The Alphabet Rockers
"Based in Oakland, California, Alphabet Rockers is unlike other bands that make music primarily for children, and over the last several years, Grammy voters have noticed. The hip-hop collective--which weaves the stories, spirit, and voices of a widely diverse group of young people into their work has earned a total of four nominations for Best Children's Album. This year, they took home their firs... posted on May 18, 1209 reads

Off By an Inch in the Beginning...
The Venerable Master Hua, famously and pithily recounted: "Off by an inch in the beginning, off by ten thousand miles at the end." I have to say -- Christopher Columbus might have benefited from that advice in 1492 when he missed India by nearly 10,000 miles. I wonder what that says about the scope of our compounding trajectory 530 years later. But luckily the NASA engineers working on getting Apo... posted on May 30, 8723 reads

Murmurations: Breaking is Part of Healing
"The material world is necessarily temporary, and it is only a matter of how deep we are willing to look, how far into the past and future we are willing to consider, to understand this. If you don't believe me, look at the ruins of every society that has predated us on this planet. Remember that the matter that makes up our moon and planet is the dust of stars exploding in other galaxies. Remembe... posted on Jul 12, 5234 reads

Honey Church
"Our first summer in Baltimore. The first year of our marriage--your only marriage, my second one--when my kid became our kid. This house, our home. We watched the parade of ants--polite little soldiers marching single file along the kitchen baseboards in a thin and steady stream. You took a white sheet of paper from the printer, slipped it under their quick feet, then whoosh, like a magician and ... posted on Jul 17, 2131 reads

The Medicine of Memory
"Every life is like a day. We begin the night before and, in the darkness, we are formed as a word that strikes a spark. This spark lands like a seed coming to the ground in the soul of the womb. Then miraculous growth pulses like wildfirean unstoppable explosion of unimaginable geniusthe exponential roar of universal proportion. Every life well-lived holds in its hearts core the knowing that all ... posted on Jul 18, 4962 reads

Beannacht (Blessing) for Our Death
Tracey Schmidt's poetic reading of a Blessing for Our Death reminds us of the complexities of life - how we can be gatekeepers and entrance points, light filled and vulnerable, lonely and loved, all at the same time. She praises life and exhorts us to do the same, to "sing as if tomorrow will not come because one day it will not." This singing of life's praises enables us to live fully, "as if hom... posted on Jul 21, 4179 reads

Parenting Advice from Mister Rogers
"Being responsible for ourselves, knowing our own wants and meeting them, is difficult enough -- so difficult that the notion of being responsible for anyone else, knowing anyone else's innermost desires and slaking them, seems like a superhuman feat. And yet the entire history of our species rests upon it -- the scores of generations of parents who, despite the near-impossibility of getting it ri... posted on Aug 3, 4825 reads

Alison Benis White: Light on the Page
"Chaos--confusion, bewilderment--these are things I'm always working against and within as a writer. Frost famously argued that a poem is a "temporary stay against confusion"--and by "stay," within the context of 'The Figure a Poem Makes,' he means clarification--a temporary clarification of life. This resonates with me, although I don't know if I agree with the certainty of his claim. I think poe... posted on Aug 1, 1039 reads

A Turtle's Silver Bead of Quietude
"One day in the fall, as water and air cooled, at some precise temperature an ancient bell sounded in the turtle brain. A signal: Take a deep breath. Each creature slipped off her log and swam for the warmer muck bottom. Stroking her way through the woven walls of plant stems, she found her bottom place. She closed her eyes and dug into the mud. She buried herself. And then, pulled into her shell,... posted on Aug 7, 3812 reads

Eating the Wild
"In recent decades, and especially since the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a growing interest in foraging and cooking with food gathered from the countryside around us. In this article, Charlotte Maberly talks to the distinguished Scottish food writer Fi Martynoga about the benefits of eating wild food, and also looks at the history of the movement and its wider implications in terms of health... posted on Aug 15, 1300 reads

