that the next time I was lucky enough to be a Trail Angel, I would call on all of them to be Trail Angels too so they could bring their favorite gifts and offerings to the next weary traveler. They cheered in delight. As should we all. When we give without expectation, when we are able to acknowledge what a gift it is to have something to give in the first place, that alone will fill us with an overwhelming sense of gratitude, love and compassion. I believe it’s in our nature to give to one another, and most people deeply appreciate opportunities to offer kindness without expectation. As soon as we tie an expectation to our giving, as soon as we draw conditions arou... posted on Jun 16 2017 (11,457 reads)

whose sensory capabilities far exceed my own. Ha! Although we remained with foreheads touching for only several minutes, for me, time was suspended. I heard what I presumed was her sonar echolocation, which so far exceeds even our own sophisticated technology that the military has drafted dolphins into military service, unfortunately. This whale imparted a lesson to me and my student, who was watching intently. She gave us a glimpse of the beauty and magic we could perceive every day in in nature if we only open ourselves to it. Of course this was clearly interspecies communication. I have various possible interpretations of what this beluga was communicating to me, but clearly her a... posted on Jun 30 2017 (13,460 reads)

gifts of a purposeful approach is that purpose is bountiful: it gives those who commit themselves to it not only the conviction to act for long-term sustainability, but the courage to take a long-term view. It rewards you not only with sustainable growth but the deep, personal fulfilment that comes from having a genuine and uncompromising positive impact. REI’s story teaches us that purposeful sacrifice can be as heart-warming as inspiring the world to spend a day in the beauty of nature. They may have sacrificed a day’s profits, but they’ve gained the love of their customers, 24/7. ... posted on Jun 28 2017 (15,797 reads)

Mesa, Arizona, where the Hopi have lived for centuries. There is something liberating about going on a journey. It frees the spirit and opens the door to encountering new and exciting experiences. If you’re lucky, the fates might steer a bit of serendipity your way. A “wrong turn” on the road leads you to discover an old castle; an architectural gem you find fascinating. Maybe a chance meeting with a poet in a café livens up your sightseeing day and you remember it with a smile, long after the trip is comes to an end. These serendipities are gifts, a reward for getting off the couch and taking to the road! Sometimes the memory of your excursion is... posted on Jun 22 2017 (10,605 reads)

lawyer who's actually taking care of his divorce. While he does that, he's about to have a car accident and a heart attack. All these things are good things for GDP.“ Working with other forms of capital, however, is quite a challenge. We go through extra-ordinary effort to grease the wheels of our financial currency -- banks, markets, derivatives, fiscal policies, and so much more. But do we have the equivalent machinery for amplifying time capital, or community capital or nature capital? Far from it. If we did, we would be asking a very different set of questions. Like -- what is an education that amplifies, not just intellectual or even emotional quotient, but... posted on Jul 28 2017 (9,936 reads)

a poem is made available to the public, the right of interpretation belongs to the reader,” young Sylvia Plath wrote to her mother as she reflected on her first poem. What is true of a poem is true of any work of art: Art transforms us not with what it contains but with what it creates in us — the constellation of interpretations, revelations, and emotional truths illuminated — which, of course, is why the rise of the term “content” to describe creative output online has been one of the most corrosive developments in contemporary culture. A poem — or an essay, or a painting, or a song — is not its “content”; it transforms ... posted on Jun 27 2017 (8,210 reads)

light of dawn,tent-like white light of day, the gold light of the afternoon, and of course, at night, the reversal: sensuous, catching the light in all kinds of mysterious ways. And the site: it's interesting; 14 years ago when we made the submission, we showed the temple set against the Andes. We didn't have the Andes as our site, but after nine years, that's exactly where we ended up, the lines of the temple set against nothing but pure nature, and you turn around and you get nothing but the city below you, and inside, a view in all directions, radiating gardens from each of the alcoves, radiating paths. L... posted on Jul 8 2017 (9,623 reads)

research is now exploring what learning looks like in the brain—and it’s bad news for those of us who loved to cram in college. Apparently the brain can only build so many neurons each night, so regular, repeated practice is crucial. Oakley recommends learning in “chunks”—bite-sized bits of information or skills, such as a passage in a song, one karate move, or the code for a particular technical command. Practicing these regularly allows them to become second nature, freeing up space in our conscious mind and working memory so we can continue building new knowledge. (If this doesn’t happen, you may have to select a smaller chunk.) It also helps to... posted on Jul 4 2017 (15,873 reads)

Hinshaw explores what it meant to be raised by a father with psychosis—and how that experience has informed his work as a psychologist. What is it like to grow up in a household with a parent displaying serious mental illness? Renowned psychologist Stephen Hinshaw knows firsthand. His father suffered major bouts of psychosis that kept him periodically hospitalized during Hinshaw’s childhood. Yet, the reasons for these absences were never explained to Hinshaw, until he turned 18 and his philosopher father started to divulge his lifetime of struggles (which included being (mis)diagnosed with schizophrenia for decades). Stephen Hinshaw Hinshaw is now a professor... posted on Sep 4 2017 (9,691 reads)

human being is part of a whole, called by us the Universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circles of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.” This perspective of oneness shows the slow fusion of science and the soul in a single human being, a process that releases enough energy to secure the survival of human... posted on Jul 10 2017 (6,653 reads)

