For the Traveler: By John O'Donohue
We think we travel to find adventure and a change of scenery, but there are other tiny gems that come to us along the way of the road that are not from travel brochures. It is "the compass of our soul" that is the secret guide for finding our way in this world. When we are lost in faraway lands, or "in that part of the heart that lies low at home," there is a silence within that can show us how ... posted on Feb 23, 53000 reads

Become Your Own Greenspace
Studies reveal that contentment, interconnectedness and wellbeing levels all increase with exposure to the vibration of natural greenspaces. According to this article 'you don't need a rooftop garden or an acre of forest to create your own meditative biosphere. It can be wherever you are.' When we tap into the vibration our our hearts, this magnetic strength beyond that of our brains, creates a ca... posted on Mar 21, 11536 reads

A Reading List For The Spirit
Spirituality and Health magazine has assembled its picks for the Best Books of the past year. Among them you will find reflections on mortality, explorations of depression, and insights from authors from a wide range of traditions. Some of the books examine the mind body connection for better mental health. One suggests that creating your own spiritual biography may help you recognize the times y... posted on Apr 4, 38061 reads

A Champion for Every Foster Child
"Research into foster children shows a clear correlation between their educational struggles and their chaotic home life - and how this gravely affects their future. Enter FosterEd. It is the brainchild of Jesse Hahnel, an attorney at the National Center for Youth Law, who believes that if foster children had someone advocating for their education, at least some of those dire statistics might be a... posted on Feb 24, 9564 reads

A Call to Revolutionary Love
Valarie Kaur has lived the radical lessons of love that she shares as "an American interfaith leader, lawyer, filmmaker, Sikh activist, and founder of The Revolutionary Love Project based at the University of Southern California." She knows the sting of losing friends as a child because of her religion. She knows the trauma of losing a beloved family friend who was killed in a hate-crime in the af... posted on Mar 10, 13151 reads

Eight Ways to Stand up to Hate
Ever neglect to defend someone in a sticky situation and then kick yourself later for not having done anything? Oftentimes we freeze. Other times we fear retaliation. Maybe we simply are at a loss for what to do. But it's everyday events such as these that can affect society's overall tolerance for hate, which can be found not just in the news but under our very noses. This article gets us ready f... posted on Mar 6, 26784 reads

Business the Way Nature Intended
Giles Hutchins feels that study of our relationship with Nature can help us understand the challenges we face today. Climate change, rampant social inequality or rising stress in the workplace, all are symptomatic of our sense of place and purpose within life. Our relationship with ourselves, each other and the world is in desperate need of our attention. ... posted on Apr 3, 11315 reads

Recording the Sounds of Extinction
Musician and naturalist Bernie Krause is one of the world's leading experts in natural sound. Krause has been recording "soundscapes" - the wind in the trees, the chirping of birds, the songs of humpback whales - for over forty years and has amassed the largest archive in the world. In doing so, Krause can chart how wildlife sounds have changed over the course of climate change. Listen for yoursel... posted on Mar 5, 3065 reads

Anthony Chavez: Continuing a Legacy of Inspiration
When Cesar Chavez died, 30,000 people showed up to march in his honor. He was the visionary force behind the United Farm Workers union and had led the Farm Workers Movement fighting for civil rights while promoting nonviolence. Anthony Chavez, seven-years-old at the time, knew him simply as --Grandpa. Today Anthony is a leader in his own right, he travels the country speaking on behalf of the Cesa... posted on Mar 22, 10862 reads

The Promise & Paradox of Community
We human beings have a great need for one another, "an instinct of community." However, today this instinct to be together seems to be fragmenting as we experience increasing ethnic wars, militia groups, specialized interest clubs, and chat rooms. Are we using the instinct of community to separate and protect us from one another? It's ironic that we live surrounded by communities that succeed in c... posted on Jun 4, 12719 reads