Jeffrey Bale: The World Needs Beauty
"Jeffrey Bale received his degree in landscape architecture from the University of Oregon back in 1981. He quickly landed a job at a Portland architecture firm -- but he only lasted 20 minutes behind a desk. Instead, he began traveling the world, finding inspiration in the stunning architecture of Europe and SE Asia. He returned home and began creating elaborate and intricate pebble mosaics from s... posted on Sep 25, 2642 reads

Elizabeth Alexander: Light of the World
"In 2009 at President Barack Obama's first inauguration, Elizabeth Alexander read a poem she wrote for the occasion called "Praise Song for the Day". It was a high point in her celebrated career as a poet, essayist, playwright, and academic. She has published many books of poetry and prose, she taught at Yale for many years, and now she's teaching at Columbia, in New York City, where she was born.... posted on Oct 1, 1647 reads

Meeting Gojira: A Conversation with Craig Nagasawa
"There's this idea that, as an artist, your job is to put your ego into your painting and push it at everybody else, that a good painting is 'full of you' somehow.But the art I like is made when the artist actually has gotten out of the way. At some point doing a painting, it literally feels like I'm the one stopping it with my decisions, and my aesthetic--and all that stuff about, 'I'm the artist... posted on Oct 10, 856 reads

The Marvelous Connections Between Poetry & Medicine
"Sri Shamasunder likes to say he was a poet before he was a doctor. His college mentor, the legendary poet and activist June Jordan, passed away from cancer during his first year of medical school, but had a lasting impact on his practice of medicine. She encouraged him to harness righteous anger and to use his voice to fight inequity, inspiring Shamasunder's work as a professor of medicine at the... posted on Oct 26, 1244 reads

Pooja Lakshmin: Self Care the Right Way
"The wellness industry saturates our cultural consciousness, with juice cleanses, organic skincare, and spa retreats flooding our social media feeds. But what does this plethora of dazzling -- and often expensive -- lifestyle products all amount to? Not much, argues Dr. Pooja Lakshmin, a psychiatrist who specializes in women's mental health and clinical assistant professor at George Washington Uni... posted on Oct 30, 2296 reads

Cultivating Inner Stillness for Compassionate Service
"Make the world your Temple. In 2019, Sarah Tulivu had been given this clear instruction by two Taoist masters, including her direct teacher, Master Waysun Liao. At the time, Sarah, ordained as Fong Yi, was living and training full-time as a monk in a Taoist temple in Lago Atitln, Guatemala. For six years, she had practiced meditation and the embodied consciousness practice of taiji (tai chi) in ... posted on Nov 14, 2074 reads

Attuned: Global Social Witnessing
"What would trauma-informed media look like? It's a question that deserves critical research. What's clear is that contemporary societies need to focus as much or more attention on healing and health as they do on increasing gross domestic product. Imagine a new media and economic landscape that is grounded, professional, and ethical, whose leaders value human health above personal profit. Imagine... posted on Nov 16, 1317 reads

Jennifer Bichanich: Rising from the Ashes
In this deeply moving episode, Fill to Capacity podcast host Pat Benincasa speaks with writer and life coach Jennifer Bichanich. Jennifer opens a window on her experiences with profound loss, including losing her beloved husband when the church they were remodeling went up in flames. Despite immense grief and despair, Jennifer found ways to rebuild her life and discover her own creative resilience... posted on Nov 20, 2867 reads

Personal Integrity in C.P. Cavafy's Poetry
"The current world situation, with war raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, presents a particular challenge to those people who wish to take a unified perspective one which goes beyond polarities and tribalism in search of justice and humanity. It is hard to know how to respond. At such a time, the gentle but insistent voice of Constantine Cavafy, the modern Greek poet, carries a welcome remind... posted on Nov 26, 1403 reads

How Rituals Support Us
"I dont know if I could have survived seven years of my childhood without the soul-saving rituals of my Persian culture. I grew up amid the Iran-Iraq War, which killed a million people. Besides the horrors of the war, freedom of thought and expression were severely restricted in Iran after the Islamic revolution. Women bore the brunt of this as, in a matter of months, we were forced to ditch our p... posted on Nov 27, 2293 reads

