The Man Who Transformed Trash Into A Free Library
A garbage man is making a difference in the lives of the children in his community in Colombia, and it all began when he spotted Leo Tolstoy's Anna Karenina in with the rubbish. Rather than see the book discarded, he saw an opportunity to give back, and began collecting neglected books and storing them in his home. Alberto Gutierrez has rescued over 20,000 books in the last 20 years, that take up ... posted on Oct 16, 13335 reads

One Activist's Oath, First Vow Not to Burn Out
Mushim Patricia Ikeda is a teacher, artist and activist. She's worked tirelessly for the upliftment of the marginalized. Through her work, Ikeda realized that the major danger for activists is burnout. "We need tools to address and prevent burnout and we need to go to the root of it," she said. It was in her earlier years during activist work that she recognized an acceptance, if not cultivation, ... posted on Nov 15, 11215 reads

Koan: A Conversation with Vaea Marx
Born in Tahiti, Vaea Marx's family moved to France where, as a child in the resistance during WWII, he was captured for blowing up a building the Germans were using. After the war, he became a pastry chef, then a cowboy in the Outback in Australia. He then went to Japan and met Kawai Kanjiro, one Japan's greatest potters, who became his teacher. There he met Hamada, Yanagi, Bernard Leach and even ... posted on Jan 31, 2719 reads

Tending to Your Inner Weeds
Tending to your garden is said to be good for your soul, but what if you tended to your life as you do your garden? In this piece, writer Alanda Greene discusses the lessons her garden weeds have taught her about paying attention to her inner weeds; those habits, behaviors, and tendencies we all have, and often ignore until they are out of hand. Much like weeds obstruct the fullest potential of a ... posted on Sep 20, 20972 reads

Winter Garden
When the seasons turn, snowfall whispers to you to stay warm and cozy - to go a little more inward. The cycle of seasons impact our own inner lives. So how does this cooler season express the balance between our own sense of stillness and busy-ness? How much of our lives do we spend filling our days with activity without purpose? Or ruminating on our own inner voices that tell us we aren't 'busy' ... posted on Dec 23, 12470 reads

The Blind Man and Double Amputee Who Planted 10,000 Trees
Two friends from Northern China are not letting their handicaps hold them back. Jia Wenqi, a double amputee, and Jia Haixa, who is completely blind, have been working together to plant trees along a riverbank in Yeli Village, planting an astounding 10,000 trees over the last decade. Finding it difficult to gain employment, the pair approached the local government with their idea. They hope that th... posted on Oct 26, 23809 reads

To Try to Have Some Healing: A Conversation with Silas Hagerty
What would you do to remember a deep wrong? Would you ride over 300 miles, through the Dakotas and Minnesota on horseback, in the middle of winter as a ceremonial act of forgiveness and reconciliation? And, if asked, would you be willing to accompany the journey to document the healing as an act of service? Read this interview from Parabola with Silas Hagerty. Silas describes his experience filmin... posted on Sep 7, 5729 reads

Gothenburg: The World's Most Sociable City
Gothenburg, like all cities, has its pros and cons. Despite problems with segregation and reliance on fossil fuels, Sweden's second city has a lot to offer in terms of collaboration and community, being voted the "world's most sociable city" earlier this year. The nonprofit organization Kollaborativ Ekonomi Goteborg (Collaborative Economy Gothenburg) discusses the 12 ways Gothenburg is encouraging... posted on Sep 16, 10557 reads

Bowing in Service: A Short Film with Unlikely Stars
Over two million women bow down countless times each night as they pick up waste and refuse in Indian cities, working through unhygienic conditions to keep India clean, earning a meager pay while their efforts go unnoticed. In this short film by actor and filmmaker Divyang Thakkar, we follow the story of children living in the slums in Ahmedabad, India and their acts of kindness and service as th... posted on Oct 19, 12868 reads

