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Leisure: The Basis of Culture![](images/quickread.gif) "Today, in our culture of productivity-fetishism, we have succumbed to the tyrannical notion of 'work/life balance' and have come to see the very notion of 'leisure' not as essential to the human spirit but as self-indulgent luxury reserved for the privileged or deplorable idleness reserved for the lazy." Maria Popova draws from the wisdom of classic and contemporary philosophers, scientists, and ... posted on Oct 15, 11255 reads
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How I Survived the Loss of My Hands and Feet![](images/quickread.gif) Meet Corinne Hutton. Two years ago, she lost her hands and feet after catching a virus that turned her limbs septic. She knew she had a choice then and chose to live with zest and passion. Today, she is a busy mom who has climbed mountains, flown planes, started a charity, and enjoys getting dolled up for nights out with her friends. Read on to learn more about this woman who transforms adversity ... posted on Oct 13, 6698 reads
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Stretching Identity: A Conversation with Gabriel Meyer![](images/quickread.gif) "The first time I met a Palestinian Sufi Sheikh, I went to his house. The person who introduced me, my friend, he said, Listen, this is the third Israeli he meets, so be careful. You know, go slowly. So I sat; we were all very formal, Salaam. We sat down, it was very serious, and all of a sudden, I just took out my drum and starting singing, Allahu, Allahu, Allahu. His son came out from the kitche... posted on Sep 25, 3532 reads
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Vegetable Seller to Reputed Oncologist![](images/quickread.gif) Dr. Vijayalakshmi Deshmane is one of India's most reputed oncologists who dedicates her life to service through medicine. But, when she was just a child, born into a "backward caste" and a socio-economically disadvantaged family living in the slums of India, with little access to food and basic amenities, leave alone educational opportunities, it was not obvious she would have such an illustrious... posted on Oct 3, 6358 reads
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How Science Helps Us Find the Good![](images/quickread.gif) Since the beginning of time, the battle between good and evil has always been at the forefront of human existence. But only until recently has science started to help better understand the complexities of it all. And just as good and bad are linked, science also reveals how our inner world and the external one are tied together. The overall takeaway? If you want to find and foster the good in soci... posted on Oct 24, 15273 reads
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Six Pillars of the Wholehearted Life![](images/quickread.gif) In what has been named as one of the best commencement speeches of all time, Parker Palmer, author, educator, and founder of the Center for Courage and Renewal, shares six pillars of a wholehearted life. The first, be reckless in matters of the heart: "Fall madly in love with life. Be passionate about some part of the natural and/or human worlds and take risks on its behalf, no matter how vulnerab... posted on Nov 3, 60453 reads
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American Bear: An Adventure in the Kindness of Strangers![](images/quickread.gif) "American Bear" captures the adventures of Sarah Sellman and Greg Grano, who embark on a 60 day, 30 state trip around the United States, critically examining American culture, compassion and fear, by relying on the kindness of strangers for a bed in a different town each night. This 10 minute excerpt follows three days of the journey in South Dakota and Montana, featuring two of their hosts: a cha... posted on Nov 12, 3052 reads
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Choosing Suffering Over Safety![](images/quickread.gif) "Can you walk, sweetheart?" I say these words to our dog Stella who is dying. Its time for breakfast and if she walks from our bed to the kitchen, maybe that will be a sign. Maybe she will be alright. So I ask her again, Can you walk? As I ask, I remember eleven years of sleeping twisted like a pretzel so the dog could get a good nights sleep. I remember mornings, how she rose at dawn and stomped ... posted on Nov 23, 15614 reads
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Gratitude: Good for the Soul -- and Heart![](images/quickread.gif) As we launch into Thanksgiving week, consider this: Research shows that feeling grateful doesn't just make you feel good. It also helps -- literally helps -- the heart. A positive mental attitude is good for your heart. It fends off depression, stress and anxiety, which can increase the risk of heart disease, says Paul Mills, a professor of family medicine and public health at the University of Ca... posted on Nov 24, 11422 reads
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A Yuletide Gift of Kindness![](images/quickread.gif) "The year was 1933 and Christmas was just a week away. Deep in the trough of the Great Depression, the people of Canton, Ohio, were down on their luck and hungry. Nearly half the town was out of work. Along the railroad tracks, children in patched coats scavenged for coal spilled from passing trains. The prison and orphanage swelled with the casualties of hard times. It was then that a mysterious ... posted on Dec 22, 15577 reads