Duct Tape and Dreams
Become a kid again! Imagine building a soapbox car; anything you could dream up and build. And then getting to ride it downhill being cheered all the way down. Produced in collaboration with Stink Studios, "Duct Tape and Dreams: Reviving the Soapbox Derby at McLaren Park" captures the creativity, collaboration, and exuberance of everyone who participated and, of course, all that exciting downhill... posted on Dec 1, 1163 reads

How to Bless Each Other
"Every once in the bluest moon, if you are lucky, you encounter someone with such powerful and generous light in their eyes that they rekindle the lost light within you and return it magnified; someone whose calm, kind, steady gaze penetrates the very center of your being and, refusing to look away from even the most shadowy parts of you, falls upon you like a benediction.
That we can do th... posted on Dec 11, 6141 reads

The Living Sculpture Made by 90 Generations
While walking outside your home, or on a familiar street in your neighborhood, have you ever wondered who -- what kinds of people and life journeys -- walked those very same steps before you? The land has a way of connecting us across time, and a 3,000-year-old natural sculpture in Oxfordshire, England is a living embodiment of such interconnection. The Uffington White Horse is a football-field si... posted on Dec 14, 1702 reads

Life as a Cup of Tea
"'The key to tasting tea,' she said, 'is to never judge it. Some teas open in the beginning and fade quickly, some teas take 6 cups to open and last longer,'" writes Mina Lee, as she steeps in her first experience with a tea ceremony and the words of Chan teacher, Mudeng. Lee observes, "The way the leaves are picked, the water used, the ceramic used, the tea pourer, how they hold the lid to steam ... posted on Dec 18, 1552 reads

How Two Enemy Soldiers Saved Each Other, Over 20 Years Apart
In the brutalities of the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, two soldiers on opposite sides formed an unlikely bond. In 1982, Iraqi forces captured the Iranian city of Khorramshahr. In response, Iran plotted to retake the city. Shortly after that battle began, Najah Aboud, from southern Iraq, was severely wounded in the head, chest, and back. Crawling to a bunker, he prepared for the death that seemed in... posted on Dec 29, 2096 reads

Niksen: The Dutch Art of Purposefully Doing Nothing
In an increasingly busy world, the Dutch have mastered the art of niksen - purposefully doing nothing. This powerful practice counteracts anxiety and bolsters creativity and productivity. Instead of always focusing on efficiency, practicing niksen by setting aside specific time for purposeless relaxation, such as sitting in a caf simply savoring your coffee and daydreaming, can b... posted on Dec 30, 3335 reads

Tsultrim Allione: Turning Towards What’s Difficult
After losing her infant daughter suddenly in 1980, the search for stories to help process grief led her to write what would go on to become a book that rippled into a burgeoning community of practice. Along the way, Lama Tsultrim found herself delving into research of the sacred feminine, deepening her own inner practices, and a whole lot more. In an intriguing podcast conversation, Tami Simon jou... posted on Feb 11, 2425 reads

Something Old Is Something New
"When Rue MaCall walked down the aisle at her wedding in September, everything she wore was second-hand, borrowed or stitched from someone else's discarded fabrics. Her earrings were made from tassels she found in a donation bin. A friend lent her pearls purchased 50 years ago. She made her dress by hand, finding all the second-hand silk, thread and lace she needed from a single source, the Ragfin... posted on Feb 23, 1820 reads

From Accessing Your Ignorance to Accessing Your Love
"Ed had an amazingly minimalist teaching style. He did not give lengthy lectures. He never used a superfluous word. Ed the teacher inverted the relationship between learner and educator. Normally that relationship is based on the professor knowing things that the students don't, a learning structure in which the professor conveys information and insights through lectures, discussions, and readings... posted on Mar 1, 2972 reads

Dishes in the Sink
When Bethany Renfree was 20 years-old, she lived with her three young daughters in a low-income apartment in California. Like most of the tenants, Renfree was a single mom. Life was full and overwhelming. One cold morning, as Renfree shuffled into the kitchen, she looked at the sink piled high with pots and pans and dishes. "These pots were caked in grease and burnt because I actually didn't reall... posted on Mar 10, 4860 reads