Sergeant Helps Abandoned Animals in Afghanistan Find Homes
While Staff Sgt. Edwin Caba served in Afghanistan, a litter of puppies born on his base brought a sense of much needed joy and relief to the soldiers. Many didn't want to part with them once their tour ended. Enter Nowzad Dogs. Since 2007, the nonprofit has reunited more than 700 soldiers with the animals they cared for on duty. As the only official animal shelter in the country, it also helps fin... posted on May 21, 2016 reads

Born Baffled:Musings on a Writing Life
In the fall of 1978, Parker Palmer gave a lecture to a small literature class. Word-of-mouth landed him a book deal and 26 years later, he has published multiple books on a range of topics that he describes as 'curious musings' on his many interests. Since his first publication 'The Promise of Paradox', he continues to write, fueled by his love of words. For budding authors and word enthusiasts, h... posted on May 9, 13906 reads

When Serendipity Touches a Journey
Anthony Rubino is a nonfiction writer and artist based out of New York City, where he also is an art teacher in the city's public school system. In this piece, Anthony tells the story of a vacation he and his wife took to Arizona, where he experienced the serendipity of connecting with a man whose painting appeared in his dream. He recently completed his memoir "Looking for Wonder: A Teacher's Une... posted on Jun 22, 10817 reads

Hack the Hood Connects Bay Area Youth With Tech Opportunities
Growing up in East Oakland, California, Zakiya Harris straddled two different worlds: one predominantly black and the other affluent. Now, she's connecting those worlds through Hack the Hood, a nonprofit that introduces people of color to tech careers. Since 2014, the program has attracted more than 200 young minorities from local, low-income neighborhoods to learn skills such as website design, c... posted on Jun 18, 7068 reads

Hello Hijab: Mom Hopes To Create A Better World For Daughter
Safaa Bokhari, a mom living in Oakland, Pennsylvania, has experienced difficulty practicing her Muslim faith, especially while wearing her headscarf. Her goal is to foster a safer environment for her daughter when she becomes old enough to choose whether to wear a headscarf. To do that, she teamed up with a community organization in Pittsburgh to launch Hello Hijab, which creates tiny headscarves ... posted on May 2, 11845 reads

A Conversation with Carl Cheng: The John Doe Company
"My grandfather was the mayor of Canton and on my mother's side there were even more distinguished figures." All that was wiped in the Cultural Revolution and when Carl was five his family emigrated to the U.S. taking up farming in the San Fernando Valley. Cheng's story is fascinating. He now focuses on public art. "The potential of public art is to make us value what we have." He calls himself, t... posted on May 19, 2449 reads

When Rivers Hold Legal Rights
In the beautiful land of New Zealand flows a river that now has a voice to protect it. The voice is not like ours, but in every other way the Whanganui River has been given the same legal protections accorded to any person living in New Zealand. The river now "owns itself" and has the law to speak up for it when the river's rights are being violated. This growing global movement for Rights of Natu... posted on Jun 2, 6987 reads

The Axis & the Sycamore
Sitting in his newly built tree-house, Paul Kingsnorth muses about the situation the world is in. German philosopher Karl Jaspers coined a term, the Axial Age, referring to an historical period when five distinct civilizations, those of Greece, Palestine, Persia, India, and China, experienced profound transformations, led by spiritual pioneers such as the Buddha, Plato, Socrates, Zarathustra, Elij... posted on Jun 3, 8130 reads

Will Rosenzweig: Business Lessons from a Quiet Gardener
When William Rosenzweig learned he had been awarded the prestigious Oslo Business for Peace Award via a Google news alert -- he immediately assumed it was spam. But it was in fact real. A 2010 recipient of this award, selected by a committee of Nobel Laureates for the highest distinction given to a businessperson for outstanding accomplishments in the area of ethical business, Will has spent more... posted on Apr 26, 12330 reads

