The Soul of Care
Arthur Kleinman's wife, Joan, began to struggle with a rare form of early Alzheimer's disease at 59. Eight years after losing her, the Esther and Sidney Rabb Professor of Anthropology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and professor of psychiatry and of medical anthropology at Harvard Medical School chronicles their journey in "The Soul of Care: The Moral Education of a Husband and a Doctor." The... posted on Feb 21, 5121 reads

Humanity's Wake Up Call
"The rapid spread of novel coronavirus has prompted government, business, and civil society to take dramatic action--canceling events large and small, restricting travel, and shutting down major segments of the economy on which nearly all of us depend. It is a demonstration of our ability, when the imperative is clear, for deep and rapid global cooperation and change at a previously unimaginable s... posted on Mar 25, 8584 reads

Caring For Self and Others in Troubled Times
"Warm greetings of peace, hope, and healing to you and yours. As we navigate these perilous waters of our common life -- with all the grace and gratefulness we can muster -- you might find support in exploring these thoughts on 'Caring for Self and Others in Times of Trouble: Some Spiritual Tools and Tips'. Please share these wherever you wish, taking what you need and leaving the rest."... posted on Mar 27, 13784 reads

Even If You've Not Been Fed, Be Bread.
"In my role as director of the nonprofit Mercy Beyond Borders, I am frequently in South Sudan visiting our education projects for girls and our micro-enterprise projects with women and our leadership training of young women for advocacy. Keeping girls in school protects them from early marriages, allows them to develop their gifts, sets them on the path to pursue professional careers. The small lo... posted on Apr 4, 7645 reads

Helping Parents When Parenting Gets Hard
"I love the act of listening to parents, one-on-one or in a group. Parents have so much love they want to give to their children and families, they work so hard at it, they summon unprecedented amounts of energy and persistence to love well. I love listening over time, and being privy to the creativity of parents, and to their successes in transforming difficult situations in their families into p... posted on Apr 30, 4664 reads

Greg Tehven: Business, Local Community and Love
"I think we have to love our sense of place, and champion the heck out of it", says Greg Tehven, who is turning the world of economic development on its head, and inviting people to build the communities they want to live in. Confronted with the business failings of his beloved hometown of Fargo, North Dakota, he asked himself what the community could offer to the public that would help get it bac... posted on May 11, 3398 reads

Health for All: The Journey of Dr. Abhay Bhang
In 1986, when Dr Abhay and Dr Rani Bang decided to adopt Gadchiroli, a tribal village in Maharashtra, India as their home and workplace, the district was infamous for Naxalism, abject poverty, poor infrastructure and abysmal health services. Today, nearly 30 years later the Bangs' model of home-based newborn and child care is now being practiced across India and even in Nepal, Bangladesh, Pakistan... posted on May 14, 5679 reads

John Welwood: On Spiritual Bypassing & Human Relationship
"When we are spiritually bypassing, we often use the goal of awakening or liberation to rationalize what I call premature transcendence: trying to rise above the raw and messy side of our humanness before we have fully faced and made peace with it. And then we tend to use absolute truth to disparage or dismiss relative human needs, feelings, psychological problems, relational difficulties, and dev... posted on Jun 27, 4333 reads

Ayni: Living Life in the Round
"Today For You, Tomorrow For Me." This is the meaning behind ayni, a living Andean philosophy and practice that awakens a balanced and harmonious relationship between nature and man. In Andean cosmology, this is expressed through complementary opposites such as male/female; sun/moon; gold/silver. Their interaction is a form of reciprocity called ayni. One of the guiding principles of the way of l... posted on Sep 4, 5278 reads

Hot Gravy: A Story of Hope and Healing
""Hot Gravy," is a story of hope and healing, redemption and forgiveness, captures one such moment. It is featured in the "Guiding Rage Into Power (GRIP) Course Book," developed by Jacques Verduin, founder of GRIP, a yearlong program that enables prisoners "to turn the stigma of being a violent offender into a badge of being a non-violent Peacemaker." We invite you to take a few minutes to meet Ja... posted on Sep 7, 5570 reads