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The Art of Sho: A Calligraphers's Pilgrimage![](images/quickread.gif) Filmmaker Jerry Hsu spent four months observing Dr. Ronald Nakasone practicing the art of calligraphy, and witnessed how this art requires contemplation, perseverance and single-minded concentration. The art of "sho" or "writing", can be properly called abstract art. It is nonfigurative, nonobjective, and nonrepresentational. The process of the work is one of experimentation and distillation. All ... posted on Mar 3, 3903 reads
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Waging Life in a War Zone![](images/quickread.gif) "From the stones of the destruction we will build plant basins to grow flowers." It started with one man's efforts to beautify his home with paint and flowers, but the initiative spread as neighbors came forward to spread the beauty. Using salvaged and recycled material, with some funding from a local and U.S. nonprofit, the densely populated neighborhood of al-Zaitoun in Gaza City, Palestine, is ... posted on Feb 7, 2762 reads
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Indiana Jones Meets Florence Nightingale![](images/quickread.gif) "One night I was driving home from a sales conference and I went blind -- I later learned it was stress blindness. I managed to pull over to the hard shoulder of the motorway. All the while I was thinking, 'My life is over; I will never see my kids again'. I promised myself then that if my sight came back, I would find my purpose. I was very lucky, and my sight did return...And then I started to w... posted on Feb 11, 12749 reads
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Rising Women Rising World![](images/quickread.gif) "It is an unusual occurrence when the roll call of achievements of just three women includes several nominations for the Nobel Peace Prize; training roles for UN Development Programmes, and advice-giving to NATO military officers and government officials. That the Dalai Lama, Nelson Mandela and the Clintons, to name just a few, have sought them out for their input makes the individuals of this tri... posted on Mar 8, 15715 reads
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Why Silence Is Good for Your Brain![](images/quickread.gif) "As our internal and external environments become louder and louder, more people are beginning to seek out silence, whether through a practice of sitting quietly for 10 minutes every morning or heading off to a 10-day silent retreat. Inspired to go find some peace and quiet? Here are four science-backed ways that silence is good for your brain -- and how making time for it can make you feel less s... posted on Mar 14, 81048 reads
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Path to Freedom: A Former Prison Monk's Amazing Work![](images/quickread.gif) Redemption and transformation can occur in even the harshest of surroundings. During his 14-year incarceration Fleet Maull found meditation. With meditation he found a freedom that transcended prison walls. After his release he returns to prison to teach meditation, healthy survival skills and share his story of meaningful change. 1 out of every 100 Americans is currently behind bars. And 700,000 ... posted on Mar 30, 3721 reads
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The Intelligence in All Kinds of Life![](images/quickread.gif) "Why is the world so beautiful?" This is a question Robin Wall Kimmerer pursues as a botanist and also as a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation. She writes, "Science polishes the gift of seeing, indigenous traditions work with gifts of listening and language." An expert in moss - a bryologist - she describes mosses as the 'coral reefs of the forest.' She opens a sense of wonder and humility fo... posted on Apr 22, 14964 reads
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We Are All Criminals![](images/quickread.gif) Emily Baxter is a public defender, turned policy maker, turned storyteller with an unusual cause. As founder of the nonprofit, "We Are All Criminals" she invites everyday people to anonymously share stories of crimes and misdemeanors that they were never caught or charged for. Through sharing personal experiences, her work seeks to inspire empathy and ignite social change. The project is gaining ... posted on May 11, 13373 reads
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How to Cultivate Global Compassion![](images/quickread.gif) Paul Ekman, legendary psychologist and Professor Emeritus at UCSF, is an expert on emotion recognition and his work has been instrumental in helping us understand the universality of emotion and its place in our social lives. More recently, inspired by his exchanges with the Dalai Lama, Ekman's work has focused on applying his knowledge of emotion and compassion toward bettering human social inter... posted on Apr 24, 11695 reads
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Slow Down to Get Ahead![](images/quickread.gif) Chronic rushing through a never ending to-do list feeds anxiety and heightens stress levels. Due to the epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, released in the brain during stressful periods, our brains get hooked on the stimulation of activity. Our bodies become addicted to rushing and our minds switch into autopilot with everything of high importance and needing to get accomplished quickly. We st... posted on May 1, 9767 reads