Training Our Trains of Thought
When negative thinking becomes habit, take heart. With compassion, mindfulness, and gratitude, it's possible to retrain our neural pathways for the better. To start, we become mindful of what's going on inside our heads. Thoughts and feelings come and go -- they don't stick with or own us. Realizing this gives us the space we need to observe them without letting them carry us away. By treating the... posted on Nov 24, 19403 reads

People Helped You Whether You Knew It Or Not
William Weaver, currently the chief of surgery at the Fayetteville VA Medical Center in North Carolina, doesn't remember a single day in high school "that a teacher didn't tell him that he didn't belong." This was in Knoxville, Tennessee, where in 1964, he was one of 14 black students integrating the all-white West High School. He remembers his test papers being unfairly snatched from him so he ... posted on Oct 21, 11237 reads

Business Lessons from the World of Improv
While few of us associate the world of business with the world of improv, the two may not be as far apart as you originally think. Bob Kulhan, founder and CEO of 'Business Improv', is working to bring the two worlds together, through bridging the comedic with the corporate. "Improvisation," he argues, "is a communication-based art form that...is based in some core principles of business." Improvis... posted on Oct 27, 7510 reads

The Remarkable C3 Coach of Panchavati Express
This year, the unique C3 A/C Coach or the "Adarsh" ("ideal" in Hindi) Coach on the Panchavati Express, a train running between Mumbai and Nashik, India observed its 10th anniversary. This is no ordinary coach, however. Its passengers follow a voluntary code of conduct that includes not consuming liquor and chewing tobacco on the train, adhering to cleanliness guidelines, switching off lights durin... posted on Dec 17, 10527 reads

French Lessons
An ordinary day can turn extraordinary at any given moment. For Tracy Cochran, it happened while walking the dog one colorful autumn morning. She paused for a second, looked up at the lake. . . and then it struck. A flash of insight and heart-opening so profound it swept her away. It was like lightning. But her good fortune didn't end there, as an opportunity to visit vineyards in France presented... posted on Oct 9, 9498 reads

The Gifts of Imperfection
Have you ever wondered what makes it easier for some folks to bounce back from difficulties than others? Resilience, or the ability to overcome adversity, includes 5 core components: resourcefulness, help-seeking, the belief that they can do something to help manage their feelings and to cope, availability of social support, and connections with others. But there's more to the stories of those who... posted on Jan 16, 0 reads

What Future Does Humankind Have?
In June of 1983, world-renowned theoretical physicist David Bohm and globally acclaimed philosopher J. Krishnamurti sat down for a conversation on the future of humankind. With Bohm at 66 years of age and Krishnamurti at 88 years of age, both men brought a lifetime of thought and wisdom to the table. Enjoy this deep conversation that touches on the evolution of thought and consciousness, the reali... posted on Dec 29, 15600 reads

In the Beginning Was Love
"I think he [Robert Lax] understood the difference between hearing and listening, and he really emphasized the listening. In fact, one of the things he'd say when we walked along the Patmos shoreline was, 'Well, I'm going to go back up to my place now. There's a lot of listening I have to get to.'
And listening for what? I think for all the cosmic sounds, his own heart, his own soul.." A lo... posted on Nov 17, 14461 reads

Grief as Deep Activism
No one escapes suffering in this life. Yet we live in a collective denial, deprived of meaningful ways to speak of sorrows and collective practices of releasing grief. Francis Weller walks us to the shore of sorrows and shows us how this ocean ripples through our individual lives, through community, and into the Earth herself. He invites us to see the illusion of private pain that imprisons us. He... posted on Feb 3, 0 reads

Finding Your Moment of Obligation
People who successfully tackle big social, environmental, and economic problems are driven by what Lara Galinsky of Echoing Green calls a moment of obligation -- a specific time in their life when they felt compelled to act. These moments become their North Star and keep them going in a positive direction when everything seems dark. Activists or social entrepreneurs aren't the only ones who are mo... posted on Oct 6, 10106 reads

