun 11 2017, 6,540 reads

Day Jobs for Panhandlers
With just under 400,000 residents, Tulsa, Oklahoma, has a significant homeless population. In 2016, between 6,000 and 7,000 residents lived on the streets. That number, while small in comparison to homeless populations in cities such as New York and Los Angeles, is noticeable in medium-sized Tulsa. So what did Tulsa decide to do to address this problem? Do what Albuquerque, New Mexico did -- move... posted on Jun 10 2017, 8,741 reads

Change Yourself, Change Your Story
"Storytelling, recognised in every society as a way of making sense of cultural roots or social reality, is an elaborate form of metaphor, and memoir is its masterpiece: life stories enable us to share insights and enhance mutual understanding in a social, political, psychological and spiritual sense. Memoir is revolutionary precisely because, when shared, it's a way towards the truth." In this es... posted on Jun 10 2017, 9,552 reads

My Year Reading a Book from Every Country in the World
Several years ago, Ann Morgan, a writer from London, looked at her bookshelf and realized it held almost no books from other countries -- an oversight she called a "massive cultural blindspot." In a nod to the Olympics, she decided to read a book from every country (196 total) and blog about it. But she quickly learned that finding books in English would be a challenge. Only about 4.5 percent of l... posted on Jun 09 2017, 2,871 reads

Why Defending Human Rights Is Women’s Work
Whether it is Black Lives Matter activists working to encourage and support school-age black girls so that they can thrive, formerly incarcerated black trans women fighting police brutality, Muslim women debunking dangerous stereotypes besetting their communities, or undocumented Latina women promoting the rights of domestic workers, women human rights defenders in America are building solidarity ... posted on Jun 08 2017, 5,694 reads

She Gave Street Children Her Cell Phone Number and That Changed
Jeroo Billimoria isn't one to see a person in need and hope that someone else will take action. She is a social entrepreneur who responds by getting involved in big and small ways. She became a social activist many years ago at the age of 11 when she encouraged her neighbors to open bank accounts and become financially literate. She wanted to enable their freedom from poverty. In recent years, Jer... posted on Jun 07 2017, 9,748 reads

Our Greatest Obstacle to Happiness and How to Transcend It
Maria Popova of Brain Pickings points out that "perhaps the greatest paradox of human life is that although happiness is the most universal of our longings, it is unobtainable by striving. The more ferociously we try to attain it, the more it eludes us." Join Artist Agnes Martin as she examines this paradox.... posted on Jun 06 2017, 16,340 reads

The CEO Who Gave 90% of His Salary to His Staff
In April 2015, Dan Price, CEO of a Seattle-based tech company Gravity Payments, did something with barely any precedents in the modern business world. He gave away 90 per cent of his own pay to raise the salaries of his employees to a minimum $70,000 a year. Price's decision came after reading a study from Princeton University, which found that emotional wellbeing rises with income up to a cut-off... posted on Jun 05 2017, 34,938 reads