we have enjoyed for years—Northern Pine Lodge on Potato Lake, in Park Rapids, Minnesota. It is about a 4-hour drive from the Twin Cities under normal circumstances. This trip was not “normal circumstances.” I had all three of my sons, plus three of their friends.  This was the first time in over five years that my oldest son, Lee, 18 years old, came along.  His special needs had evolved to where he no longer enjoyed leaving home very much or being outside in nature. Most recently, he did not want to leave our 3 beloved cats—especially his handsome tuxedo cat Norman Ruffles. Norman will snap at those who pet him “unmindfully”  (me... posted on Feb 12 2020 (7,711 reads)

these religions were even passed on to and why they were brought to these communities as a system of control, to keep you in your place so that you can be doing these specific things that the slave owners want you to do. When we look at actual African diaspora religions, and even Christianity as a religion in Africa before slavery, we see that the way Christianity actually looked and the way religion for African people before America actually looked when it was so inclusive, and it involved nature. It involved crystals. It involved the sun and mindfulness—not with that name. It involved all of this. And all of that got stripped away, and given this dogmatic thing. I’m not ... posted on Feb 17 2020 (6,501 reads)

framework and approach of Critical Alignment in book form. In a Facebook post to his community he wrote, “As a teacher I knew I had discovered something but Wijnand carved it out of the rough teacher’s stone inside.” Geraerts participated in the project under the condition that there would be no money involved. He believed this would give them total freedom to “complete the mission.” Over the course of their lengthy conversations van Leeuwen would understand the nature of that freedom, “ I felt lighter when I stepped into his room, as if something fell off me. Maybe it was my pride or insecurity, defenses or ego. I tried to fully understand him. And thr... posted on Feb 20 2020 (5,103 reads)

dusk – or dawn. The color blue, the color green, the gifts and strengths you have, other people in your life, the ability to laugh. A pet. *** Connect with your spiritual, religious, humanist, cultural, or other communities. Find strength and solace and power in traditions, texts, rituals, practices, holy times and seasons. *** Pray as you are able, silently, through song, in readings, through ancestors. Remember the long view of history, the rhythms and cycles of nature, the invisible threads that connect us all. *** Practice hope. Trust in the future and our power to endure and persist, to live fully into the goodness that awaits. ... posted on Mar 27 2020 (13,618 reads)

Of those with jobs easily made remote and healthcare and savings accounts. Even being able to philosophize about bright sides implies the luxury to catch one’s breath. Implies some pockets of calm and quiet and reflection. I’m not an ER doctor. Or a mother of five in a refugee camp. We live in a two-family house. We have our leather couch. Our dog. Our backyard, which catches and releases the sun. We are merely lucky and grateful and afraid. I’m not an optimist by nature. I’m inclined to distrust and catastrophize. I have a body that tends towards adrenalized, a mind that tends towards obsessive, and when I have too much free time I spiral. It’s str... posted on Apr 11 2020 (12,499 reads)

from the ashes of Hurricane Sandy? For the nonviolent, necessity is truly the mother of invention. But it goes way beyond activists. In just two weeks, China sequestered 100 million metric tons of carbon. People in North India are gazing at the distant Himalayas —some of them for the first time in their lives. They can see blue sky from the streets of Delhi; dolphins have already returned to the canals of Venice, and so forth. Who will want to go back after they’ve seen how fast nature can recover if we give her a chance? Another thing we can take advantage of are the new forms of organization springing up, like the vast network Gandhi set up for the manufacture and distri... posted on May 7 2020 (7,918 reads)

Georgia O’Keeffe, impoverished and solitary in the desert, wrote in considering limitation, creativity, and setting priorities as she was about to revolutionize art while the world was crumbling into its first global war. There are echoes of Stoicism, of Buddhism, of every monastic tradition in O’Keeffe’s core insight — that only in the absence of our habitual comforts, without all the ways in which we ordinarily cushion against the hard facts of our own nature and our mortality, do we befriend ourselves and discover what is most alive in us. The contrast, uncomfortable at first, even painful, becomes a clarifying force. Without the superfluous, the e... posted on May 15 2020 (8,583 reads)

believing he wasn’t stupid or unable. We moved to Southern California where I enrolled him in an academically competitive junior high school. He floundered.  He fell in with “the wrong kids” and began  skipping school. School was more tortuous for him than ever. The downward spiral continued and I watched him sink into depression. In 2004, we started Square Peg Ranch.  My son was now a young man, working on a farm in Maui.  In Maui, he re-discovered nature and beauty.  He was riding horses again and was mentored by the local polo pro who taught him the game he loves.  Alone, he explored the Haleakla Volcano by horseback for days on end.... posted on Aug 20 2020 (6,503 reads)

cultivate generative social fields. Who are the main teachers in our journey toward making the deep, transformative learning cycle accessible to everyone? The Reggio Emilia approach is known for seeing place as the third teacher (with the learner and the educator being the first two). Building on that foundation, we have come to see the cultivation of generative social fields, of relationships among learners, educators, parents, community members, and nature, as a powerful gateway to the deeper sources of knowing (”the fourth teacher”). What is a great university, a great school? First and foremost, it is a generative social field.... posted on May 25 2020 (11,382 reads)

