Hands Across the Hills
Hands Across the Hills formed in response to the 2016 United States presidential election with the goal of bringing together people who voted differently, face to face. Two small groups, progressives in rural Western Massachusetts (MA) and conservatives in Eastern Kentucky (KY) coal country, met for two weekends of dialogue and cultural exchange in each others towns in fall 2017 and spring 2018.... posted on Feb 25, 7452 reads

Into the Middle of Nowhere
Imaginations run wild in this touching video of young children as they explore their surroundings at an outdoor nursery in Scotland. With admirable patience and unwavering deliberation, they build an aeroplane and travel the world without ever leaving the ground. Press play to witness the human mind's capacity for creativity, connection, and joy of discovery.... posted on Feb 28, 2561 reads

Why Shadows Were Invented
In 'From These Wilds Beyond Our Fences,' Bayo Akomolafe points out that when Seventeenth-century physicist Francesco Grimaldi directed a focused ray of sunlight in a dark room, managing the ray so that it struck a thin rod and produced a shadow on a screen, he proved that light behaves in unexpected ways. In fact, light is only one side of a whole,like yin and yang. Thus "darkness is not the absen... posted on Mar 21, 7400 reads

Three Minutes and a Pair of Socks
Our daily interactions have great potential: to shape our futures, our families, our life's work, or simply to brighten someone's day. We often don't know where a brief exchange with the checkout clerk might lead or how our kind words will impact a stranger. Yet sometimes we are given the gift of witnessing a single conversation's journey, gaining glimpses into the lives it touches along the way. ... posted on Mar 6, 9169 reads

Who Gets to Cry?
Climate change is destroying many places we love points out Trebbe Johnson, and while some of us turn away from admitting this, others are filled with sorrow. But here's what's most difficult: "Many of us are simply afraid that if we allow ourselves to wade, even for a moment, into the feelings of sadness for the living world that lap at the edge of our consciousness, we will find ourselves pulled... posted on Apr 1, 6565 reads

At-One-Ment: In Conversation with Rabbi Michael Lerner
Rabbi Lerner's life work has been to develop a politics of meaning, to heal, repair and transform politics in the US. He feeds the hunger in us for a different kind of society - one based on the principles of caring, ethical and spiritual sensitivity, and communal solidarity. This inspiring interview shares more.... posted on Mar 30, 9111 reads

Therapy Dogs Help Kids With Trauma Tell Their Stories
Companions for Courage in Orlando, Florida, is a community outreach program that provides therapy dogs for children who have experienced trauma and need to confront that trauma in court. The dogs provide a sense of security, creating a bond with child victims, giving them the courage and confidence to face the court situation. The dogs enable the children to stay calm and tell their stories. The c... posted on Mar 8, 1984 reads

We Became Fragments
This powerful film chronicles the journey of Ibraheem Sarhan, a Syrian teenager, as he adapts to a new life in Winnipeg, Canada. Following the loss of his mother and four siblings in a bombing that left him injured, Ibraheem left Syria with his father. "We went out against our will and we shall return with our hope," he says. Watch Ibraheem as he navigates his first week of high school in this sto... posted on Mar 23, 2505 reads

In Which the River Makes Off with Three Stationery Characters
The river beckons the lumberjacking beaver and spawning chinook salmon to capture its currents, to countervail its flow. Befurred and befinned they dance to its gurgling song but do not yield to the flow, living for their time as dissenters, laboring at cross-purposes against currents as frantically stationary characters in their water world - "there is music that will dissolve your anchors, your ... posted on Jun 12, 2173 reads

Phil Cass: Shifting the Healthcare Paradigm
Phil Cass is making a difference in Columbus, Ohio. He describes how shocked he was to discover that physicians have become the #1 group of people who commit suicide in the U.S. Working with staff, he remade the culture of the medical association, and their affiliate corporations, into a highly participatory culture and spearheaded the creation a free health care clinic for the uninsured. Over 5,0... posted on Apr 3, 2000 reads

Who is Mother?
Matt Hopwood is a writer, storyteller and founder of A Human Love Story. He has traveled widely to gather peoples experiences of love and connection. In 2018 after the death of his beloved grandmother - he wanted to explore the role of mother in our lives and communities. Matt eventually grew the awareness of the sense of Mother in himself. He shares with us his yearning to nurture, the longing to... posted on May 14, 5879 reads

Harbored by a Mulberry Tree
Kate Legge, journalist and author, reflects on her life through her relationships with trees. One of her life long friends and teachers was the mulberry in her back garden growing up. Here, held in its arms, she was able to cross the threshold into enchantment. She learned to appreciate the world we live in and natures ingenious design, by becoming a tree whisperer.... posted on May 5, 7282 reads

