beginning of another new year is the perfect time to reflect, as a family, on memorable moments of togetherness and inspiration from the year gone by and to express gratitude for all that it offered. It is also an opportunity to plant seeds for the intentions you want to cultivate at both a personal level with your families and, more broadly, to plant seeds of goodness for the change you wish to see in the world in 2017. Our team of volunteer editors hopes you enjoy our personal selection of the Top 10 Kindful Kids of 2016 here below! We are grateful to this entire community for nourishing children's journeys in the beautiful ways that you do and we look forward to seeing all of the ... posted on Jan 10 2017 (10,587 reads)

year, about fifteen of us had a breakout call with some visionaries of World in Conversation and Laddership Circles, around working with volunteers.  Below is a glimpse of the Q&A that emerged, on the call and afterwards.] Our efforts attracts many volunteers, but we don't use them effectively. What do you suggest? The most fundamental design principle is our mindset. Typically, volunteers are used as a means to an end -- this is our mission, we need this stuff done to achieve our mission, and you can help us do these chores. ServiceSpace doesn't work that way. For us, volunteer experience is an end in itself. We believe that if a volunteer ha... posted on Jan 12 2017 (19,395 reads)

refused to keep an image of herself on the wall. Her mother had been asking her for a photograph for years, but she had been unable to give her one. She did not consider herself beautiful enough to look at. Love stories often have their roots in hospitality, in providing welcome to a stranger, an acknowledgement of a shared humanity.  In his autobiographical book “Letter to a Hostage,” the French writer Antoine de Saint-Exupéry talks about the miraculous nature of a smile, not only to obscure the trauma of being taken hostage but to remove it all together, as if it never existed. As I have walked from place to place, the willingness of communities to ... posted on Jan 14 2017 (13,340 reads)

politics of deeply listening and collaborating on behalf of the common good. It’s a politics of openness and transparency and participation, leveraging the technological tools that we have and the wisdom of listening to one another and sitting together in a circle and in groups and allowing the collective wisdom to inform our decisions as a community, as a nation, as a human family. The new story is playing out in the field of our environment, right? Young people are reconnecting with nature, with the natural world. We’re reshaping the way that we eat and the way that we engage with food. People are growing food locally, working to transform their schools and make sure that f... posted on Jan 18 2017 (12,327 reads)

fixed) patterns of connection, but connection remains key to reorganization, so maintaining some critical connections will be key to resilience and regeneration of new forms (see #3 in image below).  All of this has me emphasizing that much more the importance of network leadership, which I recently presented to the Food Solutions New England Network Leadership Institute, in the following way: Network leadership operates from the understanding that the nature and pattern of connection in a system underlie its state of health (including justice, prosperity, resilience). Network leadership strives to understand, shift and strengthen connectivity,... posted on Feb 4 2017 (25,740 reads)

dealing with processes of communication. Social networks, as you know, are networks of communications. Like biological networks, they are self-generating, but what they generate is mostly non-material. Each communication creates thoughts and meaning, which give rise to further communications, and thus the entire network generates itself. Mind and consciousness One of the most important, and most radical, philosophical implications of the systems view of life is a new conception of the nature of mind and consciousness, which finally overcomes the Cartesian division between mind and matter that has haunted philosophers and scientists for centuries. In the 17th century, René... posted on Jan 31 2017 (18,686 reads)

to each other in groups. This is critical to human survival and wellbeing; we are above all social creatures and we thrive through co-operation. When we are generous or caring towards another person and we witness their gladness as a result, we can feel pleasure in our hearts even before receiving their gratitude. Our empathic neuro-circuitry allows us to take pleasure from the joy we see in others; this primes us to be prosocial beings and balances the more self-serving aspects of human nature. We are wired for empathy and are driven by it – that is; provided the neurological blueprint for empathy has been nurtured in childhood. No-one is born to be un-empathic. But if the c... posted on May 15 2021 (43,110 reads)

I was working on The Art of Possibility—a book about changing one’s story rather than battling the world as it appears through the lens of that story—I used to go on weekends in fall and winter to a cabin south of Boston to do the writing. The cabin is on a pond, in front of a cranberry bog, and surrounded by acres of conservation land. It provided everything I needed to get my work done: freedom from interruptions, a relaxed atmosphere, beauty, and quiet. As I looked forward to my very first weekend in my recently purchased hideaway I was extremely excited. I was going to spend three days in an environment in which nothing would disturb my concentration. That ... posted on Feb 27 2017 (14,318 reads)

as testament to her belief. This year will see the release of "Herd", an award-winning film on Liz and the transformational work of the Equinisity retreats. Brilliantly shot, and documenting a group of retreat attendees from the time of their arrival to the end of their stay, "Herd" poignantly captures the light and shadows of individual journeys and the gentle miracles that unfold between the people, the land and the animals. It has always been second nature to Liz to transform her love into art -- not just through words but also images. In addition to writing, producing the film, managing the retreats and caring for her animals, she has been a pub... posted on Mar 9 2017 (16,634 reads)

likelihood, our propensity for gratitude really does have deep evolutionary roots, and it will be up to us to find out how deep they go. We often blame our worst tendencies, like aggression and competition, on our evolutionary history. It’s important to remember that some of our most positive qualities like empathy and gratitude are also a part of this history. When we discover these traits in our closest relatives, it’s a powerful reminder that the “good” in human nature is deeply rooted, as well. ... posted on Mar 24 2017 (11,117 reads)