Thomas Merton and the Language of Life
"By listening closely to nature, we can hear an organized energy of life, full of patterns and meaning, that speaks to us. According to scholar Elizabeth Sewell, we experience our environment as alive and speaking to us in a great variety of linguistic forms, such as an alphabet, grammar, syntax, cipher, book, and secret language. This is probably because language renders us conscious, envelops th... posted on Oct 26, 6059 reads

Paul Farmer on 'Fevers, Feuds and Diamonds'
"In November 2014, Partners In Health Co-founder and Chief Strategist Dr. Paul Farmer was in Freetown, Sierra Leone, breaking bread with a group of Ebola survivors as the world's largest epidemic of the virus raged across the country. "It was the night I met Ibrahim," Farmer recalled, referring to one of the survivors. "We started talking and he told me he'd lost 23 members of his family to Ebola.... posted on Dec 16, 3756 reads

The Land Has Memory
"The denial and fear of death makes possession, possessiveness, and overconsumption possible. If we would just pull back a bit, slow down, and ask the "why" of each of our actions, based on the utter assurance of death, we would all be better off environmentally." Playwright, poet, and essayist Cherrie Moraga sees the world as a place where the body knows and "the land has memory." "Her writings h... posted on Dec 20, 3343 reads

The Clarinet in the Attic
"Pat and Peter went together to the doctor's appointment. In their eighties, theyd been married over sixty years. Pat was a poet; Peter, a retired minister. The specialist confirmed an earlier diagnosis: Peter was suffering from dementia, cause unknown. Some "accident in the brain" was robbing him of his short-term memory. Every ten or fifteen minutes, his mind would reboot, and he lost all recoll... posted on Dec 28, 5785 reads

Choosing Earth: With Duane and Colleen Elgin
"Duane Elgin's book, Choosing Earth projects a half-century into the future to explore our world in a time of unprecedented transition. Duane offers a whole-systems view of the converging adversity trends facing humanity and three major scenarios for the future that are most likely to emerge from these powerful trends. By illuminating deep psychological, spiritual and scientific changes that are a... posted on Jan 6, 5515 reads

The Sword & The Shield: The Struggle for Black Freedom
"To most Americans, Malcolm X and Dr. King represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. In his latest book, Peniel Joseph upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the 20th century's most iconic African American leaders, and addresses ... posted on Jan 12, 2719 reads

Fabiana Fondevila: The Many Flavors of Wonder
Fabiana Fondevila is an Argentinian writer, speaker, teacher, and all-around wonder activist. She began her career as a journalist and war correspondent, working for the main outlets in her native country. Returning to spiritual questions, she then spent years interviewing some of the world's top thinkers, mystics, scientists and philosophers in search of a map. And then, life transpired: her olde... posted on Apr 17, 6119 reads

Love is the Last Word
"To understand anything -- another person's experience of reality, another fundamental law of physics -- is to restructure our existing knowledge, shifting and broadening our prior frames of reference to accommodate a new awareness. And yet we have a habit of confusing our knowledge -- which is always limited and incomplete: a model of the cathedral of reality, built from primary-colored blocks of... posted on May 21, 5757 reads

Finding Time: Slowness is an Act of Resistance
"The four horseman of my Apocalypse are called Efficiency, Convenience, Profitability, and Security, and in their names, crimes against poetry, pleasure, sociability, and the very largeness of the world are daily, hourly, constantly carried out. These marauding horsemen are deployed by technophiles, advertisers, and profiteers to assault the nameless pleasures and meanings that knit together our l... posted on May 25, 6383 reads

Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul
"We know things in the core of our being that we have not necessarily been taught. And some of this deep knowing may actually be at odds with what our culture or religion or nation has tried to teach us. This book is about reawakening to what we know in the depths of our being, that the earth is sacred, and that this sacredness is at the heart of every human being and life-form. To awaken again to... posted on Jul 14, 5161 reads