The Obvious is Elusive
Moshe Feldenkrais, a physicist and Judo blackbelt who developed a somatic education method named after him, challenges us to think differently. He says that "speaking is not thinking, although we "obviously" consider them as the same thing...Suffice to think what God, truth, justice, honesty, communism, fascism, and so on mean in different human societies to see that much of our trouble lies in th... posted on Apr 29, 4777 reads

10 Sharing-Focused Books to Read this Spring
Whenever people come together, something has to be shared. in the workplace, the home, the neighborhood; even in the grocery store. The books in this book list from Shareable, an award winning nonprofit, delve into understanding the what, who, how and why of sharing our way into a brighter future. Dive in and get inspired, excited and sharing.... posted on Apr 28, 8960 reads

SuperBetter: A Healing Game
In the face of death, or other deeply challenging circumstances, how would you respond? Many people come to such moments full of suffering and regret. What if you could do small things every day that would help you face life's challenges in a way that fosters resilience and transformation? In this research-packed and fun TED talk, on-line game designer Jane McGonigal guides a real-time social game... posted on May 10, 17874 reads

Stress and the Social Self
"Relationships, Adrienne Rich argued in her magnificent meditation on love, refine our truths. But they also, it turns out, refine our immune systems. That's what pioneering immunologist Esther Sternberg examines in The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions--a revelatory inquiry into how emotional stress affects our susceptibility to burnout and disease." Maria Popova shares m... posted on Mar 2, 6538 reads

A Rite of Passage for Late Life
In this TED residency talk, Bob Stein reveals his transition into using a new ritual to mark his later life. He proposes a new tradition of giving away your things and sharing the stories behind them as you get older, to reflect on your life so far, open conversations and connections that might not happen otherwise and move into the next phase prepared for whatever might come next.... posted on Apr 15, 4543 reads

Are Social Change and Scale Mutually Exclusive?
"As the clarion call for scale increases in volume, it is worth always asking, what is it we want to scale? And how will it enable social change for those who have been kept at the bottom of the pyramid?" Dr Arun Kumar is the CEO of Apnalaya, an organization that does remarkable work to create self-sustaining communities within the slums of Mumbai. In this piece he shares more about their model, a... posted on Apr 17, 4129 reads

Parker Palmer Muses on the Season
"I will wax romantic about spring and its splendors in a moment, but first there is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being create... posted on Apr 20, 0 reads

Coming Back to Being: A Conversation with Alan Wallace
Alan tells how as a young man, he reached a moment where he sent out a message to the universe. I need to meet a wise old man, and I need it now! He was hitchhiking alone in Norway when, as he says, I looked over my shoulder and saw a little black VW bug pulled over. There was a little old man, beckoning to me. Would you like a ride? Thus begins our remarkable interview with one of the preeminent ... posted on Apr 23, 4047 reads

The Call for a Capitalist Reformation
If business leaders want to take credit for all the good that has come from capitalism, then we also must reconcile all the bad that has come along with it. One way to do that is to use our unique power and privilege to design and invest in a better system that serves all of us, not just some of us." Jay Coen Gilbert Co-founder of B Lab and the movement of Certified B Corporations shares more in t... posted on May 4, 4803 reads

Send Silence Packing: A Mission of Hope
Sometimes things fall apart in a way that we simply fall silent. Sometimes there simply are no words we can say or hear to help us deal with our trauma. Such quiet time can provide the buffer necessary to absorb the impact. Staying here too long though can bring the necessary healing process to a halt, both for ourselves and others suffering in similar ways. Read this story of how one woman decide... posted on Sep 3, 3655 reads

Remembering Jean Vanier: The Living Saint
Canadian Catholic philosopher, theologian and humanitarian Jean Vanier, a man who dedicated his life to helping those less fortunate, passed away in Paris this May at the age of 90. Founder of L'Arche, a federation of communities spread over 37 countries for people with disabilities, as well as of Faith and Light, with similar works in more than 80 countries, he has written 30 books on religion, d... posted on May 21, 3491 reads

Farewell to Jean Vanier
Jean Vanier, philosopher, theologian, humanist and founder of L'Arche departed our physical world on May 7, 2019 at the age of 90. His heart, his love and his compassion live on in the hundreds of communities that have sprung from his love and compassion for humanity. This world wide movement is based on Vanier's belief that people with disabilities are teachers, rather that burdens to society.... posted on Jun 30, 6336 reads

Why We Walk
Erling Kagge is a Norwegian explorer, lawyer, art collector, author, and the first person to have completed the Three Poles Challenge on foot --the North Pole, the South Pole and the summit of Mount Everest. Kagge is also the author of "Walking: One Step at a Time," and six other books. What follows is an excerpt from Walking.

