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 (8,766 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 (9,329 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 (21,709 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 (10,807 reads)

Most of the people at the end of World War II who were in the Merchant Marine were not very favorable people as far as their futures were concerned. Many of them had received dishonorable discharges from the military, and this was the only job that they could get. So I learned a lot, and mostly what I learned was what not to do. I was very fortunate, as a young person, that drugs weren’t as prevalent in society as they are today. But, I did learn how alcohol and anger, and things of that nature caused people’s lives to take U-turns. That was a real learning experience for me. The Army taught me a lot of good things about regimentation and setting goals.  Overall, it was rea... posted on Nov 1 2017 (8,261 reads)

will come, and then against all odds, you will get your sense of humor about yourself back. Laughter really is carbonated holiness, even if you are sick of me saying it. 11. God; Goodnesss, Love energy, the Divine, a loving animating intelligence, the Cosmic Muffin. You will worship and serve something, so like St. Bob said, you gotta choose. You can play on our side, or Bill Maher’s and Franklin Graham’s. Emerson said that the happiest person on earth is the one who learns from nature the lessons of worship. So go outside a lot, and look up. My pastor says you can trap bees on the floor of a Mason jar without a lid, because they don’t look up. If they did, they coul... posted on Nov 3 2017 (233,446 reads)

with winning the lottery and marriage proposals. Yet other forms of joy exist all around us. As you begin to look for joy, you will notice more and more of them. There is the joy of pleasures, simple or sublime, such as enjoying a delicious meal, listening to music, or savoring how it feels to hold a baby in your arms. There is the joy of purpose, and how it feels to contribute, work hard, learn, and grow. There is the joy of being connected to something bigger than yourself, be it nature, family, or faith. There is the joy of wonder—being curious, experiencing new things, and feeling awe or surprise. There is the joy of being acknowledged and appreciated by others&mdas... posted on Nov 21 2017 (24,912 reads)

and this body, and they also arise and pass away. I see how I crave pleasant sensations, and I see how the craving is misery. In the bright light of my calm observation, wanting dries up and blows away. I am not in control. I did not create myself. I am a calm observer with a front row seat at the greatest show imaginable: the universe itself. How can I not smile as I watch this show? How can I be afraid when I realize how I formed? How can I feel separate from any other being when I am nature, when I am the biosphere, when I am the universe? How can I intentionally harm any being, once I’ve experienced the truth that all is connected? How can I put myself before others, when t... posted on Aug 19 2017 (9,334 reads)

metrics are those that drive productive action toward value creation. The count of how many times we brush is a great metric to get us to brush so that we may bring dental health into our lives, as opposed to just talking about it. There are wearable devices that have changed the game for many people in getting out of the office and exercising, simply by counting the number of steps they have taken during the day. These insights are the result of deep inquiry on the nature of value. All metrics are systemic values — artificial constructs created in our minds to make our world more manageable. They cannot even come close to capturing the practical value that... posted on Oct 17 2017 (14,611 reads)

most acute manifestation of how memory modulates stress is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD. For striking evidence of how memory encodes past experience into triggers, which then catalyze present experience, Sternberg points to research by psychologist Rachel Yehuda, who found both Holocaust survivors and their first-degree relatives — that is, children and siblings — exhibited a similar hormonal stress response. This, Sternberg points out, could be a combination of nature and nurture — the survivors, as young parents for whom the trauma was still fresh, may well have subconsciously taught their children a common style of stress-responsiveness; but it&rsquo... posted on Oct 8 2017 (30,146 reads)

spite of my efforts there are always weeds that escape my notice and grow too big, too much. Removing them now causes disturbance or harm to the other plants. The behavior of weeds is no different from that of humans and other creatures. The weeds want to survive and have evolved ways to maximize that chance. My own ways of being in the world are the same. Those tendencies, habits and attitudes I try to eradicate are no different. They have developed skills for endurance. It’s their nature, like the weeds. I recognize tendencies in me that want to survive, ideas about who I am and who I should be, and how I need to be in order to lead an effective life. Some of those ideas are... posted on Sep 20 2017 (20,758 reads)

myself to a delicious meal, but the joy will not at all be the same as if someone else treats me to a meal, even though it be a little less exquisite. I can prepare a treat for myself, but by no means of mental acrobatics can I be grateful to myself; there lies the decisive difference between the joy that gives rise to gratitude and any other joy. Gratitude refers to another, and to another as person. We cannot in the full sense be grateful to things or to impersonal powers like life or nature, unless we conceive of them in some confused way as implicitly personal, super-personal, if you wish. Gratitude springs from an insight, a recognition, that something good has come to me f... posted on Nov 23 2017 (17,345 reads)

Privilege of Living: A Conversation with Viral Mehta, by Pavithra Mehta August 1, 2016 Viral Mehta In mid-August 2015, Viral Mehta, a co-founder of ServiceSpace.org, was diagnosed with an acute form of bone marrow suppression. In the passages below, written half a year into the diagnosishis wife, Pavithra. “Pavi” Mehta, offers an update on Viral’s condition and speaks with him about his challenges and recovery.  -The Editors (Parabola magazine) Pavi’s Update Viral’s recovery is continuing slowly, at its own secret pace. Things are stable overall, though there have been fluctuations with his blood counts…. But the fact that h... posted on Dec 31 1969 (2,697 reads)

coined by him and variously translated as “truth force,” “soul force” or “clinging to truth,” generally used in reference to nonviolent resistance or a specific nonviolent campaign. I am committed to listen to Gandhi as a trusted guide with concrete instructions relating to my here-and-now, day-to-day life. Following February 16, 2003, this quest became particularly focused. I felt compelled to understand both the gaping hole I experienced that day, and the nature of its possible remedy. I hoped Gandhi’s life and work would offer guidance. And in due time, I found this guidance in the space of a single paragraph penned by Gandhi at a critical ... posted on May 25 2018 (14,494 reads)