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The Strange Beautiful Side of Death![](images/quickread.gif) "Its no surprise to anyone who knows my family well (or perhaps anyone who has a teenage daughter themselves) that growing up, my mom and I had a strained relationship.Simply put, she insisted that I sit at the table for dinner, go to bed at nine, periodically clean my room and go to church. She ran the whole house, had a full time job, and was frequently stressed. My dad, on the other hand, seeme... posted on May 5, 24560 reads
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Forward the Smile![](images/quickread.gif) Angelo Pangalos' project has a simple purpose - to encourage and inspire people to share a smile with a stranger. Pangalos has been in and out of hospitals since the age of five. Faced with one health crisis after another, and unable to work, Pangalos decided to give the one thing he didn't have - a smile. For the last several years, Pangalos has used his passion for magic and music to entertain s... posted on May 15, 4017 reads
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How to Avoid Abusing Power![](images/quickread.gif) "When we receive power, it feels like a vital force. It surges through the body, propelling the individual forward in pursuit of goals. When an individual feels powerful, he or she experiences higher levels of excitement, inspiration, joy, and euphoria, all of which enable purposeful, goal-directed action. Feeling powerful, the individual becomes sharply attuned to rewards in the environment and q... posted on May 17, 15174 reads
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The Lullaby Project: Homeless Mothers Make Music![](images/quickread.gif) Since 2011, the Lullaby Project, a Carnegie Hall program (part of its larger Musical Connections initiative) that takes music's transformative power outside gilded concert halls and into neglected communities throughout New York City and across the nation, has paired more than 300 homeless or incarcerated mothers with professional musicians to create a musical experience for their child. Over thre... posted on May 29, 16587 reads
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They & The Emotional Weight of Words![](images/quickread.gif) "Language is the space in which we carve a place for ourselves, where we demand to be seen. A reflection point for culture, community, and family to acknowledge our existence on our terms." For many, the pronouns 'he' and 'she' are limiting and do not adequately express their identity. "The entire lexicon for how we understand gender is shifting. For many of us, it can be a weighty, disorienting e... posted on Aug 28, 6056 reads
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Our Relationship With Media & Attention![](images/quickread.gif) Mary Rothschild studies the effects of media on young children. She tells this story, "Each child was happily kneading their dough, these two, two-and-a-half to five-year-old children, and making a bread animal or something. I thought, "Wow. It's been like four minutes and they're all quiet!"Then this little girl next to me looked up and said, "Mary, the Lion King video is too loud." So I thought ... posted on Jul 11, 21377 reads
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'Tashi & The Monk' Wins an Emmy!![](images/quickread.gif) Lobsang Phuntsok is a former Tibetan monk who trained with the Dalai Lama and spent years teaching Buddhism in the West. In 2006, he moved back to establish a community in the Himalayan foothills for orphans and impoverished children. Phuntsok remembers, "My birth wasn't something to celebrate. I brought a lot of pain and embarrassment to my family. That's why when I was younger I was always call... posted on Sep 20, 0 reads
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Street Books: Library on Wheels For People Outside![](images/quickread.gif) Recognizing that "those living outside or in temporary shelters are usually barred from borrowing books from regular libraries because they lack the required documentation," Professor Laura Moulton began lending books to people living on the fringes of society in Portland, Oregon. In 2011, Moulton founded a bike-powered mobile library, Street Books, to make sure those in isolated communities have ... posted on Aug 10, 11798 reads
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We Save What We Love: Gordon Hempton![](images/quickread.gif) Acoustic ecologist Gordon Hempton is in love with nature's music -- sounds and silences he says that have either changed or vanished in the three decades he has been recording them. Bird songs, dolphin clicks, and insect chirps are all sounds of communication. If those sounds are drowned out by noise pollution, creatures can't hear each other. The results can be devastating. If danger warnings, ma... posted on Aug 12, 18024 reads
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Color Your World With Kindness![](images/quickread.gif) Delight in this gorgeous animation designed for children and adults alike by 'A Better World'. The film portrays how small acts of kindness can positively change the feelings and attitudes of others and how naturally this will spread, grow and flourish within our communities and beyond. The Better Worldian's strategy is to plant flowers instead of pulling weeds, cultivating the goodness in everybo... posted on Aug 13, 4881 reads