... posted on May 31, 5793 reads

Weeds: A Conversation with Doug Burgess
Photography is a way of probing the world, says Burgess. Take weeds, for instance. "Two or three years ago, one weed was the same as another for me. That's changed now. I can go anyplace and feel that I have friends and knowledge. I mean I know the weeds by name now and know a little about them. Maybe it's one of the major tools I've found to come to some sort of ease with the world." There's much... posted on Jun 5, 2234 reads

Navigating the Transition into Caregiving
"Being a caregiver is not something most people think or dream about, let alone prepare for, even though it's a role many of us will inhabit, since there are approximately 43 million informal caregivers in the United States and 6.5 million caregivers in the United Kingdom. When a loved one becomes a caregiver everything changes, including responsibilities, beliefs, hopes, expectations and relation... posted on Jun 6, 10410 reads

Complicating the Narratives
"Complicating the narrative means finding and including the details that don't fit the narrative -- on purpose. The idea is to revive complexity in a time of false simplicity. 'The problem with stereotypes is not that they are untrue but that they are incomplete,' novelist Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie says in her mesmerizing TED Talk "A Single Story." '[I]t's impossible to engage properly with a place... posted on Nov 21, 2143 reads

If Life Wins There Will Be No Losers
Many, many people are feeling the widespread longing for a tenable alternative to capitalism - an urgent need for new regenerative ways of living. We feel this need both in our individual lives and in the larger ways we live together; in neighborhoods, cities, nations. We can't create a regenerative culture solely by trying to "smash capitalism". Instead, we need to understand and heal the underly... posted on Jul 2, 6993 reads

The Wanderer: Earth as Art
"There is this one extravaganza, already in production for five million years now, called Earth. Because it is so full of redundancies, so repetitious in its winters and fishes, we feel we have seen enough to get a handle on it; we would like to set out our critique of the planet's aesthetic merits and failures before we are toast like Tacitus. There was once a critique that it was "very good," bu... posted on Mar 9, 2376 reads

Meet Fadak: Australia's Inspiring Refugee Advocate
Fadak Alfayadh spent her childhood in Iraqa country that shifted from one world to an entirely different, unliveable one seemingly overnight. 15 years ago Fadak sought refuge with her family in Australia, where they received little support from the system but were welcomed by their community in Dandenong, Victoria. Today, Fadak is paving the way for the refugees who have arrived in her wake. Her M... posted on Jun 24, 3256 reads

The Table of Voices
Richard Kamler was drawn to art's potential to touch people deeply and, in that way, bring about real change. In this interview, he talks about the evolution of his work with prisoners. "During that first year, I began to change - dramatically. I began to really think about art, and in a much different way than I did when I went to school. I began to see art as something that really could reveal t... posted on Jun 26, 3853 reads

Cellist Plays Bach in the Shadow of the US-Mexico Border
With powerful words, performing music by Bach, renowned cellist Yo-Yo Ma reminds us of music's unique power to connect and unite everyone. At the border between sister cities Laredo, Texas and Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, he quotes from the poem by Emma Lazarus on the base of the Statue of Liberty: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free...". Like the Statue of Liber... posted on Jun 25, 3248 reads

Finding a Way Back
Breast cancer does not ask you if it is part of your plan for life. When the diagnosis comes, your plans must change to accommodate. And how do women find their way back into life without cancer as it's center point? Colleen Webster, a DailyGood reader, shares her experience leading a retreat she organized for breast cancer survivors where she had to travel a similar journey. While she planned for... posted on Jul 22, 5136 reads

Giving Directions
Like most of us, you've probably been asked for directions at least once in your life. While men are notorious for failing to admit when they're lost and women less so, little research has been done on how directions are imparted and the characterization of the individual giving them. "Giving directions is a form of storytelling," says Akiko Busch. "When people advise you to take the longest, most... posted on Sep 22, 3896 reads

The Daily Opportunity in Randomness
"The physicist Leonard Mlodinow changes how we think about the agency we have in shaping our own destinies. As a scientist, he works with principles like Brownian motion, by which Einstein helped verify the existence of molecules and atoms. As the child of Holocaust survivors, he dances with the experience we all have: that life never goes as planned, and yet the choices we make can matter. The co... posted on Jul 6, 12011 reads

When Old and Young Connect
"Forty years ago, the eminent Cornell University professor and child psychologist Urie Bronfenbrenner famously concluded, Every child needs at least one adult who is irrationally crazy about him or her. The benefits of a caring adult mentor on childrens well-being have been reinforced in study after study, as well as reports from youth themselves--including research I was engaged with early in my ... posted on Jul 14, 7191 reads

Wild Wisdom
Jenny Cullinan dedicates her time to studying and learning from bees in the wild. Spending time with any species in the wild over time leads to understanding of that species as it truly is. She calls this greater understanding wild wisdom. With an allergy to bee stings, instead of being afraid of them she chose to learn how to be with them. She urges us to look at nature's genius and use it as a g... posted on Jul 24, 2265 reads