Robert Bengston: Inspiration Campaign
In 2012 artist Robert Bengston started a new participatory, people-powered project, Inspiration Campaign, that involves beautiful, empowering, nothing-for-sale advertising. The aim was to inspire the human spirit, and to transform mainstream media into a source of inspiration. The campaign uses crowd-funding to run uplifting, crowd-sourced messages on traditional physical advertising spaces. Mess... posted on May 3, 11313 reads

Rosanne Cash on How Science Saved Her Life
In a prelude to her reading of Adrienne Rich's poetic tribute to Marie Curie, Roseanne Cash discusses the insights she gained as she battled to find a cure to her debilitating headaches. She realized the source of her creativity 'comes from the same room as her deepest pain' and argued that we have to listen deeply to our inner truth: "Persist and verify... The power that we abdicate to others out... posted on Aug 18, 6996 reads

Walking with Gandhi
In this reflection, an anti-war activist reveals what he thinks is missing from the heart of many of today's nonviolent movements. "Amidst the day's exhilaration it was plain to me that something essential was missing - that there was, in fact, a gaping void at the very heart of it all...During the march, my eyes were invariably drawn by particular phrases scrawled on several of the signs and bann... posted on May 25, 14724 reads

Five Boys' Response to Bullying
Every morning, the students at Franklin Elementary in Mankato, Minnesota, take the Pledge of Allegiance. But five fifth-grade boys embody "liberty and justice for all." When the boys noticed their classmate with a learning disability getting teased, they banded together and made him a part of their gang. Watch this short film in which the boys themselves tell you why they did what they did.... posted on Feb 24, 4986 reads

Returning the Gift
Robin Wall Kimmerer notes, "In the teachings of my Potawatomi ancestors, responsibilities and gifts are understood as two sides of the same coin. The possession of a gift is coupled with a duty to use it for the benefit of all. A thrush is given the gift of song and so has a responsibility to greet the day with music. Salmon have the gift of travel, so they accept the duty of carrying food upriver... posted on Sep 2, 15344 reads

A Feast of Flowers
What do you feel when you gaze at a flower? Or better yet - a field of wondrous, lush, vibrant flowers? Our senses become engulfed in beauty, and as writer Lucia Ferrara Bettler explains in her article 'A Feast of Flowers', they truly are nourishment for the sprint. In one single flower we can feel the life-giving abundance that nature affords. Flowers teach us to behold the small, natural wonders... posted on Jun 13, 11446 reads

Seeing Through the Lens of Good
Jeanine Lim has been working with villagers in Vietnam for more than 20 years. Starting as a personal endeavor with her mother, Project Give Pray Love has grown to become a community effort that helps children in the Mekong Delta region stay in school through tuition grants, books, stationery and bicycles to get to school. Now the filmmaker and lecturer is helping introduce students to overseas co... posted on Sep 30, 2425 reads

Why Is It So Hard to Change People's Minds?
Understanding the emotional connections underlying our deeply held beliefs and ideas can help us learn to listen and talk to others in ways that open up possibilities for change minds; ours as well as others. This article from Greater Good Magazine by Elizabeth Svoboda explores how dialog between people can be a "fertile exchange" where each person's thinking evolves in unexpected ways.... posted on Sep 8, 11371 reads

Mental Illness: Turning Stigma Into Compassion
In this interview international expert on developmental psychopathy Stephen Hinshaw discusses his book "Another Kind of Madness: A Journey through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness". Dr. Hinshaw grew up in a family where his father suffered from severe bouts of psychosis, sometimes requiring hospitalization, in turn affecting his own mental health. Having experience on both sides of the issue ... posted on Sep 4, 9864 reads

The Myth of the Digital Gene
How do parents raise children in this digital age? In this TEDx talk, Mary Rothschild suggests that what children most need is a parent's loving attention. Concerned that media saturation intrudes on a child's imagination, she urges parents to consider the types of media their children are consuming and to make sure they also have plenty of free play, alone time, quiet, and attention.... posted on Oct 16, 12564 reads