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The Effortless Effort of Creativity![](images/quickread.gif) "Every good poem begins in language awake to its own connections -- language that hears itself and what is around it, sees itself and what is around it, looks back at those who look into its gaze and knows more perhaps even than we do about who are, what we are. It begins, that is, in the mind and body of concentration." Poet Jane Hirshfield shares more on creativity, concentration, the pleasures ... posted on Sep 6, 11180 reads
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'Love Rounds' at Loma Linda![](images/quickread.gif) "Love Rounds" are done at the Loma Linda hospital once a week. "This unique idea was started by Dr. Wil Alexander, PhD, who is currently 94 years old and still teaching and lecturing within the family medicine department. He is not a physician -- he is a minister and professor of religion at Loma Linda University, and brings an important non-medical perspective to the way we learned to look at pat... posted on Oct 7, 7198 reads
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A Fun Way to Stop Buying Things You Don't Need![](images/quickread.gif) "A few years ago, illustrator and editorial cartoonist Sarah Lazarovic felt like she was buying too much junk. So she stopped shopping for a year, then documented her withdrawals and, eventually, all the lessons and tips and tricks she learned about not buying things. Instead of buying the items she coveted, she made paintings of them.During that time, instead of buying the items she coveted, she ... posted on Sep 9, 18788 reads
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Shoulders![](images/quickread.gif) In his moving creation, Kindred's Artist-in-Residence, Daniel Sperry gives voice and music to Naomi Shihab Nye's poem, "Shoulders", a poem that speaks "directly to the connection between what we do as parents and the prospect of living in a world where we take care of each other in that same careful, and tender way." Sperry's transcendent work connects with and inspires those "on the quest ...to... posted on Dec 15, 10063 reads
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Gifts for Gifted Children![](images/quickread.gif) "What gifts can we offer gifted children? How can we who are their guardians do justice by them? The first gift is not to praise them for their talents alone. Just as a beautiful child is often praised only for their beauty, and grows simultaneously vain and insecure, an intelligent child can easily learn that their mind is what makes them lovable...Instead, give these children the gift of praise ... posted on Sep 28, 34210 reads
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The Running Program That's Pulled 1,300 People Out of Homelessne![](images/quickread.gif) At 5:45 a.m., on a Friday morning, a group of about 20 homeless guys warmed up in a parking lot in East Harlem. In a circle, they did jumping jacks, twisted their torsos and touched their toes, and then huddled up, they chanted the Serenity Prayer ("God give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change...") and took off running. They ran with Back On My Feet, a program started by social en... posted on Nov 30, 17060 reads
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A Lesson in Letting Go From My Mother![](images/quickread.gif) This delicious essay is a paean to a mother who nourishes and nurtures, is selfless, gracious, and wise. . . even when a domestic ritual changed forever. The source of many happy memories for the writer as a teen was watching her mother make fresh roti (Indian bread). There was a process she followed -- one that was methodical, careful, and slow, that included plenty of leisurely talk while calmly... posted on Nov 19, 16499 reads
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Whistling in the Wind: Preserving a Language Without Words![](images/quickread.gif) The last speakers of a language without words reside on La Gomera, one of the smallest islands in Spains Canary Islands. "El Silbo," a whistled communication used in rural and isolated areas, is dying out as islanders embrace digital communication and move to cities and the mainland. Even so, El Silbo has a firm place in the island's culture. Some of La Gomera's schools are teaching the language a... posted on Oct 14, 3116 reads
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Cafe Momentum: Serving Second Chances![](images/quickread.gif) At a Texas restaurant staffed by ex-offenders, young men ditch criminal backgrounds to roast, toast and saute high-end cuisine. That restaurant was created by Chef Chad Houser who realized that the inmates who he was teaching cooking were more than his pre-conceived stereotypes and deserved a second chance: "When he arrived in the kitchen, none of the eight boys were the tattooed toughs he'd expec... posted on Nov 2, 12813 reads
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Community, Conflict and Ways of Knowing![](images/quickread.gif) "I argue that the relation established between the knower and the known, between the student and the subject, tends to become the relation of the living person to world itself." In this beautifully articulated piece Parker Palmer reflects on how we should be thinking about the nature of community in modern higher education, what role conflict plays in community, and the two types of love that are ... posted on Nov 13, 13272 reads