A Life of One's Own
In today's world most of us are obsessed with forging purpose in life. The impact that standardized tests can have on the entire trajectory of one's life has parents molding the future of their children before they even know what freedom of choice they are giving up. Fear of missing the boat has many jumping into the safest, closest one around. Almost a century ago one adventurous spirit embarked ... posted on Jan 1, 14007 reads

Head, Heart and Hands: 25 Years of Schumacher College
Inspired by Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore's vision, Schumacher College uses head, heart, and hands to teach its student body not only knowledge but wisdom by encouraging creativity and service. Set in the grounds of the historic Dartington Hall in rural south west England, the college has gained an international reputation as much for its pioneering approach to student life as for its innovat... posted on Dec 11, 9304 reads

Kindness as an Avenue to Awe
While many schools are emphasizing the importance of test scores and textbooks, Puget Sound Community School is focusing on something different: kindness and collaboration. Founder Andy Smallman recognized the importance of creating a safe space for students that encouraged the development of their unique gifts, fostered by a spirit of gratitude and present moment appreciation. In this Awakin Cal... posted on Apr 7, 555 reads

Thousand Mile Walk Home
After being sidelined by injury, professor Michael P. Branch vowed his year would be filled with 1000 miles walked. As he logged his miles, the emphasis became one of practice, like a monk's meditations, and opened his eyes in a profound way: "[The miles] were all walked here, in the high desert, on public lands, within a ten-mile radius of my home. If my bioregionalist experiment of walking more ... posted on Jul 26, 5274 reads

The 12-Year-Old Who Brought Education to His Community
Life is often difficult for children of poor or outcast communities in India. They may not be afforded the same opportunities as those from more mainstream groups, and so often become wary out outsiders, even if they mean well. But there are people in these communities who are willing to take a risk to find a better way of life for themselves and those around them. The Narikurava are one of the... posted on Apr 29, 10621 reads

Margaret Wheatley: Warriors for the Human Spirit
Margaret Wheatley is a writer and management consultant who draws upon systems analysis, chaos theory, and other diverse fields of study to inform her work. In this interview from Sounds True, she writes talks about how we are in a time of destructive change that will bring a new way of life along with it. Our best path forward is to be warriors for the human spirit as we create "islands of sanity... posted on Mar 29, 27837 reads

Love Liberates: Maya Angelou's Words to Live By
Maya Angelou eloquently describes how her mother taught her through her actions that love liberates, it does not bind. When she had a child at age 17 and moved out of her mother's home, her mother advised her to always be true to herself and made it abundantly clear that she was always welcome home. By allowing her to go, and to come back whenever she needed to, her mother's love liberated her to ... posted on Jan 24, 5242 reads

The Unplanned Organization
A traditional concept in organizational leadership is that people resist change, so the standard antidote is for strong leadership to manipulate change. Yet in this article, Margaret Wheatley upends this idea of control and shows that humans are similar to natural ecosystems with an inherent impulse to grow. Life always wants to emerge, create and evolve both on the individual level and within lar... posted on Jun 15, 9578 reads

Warriors for the Human Spirit
Margaret Wheatley is a writer and management consultant who draws upon systems analysis, chaos theory, and other diverse fields of study to inform her work. In this interview from Sounds True, she writes talks about how we are in a time of destructive change that will bring a new way of life along with it. Our best path forward is to be warriors for the human spirit as we create "islands of sanity... posted on May 17, 16395 reads

When Things Fall Apart
Just when we think we've escaped and found firm ground to stand on in a painful moment, Pema Chodron suggests that we let go into the difficulty of our situation and rest there with an open mind instead. In her book "When Things Fall Apart", Pema Chodron gently guides us through the dark places in our lives and shows us that we are strong enough to live fully in those moments. Rather than running ... posted on Mar 13, 17657 reads

How to Put the Power of Law in People's Hands
What can you do when the wheels of justice don't turn fast enough? Or when they don't turn at all? Vivek Maru is working to transform the relationship between people and law, turning law from an abstraction or threat into something that everyone can understand, use and shape. Instead of relying solely on lawyers, Maru started a global network of community paralegals, or barefoot lawyers, who serve... posted on Aug 24, 8022 reads