5 Ways to Step Up Your Love for Nature
Writer Melissa Hellmann discusses 5 ways to take your love of the outdoors to the next level, including activities such as volunteer work and activism. In order to increase our positive experiences with the outdoors, she recommends we fix the trails, count animals, restore history, take activism outside, and ditch the car. ... posted on Sep 3, 6183 reads

Garbage Collector's Gift to a Child With Autism
Sometimes bonds are created in unexpected ways and can lead to extraordinary acts of giving. This video from the nonprofit "Autism Speaks" documents just such a moment between Daniel Newberger, a young boy with autism and Manuel Sanchez, the trash collector who decided to cross the divide from friendly stranger to friend.... posted on Dec 4, 3556 reads

Elisabet Sahtouris on Ecosophy
In this interview Elizabet Sahtouris shares how society must unite to work toward the common goal of creating a better future for our planet. In order to overcome our tendency toward destruction, we must put aside our competitive nature to work in global harmony. Ecosophy, or "the household which is wise", she describes, is one that does not separate ecology from economy. "The old and the new worl... posted on Aug 11, 11765 reads

Nightshift at the Marriott
An emergency search for a room in a town where all hotels were full brought the author and his jet-lagged wife at midnight to a new Marriot-in-construction, as yet seemingly manned by only one or two staffers. A whole line of room-seekers vied for their attention with customers with unmade beds. In a tense, strained situation, the author begins to admire the young staffers doing their best, and a ... posted on Aug 22, 9686 reads

10 Young Leaders Building Peace
When the news is flooded with stories of conflict happening around the world, it can be easy to forget the efforts being made to create peaceful communities, relationships, classrooms, and businesses. Here's an invitation to take a different view, and focus on the good being done by 10 young peacemakers, from Afghanistan to Australia. You'll likely recognize a few!... posted on Nov 5, 11670 reads

Overcoming Stress By Seeing Other People's Joy
Often, empathetic people build up emotional barriers to prevent stress and burnout from their interactions from others. However, Kelly McGonigal believes in the opposite. In the article, Kelly discusses the reasons to double down on positive empathy and provides ways for you to foster joy to combat stress.
... posted on Nov 21, 25253 reads

Enrique Martinez Celaya: Self and Beyond Self
The work of artist Enrique Martnez Celaya speaks for the dignity of interiority in a world absorbed by the external. Having essentially earned a PhD in quantum electronics, widely read in philosophy, a poet and writer, few are more qualified. He observes, "I don't think the last century will be remembered as the age of computing or nuclear power, but the age when entertainment finally took over ou... posted on Aug 16, 6546 reads

The Wisdom of the Animals
Animals hold a special place in every child's life, but for Steve Karlin, his childhood experiences with animals later formed his resolve to help animals and people in the process of healing. In 1980, he founded Wildlife Associates in northern California. Wildlife Associates still operates today to provide a safe haven for injured animals and to teach children in the San Francisco Bay Area, many o... posted on Oct 24, 11038 reads

The Life of Death
Marsha Onderstijn is a Dutch animator who studied at St. Joost Kunstacademie, a fine arts university in the Netherlands, specializing in 2D animation. In her hand-drawn piece, "Life of Death," Marsha follows a day with Death, who paradoxically learns to fall in love with life. This moving short animation paints Death as a warm character, interested in the goings on of the living, and even feeling ... posted on Jan 14, 8198 reads

Fly by Light Music Video
In the shadow of our nation's capital, high school students face more than just the challenges of schoolwork. They have to deal with inner-city gangs, drug dealers, drive-by shootings, a lack of role models, and little parental support. It can be a struggle just to stay alive -- which is why many D.C. teenagers never graduate. The Fly By Light program seeks to break this cycle with a series of aft... posted on Dec 14, 2582 reads

To Keep Company With Oneself
Philosophy student Jennifer Stitt writes a thoughtful essay asking whether we would become lonely in solitude or find new depths? Philosophers have long distinguished between solitude and loneliness. Emerson celebrated the former, in which "nature may speak to the imagination, as she never does in company." Socrates celebrated the soundless dialogue "which the soul holds with herself." And in the ... posted on Sep 9, 9320 reads