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What We Should Know About Animals![](images/quickread.gif) It's easy to assume that animals experience happiness (just think of a dog wagging its tail), but what about higher-level emotions and qualities like selflessness, empathy, or even love? In "Beyond Words: How Animals Think and Feel," conservationist Carl Safina shares stories from decades of observing animals and combines it with new brain research to paint a picture of animals' emotional landscap... posted on Jun 28, 2980 reads
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John Muir's Spiritual and Political Journey![](images/quickread.gif) A self-taught mechanical genius and trained botanist, John Muir was offered a lucrative job, but an accident that had nearly blinded him had given him the resolve to abandon convention, renounce the prospect of wealth and success, and go "wholehearted and unafraid" into the American wilderness. Read on about how his spiritual awakening became a catalyst for social change.... posted on Nov 22, 20591 reads
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Three Ways to Keep Technology from Ruining Your Relationships![](images/quickread.gif) We all know there's nothing like a warm smile, loving hug, sympathetic eyes, shared laughter, or long talks. These are the things that make us human and happy, and they are best done in person. Yet sometimes we are too busy to get together. Enter technology, with promises of improving relationships. However tempting, technology needs to be limited. While Facebook, Instagram, and e-mail give us the... posted on Jan 8, 20071 reads
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Ode to Lesvos![](images/quickread.gif) "It was natural to help." "Next time it might be my family." When over 300,000 refugees passed through the island of Lesvos, Greece, in 2015, the people there fished them out of the water, opened their homes and businesses, fed them, washed and ironed their clothes, and held their babies. This ode to the people of Lesvos celebrates the triumph of compassion and kindness over the tragic politics an... posted on Nov 18, 4168 reads
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How to Only Do Things You Actually Want to Do![](images/quickread.gif) "Can you remember the last time your to-do list was short enough to be, well, do-able? How about the last time you looked at your list and actually wanted to do everything on it?" Christine Carter, Senior Fellow at the Greater Good Science Center, started getting loads of requests for help managing too-long task lists. Recognizing that ineffective task lists make us feel like we have too much to ... posted on Dec 17, 22962 reads
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Inside the Rush to Preserve Indigenous Languages![](images/quickread.gif) A good puppet has to be liked, so Binnabannas was given a pair of friendly brown eyes, a set of uneven blue antlers, and leather shoes with red trim and curled toes reminiscent of samiske komagers, the traditional reindeer skin shoes worn by the Sami, the indigenous people of Northern Europe...Binnabannas's main goal is to keep the Sami language alive in the next generation, but the character may ... posted on Dec 18, 7980 reads
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Educating Our Children's Hearts![](images/quickread.gif) In November 2016, a university in Vadodara, India hosted a panel discussion titled "Education for Compassion: Rethinking Means and End," seeking to answer how schools, parents, and communities can prepare children to lead more compassionate rather than competitive lives. One of the panelists, Meghna Banker, is a graphic designer, volunteer, and a full-time mother home-schooling her daughter. In he... posted on Jan 6, 18920 reads
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Good Morning Beautiful Business!![](images/quickread.gif) Judy Wicks is an entrepreneur, activist and author working to build a more compassionate, environmentally sustainable and locally based economy. She notes, "Not long after I opened the White Dog Cafe in Philadelphia in 1983, I hung a sign in my bedroom closet in my home above the business -- right where I would see it each morning. "Good morning, beautiful business," it read, reminding me daily of... posted on Jan 29, 5703 reads
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Coming in Peace, 2017![](images/quickread.gif) In this brief, poignant post, Tracy Cochran of Parabola magazine reminds us of a profoundly simple yet overlooked soul-soother that anyone can practice and share: forgiveness. This year, why not take one small step toward self-compassion and taste the peace that comes with self-acceptance. Say, "Forgiven." To yourself, then others. "To ask for and offer forgiveness is to put down arms, daring to s... posted on Jan 23, 10984 reads
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How to Find and Support Trustworthy Journalism![](images/quickread.gif) In this world of fast-paced news and the proliferation of news sites-- some reliable and some far less so-- how can we make sure the journalism we rely on to help us learn about the facts and events unfolding around us is reliable? This insightful piece from Shareable.com suggests some ways that we can evaluate the news sources we use and encourage responsible journalism on the issues we care abou... posted on Feb 6, 20552 reads
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