does it matter? / The sunflowers blaze, maybe that’s their way. / Maybe the cats are sound asleep. Maybe not. / While I was thinking this I happened to be standing / just outside my door, with my notebook open, / which is the way I begin every morning. / Then a wren in the privet began to sing. / He was positively drenched in enthusiasm, / I don’t know why. And yet, why not. / I wouldn’t persuade you from whatever you believe / or whatever you don’t. That’s your business. / But I thought, of the wren’s singing, what could this be / if it isn’t a prayer? / So I just listened, my pen in the air.” Well, the poems keep coming. MS. TIPPETT:... posted on Jan 18 2019 (45,927 reads)

as the basis for judgment, for one group of people separating themselves form other groups, or one individual separating from others. Yet the spiritual is profoundly non-judgmental and non-separative. The spiritual does not vary from time to time because it is not within time. Spirit is unchanging. The spiritual is also different from the ethical. Ethics is a set of values, a code for translating the moral into daily life. It defines the right way to relate to other people, to carry out business and to behave in general. If the moral is not the spiritual, then the ethical isn't either. The spiritual is also not the psychic. The psychic is a capacity we all share, although it i... posted on Feb 4 2019 (10,638 reads)

hired me part time, and eventually talked me into quitting my other jobs and doing it full time. I was there for three years and ended up running strategy. Did working in advertising change your perspective on consumer culture? The people I worked with had good values. They had this rule that they would only do work with people who they would invite to their homes for dinner. I remember one time a really major tobacco company came to them and said, “We’ll give you all of our business and you don’t even have to make a pitch.” The fact is, this client would have paid really good money at a time when we needed it. But they just said, “No. We’re not se... posted on Feb 17 2019 (8,781 reads)

even started talking — I think the writing you’re doing now, and I feel like what is absorbing you now, is really — the phrase you’re using is “the myth of closure.” That in fact, I don’t know when that word got inserted into our vocabulary — maybe you can speak to that — but that that word has led us astray. Ms. Boss:I believe that. I think “closure,” though, is a perfectly good word for real estate and business deals, so I don’t want to demonize the word “closure.” But “closure” is a terrible word in human relationships. Once you’ve become attached to somebody, lo... posted on Feb 11 2019 (10,671 reads)

in a vibrant and happy life stage. We are resilient and know how to thrive in the margins. Our happiness comes from self-knowledge, emotional intelligence and empathy for others. Most of us don’t miss the male gaze. It came with catcalls, harassment and unwanted attention. Instead, we feel free from the tyranny of worrying about our looks. For the first time since we were 10, we can feel relaxed about our appearance. We can wear yoga tights instead of nylons and bluejeans instead of business suits. Yet, in this developmental stage, we are confronted by great challenges. We are unlikely to escape great sorrow for long. We all suffer, but not all of us grow. Those of us who grow... posted on Feb 27 2019 (471,090 reads)

BICEN, DANIEL - PENCIL ON DRAWING AND TISSUE PAPERS - 30” X 22” “Introduced through Hospice by the Bay, Daniel and I met weekly in his room in a high-rise SRO block in San Francisco’s SOMA. A graduate of Harvard University and friends with Spanish royalty, Daniel lost all of his wealth when he was cut out of his father’s business empire and struggled with mental health issues. Now sharing hallways with the city’s most disenfranchised residents, Daniel would still go for caviar and champagne once a week using money from his estranged son. Daniel was adamant that death did not trouble him and that he was simply letting the “gentle flow o... posted on Apr 9 2019 (13,070 reads)

Radical Joy for Hard Times: Finding Meaning and Making Beauty in Earth's Broken Places by Trebbe Johnson, published by North Atlantic Books, copyright © 2018 by Trebbe Johnson. Reprinted by permission of publisher.  “Why don't you switch channels and see if there’s anything else on?” That’s what the husband of a friend of mine would say during those weeks in the spring of 2010, when oil from BP’s Deepwater Horizon well was spewing into the Gulf of Mexico and his favorite news channel showed him yet another image of dying wildlife: a brown pelican struggling to raise heavy wings drenched in oil; a pod of dolphins plowing through vi... posted on Apr 1 2019 (6,351 reads)

the winter 2019 student writing competition, “Border (In)Security,” we invited students to read the YES! Magazine article “Two-Thirds of Americans Live in the “Constitution-Free Zone” by Lornet Turnbull and respond with an up-to-700-word essay.  Students had a choice between two writing prompts for this contest on immigration policies at the border and in the “Constitution-free zone,” a 100-mile perimeter from land and sea borders where U.S. Border Patrol can search any vehicle, bus, or vessel without a warrant. They could state their positions on the impact of immigration policies on our country’s security and how we dete... posted on Jul 22 2021 (28,244 reads)

dying and death is one of those aspects. Because of that unfriendliness, it seems to me our deeper responsibility is to learn how we have come to be as we are about these matters, rather than to engage someone else’s achievements in these matters as a kind of “easy way out.” Rather than learning how we came to the frail departure from real life that we engage in, many of us are inclined just to beg, borrow, or steal some other more intact culture’s way of doing its business. Our obligation is to stay home and learn our home place and understand how it’s come to be as it is among us. The MOON: How might we do that? Jenkinson: Well, I’m... posted on Apr 26 2019 (21,385 reads)

article was originally published on India Development Review. Today, much of the social development sector in India appears to be engaged with discussions around scale. The debate is likely to intensify further, as there seems to be little clarity in sight as to what precisely scaling entails, and who may or may not scale. In fact, what exemplifies the sector at large is the fluidity of meaning even about some of its most routine concerns, like social change, charity, impact, sustainability, and so on. It is perhaps fair to assume that the debate on social change and scalability is principally being driven by the for-profit sector’s growing engagement with the nonpro... posted on Apr 17 2019 (3,989 reads)