Looking Past Limits: The Remarkable Story of Caroline Casey
Activist Caroline Casey tells the story of her extraordinary life, starting with a jaw-dropping revelation (no spoilers). In a talk that challenges perceptions, Casey asks us all to move beyond the limits we may think we have. At age 34 she realized the three dreams she held as a teenager: to become an elephant handler, to work for herself, and to drive a race car at 185 km/h. She went on to start... posted on Aug 10, 13272 reads

Pass It Along: A Luthier Shares a Song
The saying "we are all connected as one" is a seeming platitude we have all heard, yet this piece shares fascinating evidence to confirm the truth that we are indeed connected on an atomic level. "Long story short, it turns out that no matter where you go in the world -- Antarctica, North Pole, Africa, you name it -- every meter sphere of air around you contains 50 carbon atoms from each one of yo... posted on Nov 14, 12353 reads

Two Words That Change Lives
Cheryl Lee Rice will never forget the warm feelings she had when she was handed a business-sized card two years ago that had two simple words printed on them. Its message made her feel seen, deeply seen. "We're living in a world filled with selfies, professional branding, Facebook likes. We believe that by seeking validation we receive it.Actually the opposite is true: We receive validation when w... posted on Sep 12, 0 reads

Brother David Steindl Rast: A Deep Bow
What exactly is gratitude and what does it mean to be grateful? Does gratitude require an exchange between people or can one be grateful to something more amorphous like nature? Can an anonymous gift be received with the same gratitude as one where the giver is known and acknowledged? While many of us believe we understand gratitude, Brother David Steindl Rast challenges us to consider its complex... posted on Nov 23, 17690 reads

The Art of Cleaning
Cleaning and doing chores aren't activities that our culture appreciates much these days, yet Sufi mystic Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee understands housework as being essential for a healthy spiritual life. "As within, so without. As above, so below," he seems to be saying in this article about 'The Art of Cleaning'. Sweeping becomes a metaphor for clearing away the debris that is blocking our progress. D... posted on Nov 25, 25778 reads

Frank Ostaseski; Lessons to the Living from the Dying
Frank Ostaseski is a teacher, international lecturer and a leading voice in contemplative end-of-life care. He is also author of "The Five Invitations: What the Living Can Learn From the Dying". What follows is an-depth interview with him on the five invitations and more.... posted on Jan 26, 32140 reads

How Our Social Interactions Shape Our Experience of Time
Maria Popova tells us that our experience of time has a central social component -- an internal clock inheres in our capacity for inter-subjectivity, intuitively governing our social interactions and the interpersonal mirroring that undergirds the human capacity for empathy. This social-synchronistic function of time is what New Yorker staff writer Alan Burdick examines in Why Time Flies: A Mostly... posted on Feb 9, 6784 reads

Julian Treasure on 5 Ways to Listen Better
In our louder and louder world, says sound expert Julian Treasure, "We are losing our listening." In this short, fascinating talk, Treasure shares five ways to re-tune your ears for conscious listening -- to other people and the world around you.... posted on Dec 15, 36137 reads

The Sound of the Genuine
"Cultivate the discipline of listening" for your genuine self. This is the advice that Howard Thurman gave in 1980 during his commencement address at Spelman College. How many of us ever take the time to do that? We spend our days in many pointless pursuits that distract us from our essential truth. Thurman says the world is waiting for this truth to pour out of us, it is of our own creation and c... posted on Nov 30, 107801 reads

How I Became an Entrepreneur at 66
When Paul Tasner was laid off at 64, he was not in a position to remain unemployed. For several years after, the engineer pursued a career in consulting but realized he had no passion for it. So, at the age of 66, he took a leap and started his own start-up. In his TED Talk, he tells of this journey, his experiences, and how more seniors are becoming successful entrepreneurs. ... posted on Mar 11, 56251 reads