Hug Therapy Revolution in Argentina
Welcome to the world of hug therapy, where Irma Castro and her volunteer squad are making strides in neonatal care in Córdoba, Argentina. Part of a public maternity hospital initiative, these 'huggers' offer their warmth and touch to premature and underweight babies, whose mothers may be absent due to countless circumstances. From aiding neurodevelopment to stimulating weight gain, the powe... posted on Mar 24, 1574 reads

Feeling Anxious? A Good Deed Could Snap You Out Of It
Ever been incredibly overwhelmed by stress? Clinical psychologist, Jenny Taitz, shares a simple yet effective technique called a 'stress reset'. A stress reset involves three types - mind, body and behavior resets and offers quick ways to soothe our thoughts, body and actions allowing us space to solve problems rather than exacerbating them. Mind resets include naming your emotions, singing your t... posted on Apr 9, 1997 reads

But We Had Music
Australian musician and writer Nick Cave and Brazilian artist and filmmaker Daniel Bruson combine stunning visuals and animations to present Maria Popova’s beautiful poem, “But We Had Music.” In less than two minutes, this co-creation portrays the ongoing dance between cosmic happenings and the normalcy of daily life, between impermanence and eternity. They remind us to pay atten... posted on Apr 13, 5572 reads

How to Avoid Reaching a Boiling Point
Robert Glazer describes a failure to communicate clear and precise ground rules and boundaries up front around a shared backyard. Fear of confrontation as time went on prevented him from seizing opportunities to clarify intentions and social norms. Consequently, a seemingly simple situation turned into an awkward eruption and ended the possibility of friendship. He cautions that “addressing ... posted on Apr 19, 3050 reads

The Scientists Learning to Speak Whale
Two research initiatives -- Cetacean Translation Initiative (CETI) and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) -- are exploring not only what it means to collect data on how  whales communicate, but to listen and understand  what they are saying. Listening to whales ends up reflecting much more about humans, than anticipated: it highlights our relationship not only to another... posted on Apr 29, 1158 reads

Mary Ann Brussat: Everyday Sacred Renaissance
"You really can feel tremendous empathy for the people, but at the same time, compassion is something that's a little different. Compassion is where you move towards someone to see if there is a way that you can be of help. So not only do you recognize your feelings for someone, but you try to figure out, is there something here that I can do?" In this Awakin Call, Mary Ann Brussat touches upon he... posted on May 5, 3152 reads

Sanctuaries of Silence
What might happen if we listened deeply? If we really listened? In the tranquil chorus of nature, Gordon Hempton, an acoustic ecologist, experiences silence as 'the poetics of space' and 'the presence of time undisturbed.' He provides insight into how we perceive our locations based on their unique sounds and the value of true silence in our modern noisy world. Hempton defines silence not as the a... posted on May 6, 2144 reads

Small Sounds of the Past
"In Praise of Listening" by Christian McEwen celebrates the profound impact of sound on our memories and experiences. Through evocative stories like Alice Cozzolino's pasta-making rituals with her mother and Eleanor Adams' childhood memories of island life, McEwen reminds us of the power of sound to transport us back in time. In a world filled with noise, these memories serve as reminders to liste... posted on May 20, 1695 reads

Extraordinary Lives of Coast Redwoods
Daniel Lewis, museum curator, explores the majestic Redwoods from their history and survivability to their distinct earthy fragrances. He details the living ecosystem of birds, insects, lichens, plant life, and even salamanders that make their homes within the dense canopy. Standing in awe of the Redwoods led writer Anne Lamott to comment: “The trees are so huge that they shut you up.”... posted on May 26, 2077 reads

Mastering the Art of Forgiveness
Forgiveness has much more to deliver to us than the person being forgiven. This may sound cliche and at times dismissive when it comes to our pains, injuries, scars, and losses; Dr. Robert Leichtman, however, is anything but dismissive as he outlines the nuanced, life-giving opportunity available to us in the act of forgiveness. Forgiveness is much more than a “way to demonstrate good manner... posted on May 28, 2210 reads