Wild Imagination
"Anguish over the diminishment of our world, the destruction of Earths life support systems, and the extinction of species is deep in our shared human psyche, though largely unexpressed. So many of us can only dimly imagine our way through the psychic and physical debris to a regenerated, thriving, Earth community. Yet the mysterious human imagination itself may be our best resource for experienti... posted on Jul 25, 8448 reads

Dental Care Where There is No Dentist
In Teeth: The Story of Beauty, Inequality, and the Struggle for Oral Health in America, Mary Otto describes how American dentistry came to the point of producing Hollywood smiles for some while leaving enormous gaps in care for others. In this excerpt, she describes a model of accessible, affordable dental care that is used successfully in other countries and now, in some parts of the United State... posted on Jul 30, 4552 reads

Speechless
"One morning I woke up with no voice, just a faint, breathy whisper. This would be upsetting anytime, but on this particular day it felt as if I were in a fairy tale. In a matter of hours, I was supposed to tell a story and teach mindfulness meditation at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan. And I couldn't make a sound." Parabola's Tracy Cochran shares more in this thought-provoking essay on the ... posted on Aug 1, 7821 reads

The Rise in Giving Across Africa
"Douglas Ng'ang'a stands in the middle of the "slum library" he runs. Only he doesn't take credit for the 3,000 books housed in his childhood home in Nairobi's Mathare Valley. "The books just showed up," he says. Well, not exactly. His neighbors brought them. Ng'ang'a funds the library by working as a driver. He started the collection with 200 of his own books. Members of the community spread the ... posted on Oct 1, 2257 reads

One Breath Around the World
Guillaume Nery can hold his breath underwater for more than seven minutes, dive more than 126 meters without air and has run on ocean floors around the world. He is a professional freediver, meaning he dives without breathing apparatus. The sport of freediving is dangerous, but Guillaume Nery and Julie Gautier's film makes it seem peaceful and serene. The film shows non divers a new way of interac... posted on Aug 16, 2536 reads

A Three Year Road Trip Documenting Kindness
Do you see the world as a place of hope and optimism? Understandably, many people don't as the barrage of bad news hits the news feed every day. Mary Latham is not one of those people though. Instead of withdrawing from the world after the loss of her mother, in 2016 she began a journey to find and create kindness as she traveled across the US. Over the past years, she says she's found nothing but... posted on Sep 7, 2784 reads

Time Out of Joint: Shakespeare in Prison
Rehabilitation through the Arts brought a screening of three films based on Shakespearean works to an upstate New York prison with powerful results. The timeless themes of Shakespeare's writings, themes such as what it means to be a man, to be human, to live in a society with many ills which also provides possibilities for growth and transformation, are discussed after the films are viewed by the ... posted on Dec 3, 1867 reads

Dean Spade: On Normal Life
Dean Spade is an Associate Professor at Seattle University School of Law, a founder of the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (a non-profit law collective that provides free legal services to transgender, intersex and gender non-conforming people who are low-income and/or people of color.) In this thoughtful 2014 interview he discusses the subject of his book "Normal Life: Administrative Violence, Critical... posted on Aug 24, 2368 reads

Gratitude Behind Bars
"Does gratefulness truly make us happy? How does gratefulness serve us during difficult times? What is your experience of gratitude as a person who is incarcerated and denied so many of the freedoms and privileges associated with happiness? These are some of the questions we explored through Grateful Anyhow, a recent project in partnership with Prisoner Express (PE) that engaged approximately 350 ... posted on Aug 28, 5821 reads

Hannah Shaw: Professional Kitten Rescuer
"Hannah Shaw's job title is "professional kitten rescuer." Known on YouTube and Instagram as the Kitten Lady, Shaw has rescued hundreds of neonatal kittens, often orphaned and unweaned, who are too small and vulnerable to be in an animal shelter. Kittens are a highly euthanized population in shelters because they require a level of care that most shelters cannot provide. That's where Shaw steps in... posted on Oct 6, 4272 reads

Creating a World That Works for All
In a world with overwhelming problems, there can be little reason for hope. In this excerpt of the book, Creating A world That Works For All, Sharif Abdullah is unflinching in what we face: self-destruction. Our world does not even truly work for the select few. The solution is simple: inclusivity. Our lives are inextricably linked. "Inclusivity is the basis for a world that works for all." We mus... posted on Sep 30, 2380 reads

Holy Envy: The Key to Appreciating World Religions
"From an early age, Barbara Brown Taylor knew that she wanted to live a spiritual life."It started early in my life," she says, "a hunger for the beyond, for the transcendent, for the light within the light, the glow within the grass, the sparkle within the water."Taylor went on to become an ordained Episcopal priest, working as rector of a church. But she later left her job with the church and be... posted on Oct 7, 4395 reads