many different healing traditions, from biologist to engineer, to ecologist, and to osteopathic physician.” Music has always been a strong thread running through his life since he first started playing instruments at age four; primarily harmonica, Jews harp, 5-string banjo, and native American flute. He has won several competitions, and currently teaches at the Maine fiddle camp every August. “Music is vibration,” he reminds us. “… and vibration is the nature of the universe, and who we are, and how we heal.” ... posted on Apr 10 2017 (20,515 reads)

from Suffering to Enlightenment by Marianne Williamson HarperOne When depression is seen as the problem, Williamson believes we are not looking deeply enough at the human condition. She says that depression is, at its heart, a symptom of being disconnected from the divine.  —Kalia Kelmenson   Two Dogs and a Parrot What Our Animal Friends Can Teach Us About Life by Joan Chittister BlueBridge Why do we love pets? Because, through them, we “cling to nature in a world made of glass and steel that has divided us from it,” maintains the author of this deceptively simple set of lessons that our animal companions can teach us about living in thi... posted on Apr 4 2017 (37,740 reads)

fruits are ripe, there is always the tendency to rush the harvesting. ALANDA GREENE shares her experience of having an attitude of poise and being present in the moment instead of rushing to finish the task. LESSONS FROM THE GARDEN More than with any other berry in the garden, picking blueberries invokes a sense of urgency. I feel it as I see the clusters of deep blue-black orbs, and then see another cluster and another. The feeling is: hurry, there are so many, there is so much to be done, and there’s more there, and there behind you, and over in that bush. Another feeling is also evoked: that there is suddenly so much to do, not enough time. I’ve got to get them pick... posted on Apr 2 2017 (11,739 reads)

to that yearning that we appeal. But if we are committed to nonviolence only as a strategy or tactic, then if it fails our only alternative is to turn to violence. So we must balance the strategy with a clear understanding of what we are doing. However important the struggle is and however much misery, poverty and exploitation exist, we know that it cannot be more important than one human life. We work on the theory that men and women who are truly concerned about people are nonviolent by nature. These people become violent when the deep concern they have for people is frustrated and when they are faced with seemingly insurmountable odds. We advocate militant nonviolence as our mean... posted on Mar 31 2017 (17,941 reads)

happened in the Germany of that era. But if we look around, we will find that we count life in numbers all the time. Any report of a war that one can find on the internet includes the essential statistic of how many people died. A smaller casualty count can sometimes make us feel that the loss of life was regrettable but not too high. When we reduce  a single human life to a metric, in this case, the number 1, we risk trivializing death and rendering ourselves immune to the invaluable nature of human life. In doing so, we lose a big part of our own humanity and shape a world that is less sensitive to human suffering and more prone to causing suffering. The incredible richness of&nb... posted on Mar 27 2017 (11,156 reads)

the Equal Rights Amendment for men and women to have equal rights under the U.S. constitution and that puts things in perspective,” Sellers said. Shalini Eddens is the director of programs for Urgent Action Fund for Women’s Human Rights, an Oakland-based group that makes rapid-response grants to women human rights defenders facing imminent threats. Eddens said the group has seen a palpable increase in grant requests from the U.S., where attacks are racialized and gendered in nature. “After the election results, we saw an increase in requests from LBTQI groups and gender-nonconforming activists in the U.S., who are experiencing severe threats for the work that they d... posted on Jun 8 2017 (5,643 reads)

optimistic. We can vividly imagine the bloom and the scent of the rose even in deepest of winter. As the American naturalist Henry David Thoreau once wrote: "I have great faith in a seed. Convince me that you have a seed there, and I am prepared to expect wonders." In essence, the gardener's work is a life of care. We cultivate abundance from scarce resources. We nurture, encourage, fertilize - and prune when necessary - while being respectful of the true and wild nature of all things. We know that creating enduring value requires vision, passion, hard work and the spirit of others. I am just coming to understand this work of business gardening - and investi... posted on Apr 26 2017 (12,135 reads)

their eyes reminded me of how my mom constantly cultivated joy and wonder in me, even if things weren't going well, even if it was a bad day. She always encouraged my imagination, my creativity, my ability to be present in whatever I was doing or wherever I was, and I'm grateful for those gifts all the time, especially now that I’m a mother. Especially now that she's doing it for my son, too. It is the most amazing gift. Nimo: Mother’s are just unconditional in nature. 9 months of bodily sacrifice and embrace, giving birth to a new life, and then give of herself, physically, her time, and all possible resources to nourish this child of hers an... posted on May 14 2017 (13,635 reads)

often treated in a second-class way. People got involved in their own ideas and pretty defensive and ego driven about their ideas. People really were not working on themselves and that caused all kinds of mischief. I am wondering in the Food Not Bombs movement, is there a way besides working on the world that people are working on themselves? K.: Well, that can happen in many different ways. A great many of the young people are anarchists so they reject organized religion and things of that nature, but within that community of people, they work on themselves in other ways. For instance, they seek empowerment and being strong so they will have meetings and workshops against the "-ism... posted on Jul 7 2017 (8,552 reads)

was at the compost edge with two freshly picked red onions, washing dirt from their skins. At the time, my mind was wrangling with unpleasant thoughts, feeling wronged in a particular situation, reviewing how I was wronged. Not sure to whom I was stating my case. Not the red onions. As I peeled back the outer layer of one, the sun caught its redness, lit it up like a ruby, and I gasped at the startling beauty of it. Thoughts stilled, and the red glow absorbed my being in gratitude and awe. Suddenly I felt silly for what now seemed a petty absorption. Here I was surrounded in beauty, yet not receptive to it, letting myself be mired in thoughts not about now, not helpful, and an obstac... posted on May 29 2017 (13,197 reads)