A Tribute to Mary Oliver
H. Emerson Blake observed of Mary Oliver; "She was, in many ways, the quintessential Orion writer--fully devoted to taking notice of nature, and unflinching in her investigation of the emotional relationship between people and nature." Orion Magazine published this short tribute to Oliver in honor of her birthday this past September. It includes one of her poems titled 'Blueberries.'... posted on Nov 14, 11898 reads

A Chorus of Thank Yous
"Thanksgiving is a formal holiday for giving thanks, for sharing community with family and friends, but its also the holiday that represents most vividly the paradox of feeling gratitude even as we suffer or cause the suffering of others...For me, Thanksgiving is about paradox, about the challenge to do or think, be and hold opposing thoughts or circumstances at once. It is gratitude for the human... posted on Nov 28, 4089 reads

Slow Media
Jennifer Rauch took a six-month break from the Internet, iPhone, email and ebooks. Instead of unplugging she says, "I was replugging into relationships, into nature and into my community." She argues that Carlo Petrini's (Slow Food) principles "good, clean, fair" also apply to digital media. In regard to "clean"-- is the production of electronic products environmentally sustainable? With regard to... posted on Dec 1, 1811 reads

Spirit Bathing for the Worried and Beleaguered
"As expressed in a thousand ways in the Brussats book "Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life", the Spirit resides not only in formal religious rituals and spiritual practices, but in everyday life -- nature, a cats eyes, a beautiful painting, a colorful salad, a lover's embrace, a new place. This means that I can Spirit Bathe anywhere, anytime. I can be in my kitchen or kneeling ... posted on Dec 6, 7373 reads

When I Wrote My Mom a Thank-You Letter
"In the waning days of 2015, I decided to mark a milestone birthday by simply saying "thank you." My plan was to write one letter each week of that year to someone who had helped, shaped, or inspired me on the road to the person I am today. Nothing fancy: just one gratitude letter at time. I later called this letter-writing spree my Thank-You Project--and it would change my life in a profound, pos... posted on Dec 9, 8815 reads

Silas Hagarty: Just Start Walking
Silas gives an analogy about how he approaches making his films. If I needed to get somewhere, I could ask, Richard could take me two hours west of here? You might end up saying, "Let's do it!" But the approach I've always loved is just to start walking. You just start going in that direction. What I found is that oftentimes people would stop and ask, "Where are you walking to?" And they'd give me... posted on Dec 17, 2666 reads

Cultivating Hospitality
"Each of these three types of hospitality has strengthened my ability to accommodate the strange -- that thing or quality that is different from what I experience. At the very least, I hope these offered thoughts can help you glimpse a future of open doors, loving hosts, and loving guests." In this post Christopher Chavez shares his thoughts on hospitality of place, mind and heart.... posted on Dec 22, 4827 reads

Cats, Cancer, and the Kindness of a Stranger
"I had all three of my sons, plus three of their friends. This was the first time in over five years that my oldest son, Lee, 18 years old, came along. His special needs had evolved to where he no longer enjoyed leaving home very much or being outside in nature. Most recently, he did not want to leave our 3 beloved cats--especially his handsome tuxedo cat Norman Ruffles." A summer trip with teenag... posted on Feb 12, 7909 reads

Why I Run
"It is just after 4:00 am. I was dreaming about Missoula, running around Mount Sentinel just before dawn. I threw on a blue hoodie and began reciting in my sleep why I run." Inspired by Terry Tempest William's evocative reflections in "Why I Write," long-distance runner and writer Nicholas Triolo offers this lovely stream of consciousness exploration of why he runs.... posted on Jan 12, 11821 reads

Erich Fromm's Six Rules of Listening
"Listening, Erich Fromm argues, is 'is an art like the understanding of poetry' and, like any art, has its own rules and norms. Drawing on his half-century practice as a therapist, Fromm offers six such guidelines for mastering the art of unselfish understanding.... posted on Jan 9, 30539 reads

Shaped by a Silky Attention
"A request for concentration isn't always answered, but people engaged in many disciplines have found ways to invite it in. Violinists practicing scales and dancers repeating the same movements over decades are not simply warming up or mechanically training their muscles. They are learning how to attend unswervingly, moment by moment, to themselves and their art; learning to come into steady prese... posted on Jan 18, 5503 reads

Treatable Deaths are Also Violence
"In 2009, after completing my medical residency at a county hospital in Los Angeles I signed up to split my time between San Francisco and some of the most economically destitute parts of the planet. It was a simple calculation about where to best use my skills. In an academic medical center in San Francisco, there could be 50 doctors on one floor. If I disappeared hardly anyone would notice. In r... posted on Jan 24, 3396 reads