Neil Douglas-Klotz on The Aramaic Jesus
"This is, what I would say, the beauty of the approach that I have used is common in looking at the Semitic language teachings of various prophets. It's common among the Sufis today, it's common among the Jewish mystics, that when you look at the words of a prophet or a mystic or a teacher in the Semitic languages, the language itself allows you to look at it in a number of different ways, from a ... posted on Jul 28, 7985 reads

What Do Gardens Mean?
"This much is clear: people calling themselves artists and who are called artists by others -- are making gardens and calling it art, or are making art in which the making of gardens is part of what they are calling art. And for a very long time, people who may not call themselves anything, have been making gardens that other people call art. Further, it would be greatly surprising if all this we... posted on Aug 5, 2307 reads

Singing: Most Companionable of Arts
"Singing is able to touch and join human beings in ways few other arts can. Alice Parker is a wise and joyful thinker and writer on this truth, and has been a hero in the universe of choral music as a composer, conductor, and teacher for most of her 90 years. She began as a young woman, studying conducting with Robert Shaw at Juilliard, and collaborated with him on arrangements of folk songs, spir... posted on Oct 24, 3622 reads

The Seed Wheel Turns
"'Something will always rise up and fall again' is a collaboration between the poet Kathryn Hunt and Camille Seaman, a photographer. The photographs are part of Seaman's years-long project chasing and photographing stormsdynamic, alive, wedded to wind. "I always wanted my images to speak to the duality of all things--to speak to the essential truth that there can be beauty in something terrible an... posted on Nov 8, 2802 reads

Listen: Four Love Songs
Kathleen Dean Moore is a writer, moral philosopher, and environmentalist. Her many books and awards include Holdfast: A Home in the Natural World, and Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change, and, most recently, Earth's Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World. In the following essay, "she considers the looming loss of wild mus... posted on Nov 21, 3764 reads

ThanksBeing with Rumi
"It's Thanksgiving time...the holiday of humility and togetherness. The holiday that asks us to look within toward that ever-present beacon of gratitude which is often obscured by the frenetic world we've created. It reminds us to give, to make amends, to repair ruptured friendships and family ties. It leans into sustenance and nourishment. The table becomes the altar. The family become precious g... posted on Nov 25, 7600 reads

Transforming Trauma
"This is the timeless wisdom of the shamans, our planet's oldest indigenous healers, and also of our great religious and spiritual traditions: suffering is the soil in which wisdom and compassion grow; it is the school from which we graduate, committed to healing others' hurt. Recent scientific studies on post-traumatic growth yield similar conclusions.This is what I know after fifty years of clin... posted on Nov 30, 4839 reads

Tracking Wonder
"In a world obsessed with work and productivity, many people feel broken by distraction, disengagement, and a default reactivity to life's surprises, but can rediscover their innate genius to lead a more creative life rooted in the present. In the new book 'Tracking Wonder', Jeffrey Davis an acclaimed teacher, consultant and speaker presents a science-based, soul-centered, counter-approach to hy... posted on Feb 1, 3014 reads

Time to Shed Our Skins
Nils Kercher and Kira Kaipainen are life partners and unique world musicians who simultaneously draws listeners into the stark realities of our greater world, while also drawing them inward into the dazzling potentials of the human spirit. Theirs is a music that believes deeply in our fundamental interconnection, and the capacity we have to heal together. In the music they create together, the int... posted on Dec 8, 5047 reads

Her Imagination is a Beautiful Garden
"My winter garden is quiet and lovely, with snow piled onto the shrubs and outlining the trees. For me, this is a time for resting and reflection, reading, drawing, and planning next year's garden. Gardening has always been a part of my life. As a child, I spent summers playing in my grandfather's stately and formal garden in Rochester, New York, where my great grandfather had managed the Ellwange... posted on Dec 9, 6597 reads