One Teacher's Brilliant response to Columbine
"A few weeks ago, I went into my son Chase's class for tutoring. I'd e-mailed Chase's teacher one evening and said, "Chase keeps telling me that this stuff you're sending home is math, but I'm not sure I believe him. Help, please." She e-mailed right back and said, "No problem! I can tutor Chase after school anytime." And I said, "No, not him. Me. He gets it. Help me." And that's how I ended up st... posted on Sep 26, 21223 reads

Fritjof Capra on Life and Leadership
"Sustainability is not an individual property, but is a property of an entire web of relationships. It is a community practice. This is the profound lesson we need to learn from nature. The way to sustain life is to build and nurture community. Because of the close connection between sustainability and community, basic principles of ecology can also be understood as principles of community. In par... posted on Feb 28, 10709 reads

Good Morning, Beautiful Business!
It is not just recycled packaging or open hiring practices or good benefits or green sourcing that make a sustainable business. It takes a deep commitment to a particular place and substantial effort to weave together all the threads of that place--people, land, and community--to create new economies that can counteract the devastating effects of the global economy. Judy Wicks, owner of White Dog... posted on Apr 17, 7914 reads

How I Moved My Cat from Israel to Pakistan
"I recently hunched over my desk lunch and typed: How to get a cat from Israel to Pakistan. This is not a question that Google easily answers. There are no holiday packages from Israel to Pakistan -- no direct flights, and no diplomatic relations. But here I was, asking the Internet weird questions at NPR's Washington, D.C., headquarters in June. I was being trained there before I was to be dispat... posted on Jun 5, 3493 reads

Turning Rain, Ice and Trees into Ephemeral Works
"British artist Andy Goldsworthy works in the fields and forests near his home in Scotland using natural elements as his media. His pieces have a tendency to collapse, decay and melt, but, as he tells Fresh Air's Terry Gross, "It's not about art. It's just about life and the need to understand that a lot of things in life do not last."" Here he talks about his photography book, how he creates his ... posted on May 27, 12276 reads

Uncolonizing the Imagination
Listening to a storyteller discuss the art of storytelling is to take a trip into the land of the right brain where imagination, myth, past and present coalesce. The spoken language is exquisitely used in this interview by Charlotte Du Cann with Martin Shaw. He refers to storytelling as opening up to our uncolonized imagination, listening to the thoughts of the world, of our ancestors, of "the riv... posted on May 13, 7655 reads

In Praise of Crooked Things
"Maybe we once believed that "straight is the gate and narrow is the way" and went in search of it. But look how Nature moves in curves and curlicues. Perhaps that's why I love the many crooked trees even more than the few arrow-straight ones. They look like they've fought for survival in a tough world. Like you. Like me. Notice how they grow both up and sideways, twisted and curved from battling ... posted on Apr 16, 10740 reads

HumanKinda
Are we losing our humanity? Is humankind becoming humankinda?" In this humorous and insightful video, actor and comedian Sam Richardson explores why we're always in motion, plugged in, and overworked. Through simple breathing practices, and giving ourselves permission to slow down, even to do nothing at all, we can get in touch with what it means to be human. This short video shares more about the... posted on Apr 15, 4263 reads

Spotlight on Restorative Justice
A crime or harm disrupts the balance -- in a community, among people, and within a family. Trying, convicting, and incarcerating the wrongdoer separates them from society but may do little to reclaim that lost balance and less still to improve the underlying conditions that led to the harm. Restorative justice takes a broader view with efforts that may include facilitating reconciliation between t... posted on Apr 26, 9083 reads

Healing the Eyes of the World
At the heart of this story of the Aravind Eye Care System is how an impossible dream, one man's vision of eliminating needless blindness, has become a global system of compassionate care for all. Founded in southern India more than 40 years ago by Dr. V., a true visionary, Aravind is now the largest provider of eye care in the world. Even more remarkable is the fact that people receive care at Ara... posted on May 1, 2218 reads