I Wish My Teacher Knew...
"One day, third-grade teacher Kyle Schwartz asked her students to fill in the blank in this sentence: "I wish my teacher knew _____ ." The results astounded her. Some answers were humorous; others were heartbreaking. All were profoundly moving and enlightening. The results opened her eyes to the need for educators to understand the unique realities their students face in order to create an open, s... posted on Jan 21, 16750 reads

The Artist's Way for Parents
The artist way movement began more than two decades ago as author Julia Cameron shared her ideas with a few friends in her living room. Since then, Julia's instruction through books and courses has helped millions of people around the world discover - and recover their creativity, including parents.... posted on Jan 22, 4997 reads

Understanding King's Nonviolence
"In Kingian Nonviolence, a philosophy developed out of the teachings of Martin Luther King Jr., there is a distinction made between nonviolence spelled with a hyphen, and nonviolence spelled without a hyphen. 'Non-violence' is essentially two words: 'without' 'violence.' When spelled this way, it only describes the absence of violence. As long as I am "not being violent," I am practicing non-viole... posted on Jan 26, 3718 reads

Rachel Remen: The Soul of Medicine
"The heart has had a very central role in medicine. Aristotle describes the temples of Asclepius, which was the first medical center. He described this as a group of buildings with courtyards and, in one of the courtyards of the temples of Asclepius there was a statue of Venus, the goddess of love. What that's about is that the perspective of the heart is central to the practice of medicine." In t... posted on Jan 28, 3504 reads

Shari Swanson: A Storyteller Rediscovers Her Song
When Shari Swanson, a former lawyer and DailyGood volunteer attended her first ServiceSpace retreat, she experienced her deepest aspirations being reflected back to her by the community. The alchemy of that experience helped give her the confidence to wholeheartedly follow her dream of writing a children's book. "Honey: The Dog Who Saved Abe Lincoln" was released earlier this month. In this piece ... posted on Jan 30, 4404 reads

Living Light
"We had sailed Indonesias shattered archipelago before arriving at the uninhabited island chain of Wayag a gumdrop cluster of limestone peaks cloaked in an aura of brilliant, turquoise lagoons. Our crew, a ragbag of scientists and sailors, had come to this remote corner of the globe to study coral reefs. Unlike the bony, barren graveyards that haunt much of the tropical world, the reefs in this p... posted on Feb 6, 3823 reads

Growing Your Own Garden: Emotional Resilience for Entrepreneurs
"It has been many weeks, and I finally got the itch to write again, this time about a symbol that in just a few days has given me a profound sense of relief: growing your own garden. I'm not speaking about an herb garden. I mean cultivating, in your own fertile mind, a set of values and standards by which you will measure your life's worth separately from what anyone else says or thinks." The foll... posted on Feb 8, 8488 reads

Insight-Out: Guiding Rage into Power
This powerful video takes us inside San Quentin Prison to witness 32 men in one circle who reclaim who they really are over the course of 52 weeks in the GRIP Program (Guiding Rage Into Power). GRIP transforms these men who have committed violent crimes into non-violent Peacemakers as they learn to change their own behavior and to further become agents of change so that they can diffuse conflict a... posted on Feb 10, 2287 reads

She Transformed Her Trauma into a Path of Service
Arranged marriages can often throw up surprises. Out of the shadows of Uma Preman's traumatic youth and unhappy marriage she crafted a life that has touched thousands of others -- her difficulties forged within her both the skills and motivation to help disadvantaged Indians gain access to medical treatment.
This inspiring BBC story shares more.... posted on Feb 15, 4448 reads

A Simple Way to Break a Bad Habit
Psychiatrist Judson Brewer studies the relationship between mindfulness and addiction-- from smoking to overeating to all those other things we do even though we know they're bad for us. In this TedMed Talk, learn more about the mechanism of habit development and discover how being curious might help you beat your next urge to smoke, snack or check a text while driving.... posted on Feb 16, 5266 reads

111 Trees
When a marble mine began to strip a village of its forests, the people of Piplantri, India, developed a tree-planting project that reclaims a vital and ancient relationship between trees and women.... posted on Feb 19, 431648 reads

A Window as Wide as the World
"One afternoon, my two-year-old daughter and I idled around our apartment complex in Bangalore, watching a dragonfly hover over a thorn, when suddenly she began pointing toward the fringe of lawn below. There, a cat leaped at a wiry viper hatchling as it peeped out of its hole..." This evocative short piece describes a mother and daughter's glimpse of urban wildlife.... posted on Feb 28, 2516 reads