around the magician, the actors, the business leaders, the moms, the dads, You all have something to offer. We get connected with that passion and that heart vibration and that's where the magic is! Audrey: I am curious Linda, amidst all this activity, do you have a personal practice? How do you stay grounded? Linda: Yes I do of course. I have been so lucky because I have lived in the countries that have really engaged in being your best and being spiritual and really engaging with nature and environment and appreciating whether it is the warmth of the sun or the goodness of the flowering along the wild paddy field. I've learnt the ritual of every religion known to man. From... posted on Aug 3 2018 (4,570 reads)

people experienced different things. And depending on where you are and the age — and one of the things that I grew up understanding was that, multiplicity of viewpoints and truths. But that particular poem was to my sister, a sister who I love very much, who was experiencing trauma and trying to speak to how, in our case, I think, alcoholism shatters a unity. It can fragment a community so that you are now in separate shards. And as much as you want to be all in the same room, the nature of that illness fragments any unifying understanding, or even experience. So I think that’s what those lines were trying to say. One sister is trying to speak to another from that fragmen... posted on Jul 23 2017 (8,768 reads)

Another unmade-up room?        By now it was well after 11pm. Although I had no proof, by now I had a feeling no employees were left in the entire hotel except for this young woman at the desk. In a small motel, that wouldn't seem odd, but here it did. Don't hotels always have a manager and staff - bellboys, people hidden away in basements, kitchens, offices, back rooms, all quietly present to keep the place functioning? But Kingman is a desert town, a place where nature has been stripped down to the bare bones. Nevertheless, standing there in the Marriott lobby, my sense that the single young woman behind the desk constituted the entire hotel staff produced an... posted on Aug 22 2017 (9,542 reads)

as if we were trying to furnish a very large house with a motley mix of beautiful but odd furniture. Nonetheless I think we created a habitable enough corner to welcome people into a new perspective. In the years since my encounter with the spiritual being, I’ve become comfortable in the cultural fringes where my work has found its home. I have scaled back on traveling and speaking in order to spend more time with my precious loved ones and to connect with the source of knowledge in nature, silence, and intimate connections. I’m with my family at my brother’s farm right now, doing farm labor part of the day and writing during the other part. The flurry of publicity th... posted on Nov 9 2017 (16,089 reads)

Tippett: This is why we have children. They set us straight. Mr. Martínez Celaya: But I think that there’s an emotional relationship that colors can bring about, and paintings are intricately connected to the notion of not absolute color, but local color; colors in relationship with one another. And I find this to be a profound part of the encounter with paintings. And the colors of paintings are always insignificant, or relatively lame, compared to nature. A lot of the great things of paintings is the constraints, the limitations. I mean that’s what makes them a creative enterprise; it’s the constraints. A lot of people talk about... posted on Nov 12 2017 (9,331 reads)

with other small NGOs to provide mobile urgent care health clinics to the refugee camps at Idomeni and a smaller camp at Eko—which was set up next to a gas station—that’s how impromptu and makeshift these camps are. We also partnered with large NGOs like Doctors Without Borders, International Rescue Committee, the UNHCR (UN High Commission on Refugees), and others—including the Greek government—to try to respond to the crisis. But our support, by its very nature, had to be improvised because the situation was constantly changing. Of course, Greece and Turkey both had their own financial and economic crises prior to the refugees’ arrival, but t... posted on Jan 6 2018 (9,236 reads)

when we are content we are happy and grateful for what we have and we don’t need more. I strive to achieve my son’s level of contentment. Photo: Linda Hannum While exploring what it means to be content I’ve been pondering when I first became aware of gratitude. I’m hard pressed to identify a time frame. As a child I had good manners and appreciated what I had in life but I cannot recall early grateful learning lessons. I was a farm girl. I was grateful for nature, the sun, stars, grass, and all the beauty around me. We made our own food. I recall special times when mom would buy bakery cinnamon rolls. I was happy but I’m not sure I felt gratitude.... posted on Aug 20 2017 (12,091 reads)

was either Donna Billick or Diane Ullman, the founders of the Art and Science Fusion project at UC Davis who mentioned Meredith May to me. It was four years ago. We were probably standing out in their pollinators garden at UCD.  “Just yesterday a reporter from the San Francisco Chronicle was up here. She keeps bees on the roof of the Chronicle building.” The image of bee hives on the roof of the Chronicle building in downtown SF captured me. I wanted to meet this reporter and asked for her name. It was Meredith May.  As Meredith said, “The best interview I ever did came out of that!” And thanks to the connection, she sent me a note when her first bo... posted on Oct 10 2017 (7,322 reads)

something that is formulaic, but rather a moment of beauty that emerges from a complex set of interconnections in his inner ecology. How do we learn to honor that deep intelligence that is already native in all of us? How do we learn to marry it with the awesome computing power, the ginormous big data, and the sophisticated algorithms that are now available to us? Most importantly, how do we make sure that we lead with this kind of love? How do we make sure that instead of trying to dominate nature, we're actually in concert with its emergence? I think that's the invitation -- to hold all these questions, and craft a new narrative. In the end, if we ever get stuck between ch... posted on Aug 17 2017 (21,710 reads)

in there. A lot of times as teachers we try to give information without realizing that kids need to know that this is theirs. When they own it, that changes it. So before we get in our positions, we'll have the kids repeat after us: "I've got my feet on the floor. I've got my spine in a line, I've got my hands in my lap, I've got my heart to the sky. Now close your eyes." And the kids will say, "All right." If it’s teenagers who are out in nature, for example—just by being with the breeze touching your skin, you are being mindful; close your eyes in stillness and see what it feels like to feel the breeze, while fully present, with... posted on Sep 26 2017 (10,808 reads)