Why Adults Lose the Beginner's Mind
"We spend so much time and effort trying to teach kids to think like adults. A message of Gopnik's work and one I take seriously is we need to spend more time and effort as adults trying to think more like kids." This wide-ranging conversation between Ezra Klein and psychology professor Alison Gopnik discusses how children think, the value of play and the pivotal difference between 'spotlight' con... posted on Dec 27, 5384 reads

Writing a Better Story
"When I wrote the song Writing A Better Story I was in the process of doing some very deep inner work, which included stories of personal trauma but also legacy burdens that had been carried for generations and finally given to me. There are stories I carry and you carry that support us, sustain us, inspire us to be kinder better people and work for the better kinder world. There are stories we ... posted on Feb 17, 5100 reads

On Meeting Loss, Finding Life
"If we are able to see that loss can teach us and fear can reveal our edges and priorities, we can begin to understand that grief is part of a natural process of transformation, and more so now, as we face radical uncertainty. We also can discover that healthy grieving can be relational, and in other societies grieving and mourning are shared experiences. So being transparent with others about our... posted on Feb 21, 11541 reads

The Revolutionary Power of Diverse Thought
Elif Shafak is a Turkish author, columnist and speaker who writes stories of women, minorities, immigrants, subcultures, and youth in both Turkish and English. In this Ted Talk, she exposes the unprecedented challenges facing the world today, the attraction to and fallacy of following demagogues, and how these same problems will show us the way forward: the indispensability of democracy, the need ... posted on Feb 28, 19400 reads

When the Earth Started to Sing
"This sonic journey written and narrated by David G. Haskell brings us to the beginning of sound and song on planet Earth. The experience is made entirely of tiny trembling waves in air, the fugitive, ephemeral energy that we call sound. Spoken words combined with terrestrial sounds invite our senses and imaginations to go outward into an experience of the living Earth and its history. How did the... posted on Mar 2, 6387 reads

Resisting Revenge to Embrace Humanity
After a Palestinian sniper killed ten Israeli soldiers including her son, who was active in the peace movement, Robi Damelin's first words were: "Do not take revenge in the name of my son." Somewhere below the grief, she knew even in that moment that exacting vengeance would merely fuel the cycle of violence. In her pain, Robi couldn't bear "business as usual" and closed down her PR office. She so... posted on May 11, 2503 reads

Let the Sun Rise
We all have days when things don't go as smoothly as we'd hoped and we have to make peace with things as they are. Fortunately the sun rises again each morning for all of us and we get another chance to see what the day will bring, to try again and to meet each moment with hope and to practice the art of living. Rejection, fears, doubts and failure are simply part of the human condition. Acknowled... posted on Jun 3, 2245 reads

Woodworker Anoo Kulkarni: Answering the Heart's Call
"For many years, I wondered what it really meant to 'follow one's heart'. I was very curious to know what it felt like. I was certain it would be extraordinary, with an air of mystery. Something lofty and noble, a higher purpose. It would be a dramatic turning point after which all the pieces of the puzzle would fall neatly in place. I would no longer feel torn, there would be no guilt or self-dou... posted on Jul 13, 4031 reads

Tolu Ilesanmi: Cleaner and Life Artist
"Tolulope Ilesanmi was a cleaner. He left banking in Nigeria and came to Montreal, where he did his MBA and then started a company, Zenith Cleaning. Tolu considered everything about that company a mystery its people, its practices, its purpose. He said to himself, I will contemplate this thing with awe and curiosity and gratitude until it is done with me. Eventually he wrote down this sentence: C... posted on Jul 16, 1991 reads

Jonathan Foust: Body-Centered Inquiry
"Jonathan Foust is a longtime teacher of yoga and meditation who has guided learners at the Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health and the Insight Meditation Community of Washington, DC for more than 20 years. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon and Jonathan discuss the practice of body-centered inquiry--specifically the surprising ways it can be applied to pain. Jonathan explains how ... posted on Aug 1, 4419 reads