The Monkey and the River
"The simplest and hardest thing to do each day is to be here --fully, completely, without turning away. There's a story I love about a master who sends his apprentice to meditate by a river until he's learned all the river has to say." Mark Nepo shares more in this short piece.... posted on Feb 29, 11666 reads

The Longest Night
Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year, has a parallel in the tale of days we call our lives. During a dark time it can be hard to remember the warmth and joy that also comes and goes. This lovely animated poem reminds us to keep taking one step at a time toward the coming light.... posted on Mar 12, 3192 reads

Do Not Lose Heart -- We Were Made for These Times
Clarissa Pinkola Estes stirringly invites us to embrace the moment we are in with all of its fear, uncertainty, and turmoil. She says, "I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it...In any dark time, there is a tendency to veer toward fainting over how much is wrong or unmended in the world. Do not focus on that. Do not make yourself ill with overwhelm." This pa... posted on Mar 13, 226218 reads

Guide to Well-Being During Coronavirus
Greater Good's mission is to share scientific research that can help promote a happier, more compassionate society. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, they have committed to bringing forward stories, tips, and tools for these uncertain times. The following page will continue to be updated with resources for individuals, families, and educators. ... posted on Mar 21, 20362 reads

What an Insect Can Teach Us About Adapting to Stress
In this short animated film, "The Locust Mystery," learn how the gentle harmless grasshopper and the devouring devastating locust are actually the same creature. And how we, also, have many differing "selves" that emerge under various circumstances.... posted on Mar 28, 3573 reads

Krista Tippett on Hope
"A couple of years ago I started sometimes asking, at the end of my conversations: What makes you despair, and where are you finding hope? It turns out that answers to the two parts of that question are more often conjoined than oppositional. The puzzle of us, the contradictions alive in each one of us and in this moment we inhabit --these are the crucible of my hope." Krista Tippett shares more.... posted on Mar 29, 8123 reads

This Is Not a Rehearsal
"Self-quarantined and isolated in her apartment in Brooklyn, Hala Alyan is more aware than ever of humanity's interdependence--suddenly exposed as a raw, pulsing nerve. With all of us inescapably together as we move through this pandemic, how, she asks, can we make room for grief, empathy, and hope?"... posted on Apr 11, 13061 reads

How to Lead a More Courageous Life
When confronted with fear, the brain will seek relief in the form of old coping habits if left to its own devices. However, there are things we can do to help it change course. If we set the stage for courage, our awareness of what happens to us becomes our greatest ally. "The more you interrupt the old fear-based habits and replace fear-based responses with responses to boost courage, the more yo... posted on Apr 18, 31892 reads

Rachel Remen: The Grace of Being Seen
"I wanted to share with you a letter that meant a great deal to me that was posted to my website in response to my blog. Carol addresses it to physicians but it is true of us all; everyone who goes to work every day in this broken healthcare system in the hopes of helping others, despite everything. It has never been harder to be a health professional and I have never been prouder to be counted am... posted on Apr 21, 8432 reads

This is Me at 68: Elders Reflect During Crisis
In this beautifully illustrated compilation, citizens 60 and older share their experiences and reflections related to the COVID-19 global pandemicfrom becoming a grandmother to dancing in the street.... posted on Apr 23, 17941 reads

How I am Finding Purpose and Connection in a Pandemic
"As a millennial living alone in a small studio in San Francisco, I felt paralyzed knowing that orders to shelter in place would likely soon go into effect, trapping me in just 300 square feet for the unforeseeable future.The coming weeks loomed bleak and lonely, a growing shadow of despair that I knew would engulf so many of us. I was at a loss for what to do next. My first instinct was to call K... posted on May 23, 9975 reads

Contact with the Sacred
With spectacular visual images, this film reminds us of the necessity of connecting with the sacred in everyday life. It honors the sacred through sensory feelings of connection, with both the vast expanses such as mountain tops and waterfalls, and with the single dandelion sending its seeds into the future. This connection is further enhanced by the peaceful music that accompanies the images, pro... posted on May 24, 3956 reads

Vertical Literacy: Reimagining the 21st-Century University
The traditional output of universities knowledge is not the missing piece to catalyzing social change. MIT Senior Lecturer Otto Scharmer offers a new university model that builds the capacity to lead transformative change through deeper inner work and outer knowledge, so we no longer collectively create environmental, social, and economic results that nobody wants.... posted on May 25, 11709 reads

NBA Mental Coach Shares 7 Ways You Can Thrive Under Pressure
Do you ever wonder how a basketball player can stand at the free throw line with the game in his hands in front of 30 million viewers and casually sink a shot? How about when a surgeon is in the middle of a procedure and the patient starts to bleed profusely, or when a lawyer has to convince a jury that her innocent client isn't guilty of murder? How do they keep their heads?Graham Betchart, the d... posted on May 28, 7023 reads