Sea of Hands. The Sea of Hands was made up of simple plastic cut outs of hands in different colours. When ‘planted’ they had a visual impact similar to mass plantings of flowers, but with political meaning related to the colours chosen (Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander flag colours), the location of ‘plantings’, and the campaign context. The first Sea of Hands was held on the 12 October 1997, in front of Parliament House, Canberra. Each hand carried the signature of someone who had signed the Citizen’s Statement on Native Title, a petition circulated by ANTaR to mobilise non-Indigenous support for native title and reconciliation. The Sea of Hands ... posted on Jun 2 2020 (4,808 reads)

the high school that serves everyone in Evanston. So it’s necessarily a highly integrated high school. And a series of studies, one of them done at Stanford and another done within the Evanston school districts, found that in these integrated schools that we have in Evanston, black students and white students are not getting the same education. This is even within the same buildings, with the same teachers, within the same physical space. And it’s still unclear exactly what the nature of the problem is, but one of the phrases that came up in this article, one of the researchers used a phrase “opportunity hoarding.” They use this phrase to describe what white pare... posted on Jun 16 2020 (7,760 reads)

have a natural and innate need to bond, and when we're happy and healthy, we'll bond and connect with each other, but if you can't do that, because you're traumatized or isolated or beaten down by life, you will bond with something that will give you some sense of relief. Now, that might be gambling, that might be pornography, that might be cocaine, that might be cannabis, but you will bond and connect with something because that's our nature. That's what we want as human beings.  And at first, I found this quite a difficult thing to get my head around, but one way that helped me to think about it is, I ca... posted on Jul 7 2020 (21,467 reads)

in the thirteenth century, he used the Latin word fortitudo, and held that courage was a disposition required for every other virtue. That was before the common usage of the French word coeur or the Latin cor, which translates as “heart.” Combine them both and think “strength of heart.” What are ways you fortify yourself on all levels, especially your heart? Mindfulness meditation, listening to good music, eating great food, dancing or running, spending time in nature, time spent with friends? Anything you do to regain your strength and composure, your clarity about who you are deep down inside, is a form of fortification. Self-awareness fortifies you to sta... posted on Jul 22 2020 (6,142 reads)

POTENTIAL takes us on a mystical and scientific journey into the nature of life and reality with David Bohm, the man Einstein called his “spiritual son” and the Dalai Lama his “science guru.” A physicist and explorer of Consciousness, Bohm turned to Eastern wisdom to develop groundbreaking insights into the profound interconnectedness of the Universe and our place within it. This film is presented free of charge for a limited time by the Fetzer Memorial Trust and Imagine Films. Want to learn more about the Science of Bohm? Visit the David Bohm Symposium featuring presentation videos, documents and a link to the free... posted on Aug 1 2020 (15,963 reads)

pyramids and infinity waves. They can also activate energy codes, which inform our bodies the same way genetic codes do. And by going directly into our bodies, we can transform entrenched subconscious patterns and connect to our truer, whole selves. If we consider ourselves separate and autonomous from the rest of the universe, these concepts might sound far-fetched. If we consider ourselves integral and interconnected, these will sound perfectly ordinary. What I’ve gathered is that nature’s laws are immutable. What we call miracles don’t defy these laws. They just access laws higher than we’ve previously realized. Join us for a special conversation and works... posted on Aug 3 2020 (13,797 reads)

and finding meaning in life, which all help us focus on how we can contribute to the world. In her study with young adults, Bronk found that practicing gratitude was particularly helpful in pointing students toward purpose. Reflecting on the blessings of their lives often leads young people to “pay it forward” in some way, which is how gratitude can lead to purpose. There are many ways to cultivate awe and gratitude. Awe can be inspired by seeing the beauty in nature or recalling an inspirational moment. Gratitude can be practiced by keeping a gratitude journal or writing a gratitude letter to someone who helped you in life. Wh... posted on Aug 12 2020 (10,772 reads)

early poems to the last sonnet he wrote days before his death from leukemia, alongside fragments of his letters, diaries, and prose. The project is reminiscent of Tolstoy’s Calendar of Wisdom, but instead of an elevating thought for each day of the year culled from a different thinker, every day features a short Rilke reading. Macy and her collaborator, Anita Barrows, explore Rilke’s singular consolations in the preface: Rilke’s grasp of the transient nature of all things is critical to his capacity to praise and to cherish. […] In the face of impermanence and death, it takes courage to love the things of this world and to believe that... posted on Sep 1 2020 (6,387 reads)

Stones: Buddhist Parables is the culmination of nearly twenty-five years of reading, writing and telling Buddhist stories. The initial impetus for collecting these stories came in the autumn of 1997 when longtime Buddhist monk, Reverend Heng Sure, asked me to teach a storytelling class at the newly opened Berkeley Buddhist Monastery. An outstanding storyteller himself, Reverend Sure has for decades utilized stories to enliven his Dharma lectures. Knowing that I was a professional storyteller, he urged me to dig deep into the trove of Buddhist tales and restore them to a living, oral tradition where they belong.  Two months later, I began teaching a weekly clas... posted on Sep 3 2020 (4,874 reads)

grows. The goal posts move as we move, and that’s a good thing. Progress is a practice. Not a destination. We moved from water to land, lost our tails, recognized the developmental gift of opposable thumbs. The disharmony in today’s world is us on the verge of our next evolutionary survival-leap: as the only sentient, self-determined animal, equity is the only thing that will keep us from making ourselves extinct. It’s sacred and spiritual, but also essential. But its nature, as our understanding evolves, is such that equity should always be just beyond our grasp. Even as we place all of our efforts towards it. Working for equity is the only viable way forward i... posted on Sep 15 2020 (6,012 reads)

always been happening, and when it happens in enough of us, in a short enough period of time at the same time, then you have a tipping point, and the culture begins to shift. And then, what I feel like people are at now is, no, no, bring it on. I have to face it — we have to face it. Tippett:I’m Krista Tippett, and this is On Being. Reverend angel Kyodo williams is the founder of the national organization, Transformative Change. And it says something about the enduring nature of wisdom, and the generational scope of the change we’re in, that this conversation happened in 2018. Tippett:So I’d like to start by asking this question I always ask, in some ... posted on Sep 28 2020 (4,695 reads)