we think of ourselves as a trusted partner on the spiritual journey, offering diverse, in-depth, and life-changing wisdom. SoundsTrue.com. You're listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Priya Parker. Priya is a facilitator and strategic advisor. She's the founder of Thrive Labs, at which she helps activists, elected officials, corporate executives, educators, and philanthropists create transformative gatherings. She works with teams and leaders across technology, business, the arts, fashion, and politics to clarify their vision for the future and build meaningful, purpose-driven communities. Here's my conversation with someone who really understands how cr... posted on Sep 19 2019 (7,149 reads)

and think, ‘I haven’t got it so bad,’ and it makes me grateful.”  Her tongue was firmly in her cheek in a way, but she was making a deadly serious point.  There’s a real truth in what she says. It speaks to that part of us that is so aggravated to find ourselves the last person in an impossibly long line at the bank, supermarket or post office. And as soon as someone steps behind us in line, we feel better! We’re no closer to getting our business done, but, “at least I’m not where YOU are!”  Every time I turn around and look behind me, I feel better.  Like it’s some kind of Spiritual Ponzi Scheme! The... posted on Aug 20 2019 (10,048 reads)

don't have their high school degrees so I am in contact with people that are really motivated and usually the guys that have kind of real leadership qualities and are kind of leaders in the prison. They are the kind of people that try to civilize their life in prison and they are people with real positive outlooks as positive as you can get in a prison. Preeta: Have you got any feedback from the wardens or correctional officers from within the prison? Lee: Well it is a tricky business, prisons are tough places. And balancing the needs of the institution and balancing with what I am trying to do takes work and time and skill and we are not even entirely there yet so for the... posted on Dec 28 2019 (6,937 reads)

personal moonshot of arriving into middle America concurrently with America's (and humanity's) own literal moonshot through the Apollo 11 mission, she sets the stage for the gravity of heavy realizations from her own rocket-like career trajectory into the highest echelons of conventional power, and back to "a place that operates at a human and community scale bound to land and nature." Preeta Bansal has spent more than 30 years in senior roles in government, global business, and corporate law practice – as General Counsel and Senior Policy Advisor in the Executive Office of the U.S. President (White House), Solicitor General of the State of New York, partn... posted on Oct 25 2019 (8,105 reads)

has the potential to foster unprecedented human creativity. Like, I even started an online community called HITRECORD, where people all over the world collaborate on all kinds of creative projects, so I don't think that social media or smartphones or any technology is problematic in and of itself. But ... if we're going to talk about the perils of creativity becoming a means to get attention, then we have to talk about the attention-driven business model of today's big social media companies, right?  (Applause)  This will be familiar territory for some of you, but it's a really relevant question here:&n... posted on Feb 24 2020 (5,757 reads)

I just want to be in my studio. But then there are other things where I feel I don’t have a choice. I went to a university when the chief historical advisor of the prime minister at the time was a frontier violence denier. I read his work and I was so devastated that someone was trying to rewrite history for a nationalist agenda about white supremacy, really. So, I see the flaws. Most of the things that I stand up for is about my role in it. You get accused that this is not your business, it’s so complicated. Being a straight white man in Australia is complicated at the moment! Good! I celebrate that complexity, we deserve it. I’m not whinging about it, it&r... posted on Nov 20 2019 (4,788 reads)

incoherence, to make order out of disorder—while, I think, respecting the wildness of the disorder. And actually, at one point, you’re saying that beginning to write puts the experience of panic at a bearable distance. And one of your newer poems has this lovely line where you say, “maybe beauty is the best riposte to dread.” I’m wondering if you’ve found that putting words on this extreme disorientation began to do its work in you. It’s a funny business, you know. I still have to say that most of my mornings on Earth are pretty dreadful times. [Laughs]. So I guess we hope, almost like children, that we’re going to get through things, t... posted on Dec 2 2019 (5,565 reads)

and scale.” Cookie cutter approach, right? But when you’re a gardener, you know that there are all these other inputs. You can’t control the sun. You can’t control the rain. But you can control so many other factors. So you are in concert with all of these factors. You are just supporting the emergence. You cannot look at a sapling and say, “I need a Tomato by Tuesday.” That’s manufacturing, which is predicated on control and knowing the recipes. Our business schools today are set up precisely to leaders who can take over manufacturing plants. That’s good, and certainly has its place in the world. But everything can’t be manufacturing.... posted on Nov 19 2019 (7,689 reads)

to the Center over a decade ago when I was coordinating retreats for tenured public-school teachers here in San Francisco, and for half a decade, I held six week-long retreats a year there until the funding ended. Throughout those years, the Center began to feel like a second home to me and was a place that comforted me as I journeyed through a time of deep loss in my life—facing infertility, grieving the loss of my older sister from breast cancer, and my husband closing his small business.   I hadn’t been on a retreat there in several years, and as I settled into my room, arranging my clothes in the closet, laying out my yoga mat on the carpet, and feeling t... posted on Dec 7 2019 (6,444 reads)

degree in international management at a school where I met my husband Andrew. If Mom had balked or cried or tried to talk me out of moving so far away when I called her that spring day in 1988, I don’t know where I would be. But I cannot imagine it could be better than where I have landed. There are other territories to mine for this one. Did your mother or stepmother welcome your partner into the family? Has she been an involved grandparent? Did she stake you when you opened a new business? Teach you how to make the perfect pie crust, for which you are now renowned? Or did she, in her choices, give you a template to avoid when you reached the same decision points? Does a strain... posted on Dec 9 2019 (8,634 reads)