Mother Culture
"How does a whale find meaning in life? The question that will take us far from our comfort zone. At eight a.m. we are already traveling over deep ocean. Our thirty-foot boat, an open one, is crowded with gear, four assistants who traffic in curiosity and adventure, our huge dreadlocked Caribbean captain Dave Fabien, plus Shane Gero. Plus me. We seek a classic sea monster: the sperm whale, Jonah-s... posted on Jun 14, 3678 reads

Former Surgeon General's Book on Human Connection
"When Dr. Vivek Murthy was surgeon general of the United States during the Obama administration, he went on a listening tour of America: He wanted to hear firsthand about people's health concerns. That meant addressing opioid addiction, diabetes and heart disease. And one more thing -- something he wasn't really prepared for -- the number of Americans suffering from a lack of human connection. Lon... posted on Jun 15, 4668 reads

Eula Bliss: Talking About Whiteness
You can't think about something if you can't talk about it, says Eula Biss. The writer helpfully opens up lived words and ideas like complacence, guilt, and opportunity hoarding for an urgent reckoning with whiteness. This conversation was inspired by her 2015 essay in The New York Times, "White Debt." More from Krista Tippett here. ... posted on Jun 16, 7862 reads

Empathy vs Sympathy
Empathy and sympathy are not just two different approaches to confronting the emotional challenges of others; they are diametrically opposite responses in many important ways. Sympathy places another's problems at a distance from us, places us in a position of superiority, and "drives separation", says the film's narrator, Dr. Bren Brown. Empathy, on the other hand, requires that one internalize t... posted on Jul 10, 4158 reads

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life
In 2002 Thom Bond was a successful environmental engineer, passionate about designing smart buildings that used alternative energy. Then he chanced upon Marshall Rosenberg's landmark book Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life. "By the time I read Chapter 1, it hit me that I had found what I was looking for...A set of concepts and ideas to be able to move through conflict." Thom realized ins... posted on Jul 11, 8207 reads

Designing Schools of the Future
"We are building a state-of-the-art Formula 1 engine in the body of an old, broken-down Buick, and wondering why the car won't go."While pedagogical methods have advanced tremendously in recent decades, the shape of our learning spaces has not. Think: rooms filled with desks in rows all facing front, in an environment directly counter to contemporary progressive learning styles. Seeking to remedy ... posted on Jul 15, 4140 reads

Random Acts of Kindness Education Workshops
We often think of kindness as something a person has, or doesn't. But kindness, like all actions and skills, can be taught and has to be practiced. The Random acts of Kindness Foundation has a workshop for doing just that!... posted on Jul 24, 2881 reads

Venkat Krishnan: The Joy of Giving
Venkat Krishnan is the founder of GiveIndia-- an innovative platform that launched in 2000 to catalyze a "giving culture." It was one of the first crowd-sourcing platforms in the world dedicated exclusively to social welfare. Venkat later went on to launch DaanUtsav, an annual festival that takes place each October, and aims to unite people from diverse backgrounds across the country in a celebrat... posted on Jul 28, 5765 reads

Bill Drayton: Half the Population is Out of the Game
"A fighter for civil rights who was raised to value empathy and was fascinated by Gandhi's India, Bill Drayton believes that Ashokas entrepreneurial model, to which he has dedicated himself for years, can change the world. Drayton created Ashoka 40 years ago and it now has the largest network of social entrepreneurs on the planet. Drayton insists that technological progress creates a new inequalit... posted on Jul 29, 3718 reads

Spirit Run: The Story of a 6000 Mile Relay
In 2004, Noe Alvarez dropped out of college and ran a 6,000-mile relay with indigenous people through North and Central America. His new memoir about that time is called Spirit Run. More in this NPR interview.... posted on Jul 31, 2981 reads

The Earth Treasure Vase Healing Project
"In 1990, I had the opportunity to meet a 106-year-old Buddhist Lama living in a cave in a remote part of Nepal. As I was walking up the highest mountains in the world, I realized that I had a chance to actually ask a question of the old wise man in the cave. As I was walking, I contemplated what I should ask him that would be of benefit, not just for me, but for all of us because most people do... posted on Aug 2, 8845 reads

Seven Ways to Live in the Direction of Your Purpose
"How do you go about finding your purpose if its not obvious to you? Is it something you develop naturally over the course of a lifetime? Or are there steps you can take to encourage more purpose in your life? Likely both, says Kendall Bronk, a researcher who directs the Adolescent Moral Development Lab at Claremont Graduate University. People can find a sense of purpose organically--or through de... posted on Aug 12, 11174 reads