The Efficiency of Inefficiency
While studying the history of medicine and practicing for over twenty years, Dr. Victoria Sweet discovered approaches to healing that today would be considered inefficient--but put into practice, are just the opposite. One such lesson was from 12th century abbess Hildegard of Bingen, who felt that "the body is more like a plant than a machine . . . the difference being that someone has to fix a br... posted on May 9, 4643 reads

I Feel You: The Surprising Power of Extreme Empathy
Sometimes the world seems like a heavy and difficult place. While it's true that life has its share of challenges, one of the best ways to find the light in every day is to connect to one another. Sharing, listening, and identifying with one another helps us grow those connections through empathy. Empathy is something innate that lives in all of us, but its also something that can be grown and c... posted on Jun 26, 10744 reads

Designed by Masters, Woven with Dignity
Witness the beautiful fabric woven by traditional weavers in Toraja, Indonesia, and learn how their collective is working to bring economic independence to the weavers while preserving weaving as part of their cultural heritage. The social enterprise, Torajamelo, transforms the lives of these weavers, offering scholarships for their children and grandchildren and health insurance for themselves an... posted on May 18, 2179 reads

Embrace the Grace, Celebrate the Infinite
In a recent graduation address Nipun Mehta shares the origin story of ServiceSpace and the shifts catalyzed by exploring a set of questions unusual in the realm of technology: what do exponential love, exponential forgiveness and exponential kindness look like? He shares the power discovered in the practice of letting go/letting in and allowing "the vast conspiracy of the universe to drop you at t... posted on Jun 11, 15171 reads

The Art and Discipline of Seeing Compassionately
"Prophets and sages throughout the generations have all agreed on this one point: how you see determines what you see and don't see. So if we want to heal the divisions in our country and our homes, we have to learn a new way of seeing." In this excerpt from his book "Practice Makes PURPOSE: Six Spiritual Practices That Will Change Your Life and Transform Your Community", Paul Schroeder offers ins... posted on Nov 5, 12389 reads

We Are Still Here
Many indigenous cultures that once existed are now part of past history. However, many of those cultures are indeed alive; examples of resilience and strength. Camille Seaman, an award-winning photographer and Native American, was troubled by her childhood experiences hearing her culture and her people described in the past tense. As she says, "we are still here". With her camera and her purpose,... posted on Dec 8, 4765 reads

Healing Civilization Nature's Way
Cities of the future should have less grey and more green, according to leading thinkers Thomas Lovejoy and Jonathan F. P. Rose. In this Garrison Institute mashup conversation between biological diversity expert and urban developer, we get an overview of what might really work. Says Lovejoy, "I'm actually hoping that particularly when the ecosystem restoration part of the solution to climate chang... posted on Jul 30, 9001 reads

One Square Inch of Silence
Gordon Hempton is an acoustic ecologist who has spent over thirty years taking recordings of steadily vanishing natural soundscapes. Quiet places on earth are in danger of disappearing, a message that Hempton brought home in 2010 by marking one square inch of quiet space in Washington's Olympic National Park with a small red rock. His work was featured in a documentary entitled "Soundtracker" that... posted on Jul 12, 3007 reads

Eager: The Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
A beaver is a change agent. They build a dam, create a pond, then over the course of years, the pond fills in, becomes a wetland, wet meadow and the cycle starts again. Humans like things static, which is one reason beavers and humans have not gotten along. We have fundamentally different visions of how the landscape is supposed to work. The consequences have been the decimation of the beaver popu... posted on Aug 15, 8178 reads

4 Ways to Train Your Brain to Feel Better
It might be difficult to think that stress could be an opportunity, but Laurel Mellin, Ph.D. believes that it can encourage us to pause long enough to change how we think. Mellin is the founder of EBT, Inc. (Emotional Brain Training) an educational organization that provides certification and brain training to health professionals and the public. With stress as the number one epidemic worldwide, M... posted on Aug 17, 30948 reads