The Art of Emptiness
"The composition below is called Woodmaster and it is written for solo Taimu shakuhachi and dedicated to Ken Mujitsu LaCosse, designer and maker of Taimu. Taimu is a wide-bore, natural bamboo variant of shakuhachi, the root-end bamboo flute from ancient Zen Buddhism. This flute itself calls into question rigid lines or divisions between masculine and feminine, sacred and secular: it comes from Zen... posted on Aug 3, 1952 reads

Earth's Wild Music: Celebrating & Defending Nature's Songs
"I started thinking about how I could open people's hearts without breaking them. How I could point to the onrushing extinctions and not force people to turn away in absolute grief. I decided that I was going to have to write in a way that was like a wave -- I would lift people and smash them at the same time. What is it that reaches people without breaking them? What is it that goes straight into... posted on Aug 18, 1527 reads

Haenyeo: The Sea Women of South Korea
"My first encounter with the Haenyeo was through their song. I was hiking in the Seongsan crater on Jeju, an island off the southern coast of South Korea, when I wandered down a winding cliff path to the waterfront. On the rocky beach, an empty seaside restaurant offered seafood to absent crowds. It was obvious that Covid had taken a toll on the local tourism industry. Then the sound of singing ca... posted on Aug 22, 2610 reads

Out of the Head, Into the Heart
"When Unangan Elders speak of the "heart," they do not mean mere feelings, even positive and compassionate ones. "Heart" refers to a deeper portal of profound interconnectedness and awareness that exists between humans and all living things. Centering oneself there results in humble, wise, connected ways of being and acting in the world. Indigenous peoples have cultivated access to this source as ... posted on Aug 30, 2168 reads

Women on the Road
"For a lot of its history, the road trip has conjured predominantly white, straight, masculine images (see literature from Homer to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow to Jack Kerouac), but of course, thats never been true. Women have always voyaged, whether to follow seasonal resources, relocate or migrate, work to make a better life, or to make art and dream. The road is also one of our homes.[...]Elizab... posted on Sep 1, 1891 reads

Andy Couturier: Writing Open the Mind
"People talk about "freewriting." Free. Writing. What would it be to write totally free? To be liberated from all the niggling habits, the tendency to adopt a certain stance? What might your mind do and say if it weren't in the office drafting memos? A sassafras hickey zowie brainstorm. Writing discovers your own life. Don't box it. Don't expect it or force it to be this or that. The way most of u... posted on Sep 15, 4127 reads

Their Irrepressible Innocence
"Whenever I find myself growing grim about the mouth; whenever it is a moist, gray November in my soul; whenever I find myself expecting to be cut off in traffic, to be shortchanged at the store, to hear an ominous clank in the transmission, to catch a cold, to be ludicrously overbilled by the insurance company, to find the library closed early, to endure computer malfunction, to discover the wine... posted on Oct 30, 2084 reads

Golden: The Power of Silence in a World of Noise
In their new book, 'Golden: The Power of Silence in a Noisy World,' Justin Zorn and Leigh Marz explore the meaning of silence in a wide range of contexts--from the West Wing of the White House to San Quentin's death row; from Ivy League brain research laboratories to underground psychedelic circles; from the temperate rainforests of Olympic National Park to the main stage at a heavy metal festival... posted on Oct 4, 3313 reads

Wendell Berry and Helena Norberg-Hodge on Caretaking
"In 2018, Helena Norberg-Hodge sat down with Wendell Berry for a far-reaching discussion. The two are giants of the local economy movement. Berry is a poet and activist, an author of over forty books--including The Unsettling of America and Home Economics--and a lifelong advocate for ecological health, the beauty of rural life, and small-scale farming. He is a recipient of the National Humanities ... posted on Nov 5, 1691 reads

The Link Between Landscape and Diaspora
"My observations of nature sparked adventures into landscape and history, and it was in bearing witness to these injustices that I found language. And observation and description are at the root of bearing witness: it is about saying, in the face of the machinations of power to twist and deny its brutality, this is what I see. It is a simple act, but also a powerful one, for it cuts through facade... posted on Nov 6, 1187 reads