Why Age Diversity Is a Strength at Work
Research suggests many benefits from age diversity in the workplace. Among them are better performance results, reduction in age and other biases, and two-way mentoring that can expand learning all around. Tips include purposefully forming diverse groups and teams of people of all ages, life stages, and generations in order to reap the benefits. And there is this: Be a perennial! Perennial is a ne... posted on Jun 18, 2328 reads

People Dread This Type Of Social Interaction But It Has Benefits
Researchers find that people who have richness and diversity in relationships experience greater life satisfaction and overall well-being. An important part of that diversity comes from talking to strangers, and they found there was “deep delight and joy that ensued from these unexpected encounters.” Whether in a supermarket, coffee shop, or on a walk, a smile, a nod, a simple hello, o... posted on Jun 22, 1422 reads

Sister Marilyn: To Come and See
At age 18 and new to the convent, Sister Marilyn Lacey turned down an invitation -- an opportunity to connect -- explaining she didn’t think human relations was her field. Later on, she got an invitation she couldn’t refuse to “come and see” the suffering in South Sudan. She accepted, and that experience and invitation led to many more invitations to invite people into her ... posted on Jun 24, 3024 reads

The Solutionary Way
Zoe Weil had forty-five youngsters identify the world’s biggest problems, and was surprised when only five of them thought we could solve them. If children can’t imagine solving problems, “what will motivate them to try to make a difference?” Then, with their eyes closed, she helped them imagine a day in the future where all the problems had been solved, and questioned, &ld... posted on Jun 27, 2348 reads

Cultivation and Practice: Q&A with Rev. Heng Sure
Like many who grew up in the middle of America in the 1950s, his childhood was characterized by sports, church, and pop culture influences like the Mickey Mouse Club. Upon seeing Chinese characters at the age of fourteen, an unshakeable feeling of familiarity overtook him. When he opened the door to move into his dorm room as a freshman in college, he found his roommate meditating in full lotus on... posted on Jul 5, 2259 reads

Saying Goodbye to the Tree that Changed my Life
Stumpy was one of many cherry trees being cut down to make way for a new seawall at the Tidal Basin in Washington, DC. Some referred to the aging Stumpy as “he;” others as “she.” Nobody referred to Stumpy as “it.” After many failed attempts to save Stumpy, people began to say goodbye. Photojournalist Carol Cuzy tenderly captured his final days as people and anim... posted on Jul 19, 2182 reads

Former Businessman Greets People on Street Every School Morning
Dick Kazan, a man from California, has demonstrated the profound impact of simple acts of kindness. For years, Kazan has greeted passersby each morning with a smile and a wave, creating a ripple effect of positivity in his community. Since then, some have shared personal stories of how Kazan's kindness has touched their lives in meaningful ways. Children, in particular, have been delighted by his ... posted on Jul 21, 1739 reads

Do Friends Lengthen Life?
Numerous and well documented studies confirm that "connection and loneliness influence our susceptibility to many diverse diseases.” They maintain that connectivity strengthens the immune system, and lowers the risk of developing diabetes, hypertension, dementia, and even a cold. People with a greater number of strong connections do better, but even casual acquaintances such as at churches o... posted on Jul 30, 1565 reads

The Art of Healing: How Creativity is Changing NHS Mental Health
Artist Tim Shaw and his partner, Niamh White, a curator, visited a close friend in a mental health unit in South West London. They described it as a “really inhumane, cold, clinical space.” They set about to bring creativity, color, joy, and fantastic landscapes that bring the outdoors inside to the unit. In the ten years since, they have created a mental health charity “collabor... posted on Aug 21, 1374 reads

How ‘Pollinator Pathmaker’ Can Help Us See Like a Bee
British artist Alexandra Daisy Ginsberg was asked to design a sculpture to raise awareness about declining populations of pollinators. After intensive research, she decided: “Instead of making a sculpture about pollinators, I thought it would be better to make a sculpture for pollinators.” She designs gardens to please birds, bats, moths, wasps, and beetles. Ultravi... posted on Aug 26, 2201 reads