Voice for the Planet
From disappearing species to plastic pollution and our disastrously weak attempts to recycle it, here's what the top voices on climate change - from Sir David Attenborough to Jane Goodall to Greta Thunberg - have to say about the planet's escalating biodiversity crisis. ... posted on Sep 20, 6941 reads

On the Language of the Deep Blue
Drop your "cognitive gatekeeper" and travel along with best selling author Charles Foster as he paints a lyrical picture of whale communication. Follow the riff around a drone, like Byzantine chanters into the magical, mystical world of whales. Intuit the wonder of the world beyond the language of our minds.... posted on Oct 27, 3800 reads

How Oral Surgery Taught Me a Lesson in Wholeness
Andy Smallman created an "Anonymous Kindness" class some years back, suggesting each participant offer an anonymous kindness act toward someone each week. Recently he met with an anonymous act of kindness toward him: an organ donor's bone to fill a hole in his mouth after oral surgery. Whose bone was it? he asked himself, and came up with a new answer "ours."... posted on Nov 3, 4981 reads

Mark Tredinnick Heals with Poetry
Poet Mark Tredinnick is the recipient of multiple international poetry prizes, who experienced a period of depression or "spiritual catastrophe," when he lost his moorings. In this interview he explains how poetry helped him find himself again through his "welcoming of the wholeness of my life, including the sorrow and the pain."
... posted on Dec 2, 5633 reads

What Would Nelson Mandela Do?
"As one of the worlds most famous moral leaders, Nelson Mandelas larger-than-life struggle against apartheid inspired many of us, but it was something he said inside a Johannesburg office in 2005 that has always stayed with me.
At the time, the organization that I had co-founded, Keystone Accountability, was less than two years old. The Nelson Mandela Foundation was a founding partner, and ... posted on Nov 8, 4586 reads

A Physicist's Message for Humanity
In this thoughtful video, physicist Peter Russell pays tribute to kindness, suggesting that the world would be a drastically different place if we all showed one another more consideration. For Russell, the idea is simple: by approaching interactions with the intention of enabling others to feel better as a result, we can pave the way toward a society that is built on a foundation of love and resp... posted on Nov 10, 2738 reads

How to Overcome Our Biases? Walk Boldly Toward Them
Our biases can be dangerous, even deadly as we've seen in the cases of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, and Eric Garner, in Staten Island, New York. Diversity advocate Vern Myers looks closely at some of the subconscious attitudes we hold toward out-groups. She makes a plea to all people: Acknowledge your biases. Then move toward, not away from, the groups that make you uncomfortable. In a fu... posted on Dec 13, 9092 reads

Annie Dillard on the Winter Solstice
"Rilke considered the cold season the time for tending ones inner garden. 'In the depths of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer,' Albert Camus wrote a generation later. 'If we didn't remember winter in spring, it wouldn't be as lovely,' Adam Gopnik observed after many more revolutions of the Earth around the Sun in his lyrical love letter to winter. But if we ar... posted on Dec 21, 12206 reads

Night Shift at the Marriott
Picture this: It's almost 11pm on a hot August day. You're exhausted, having just driven over 600 miles, and you arrive at the newly opened Marriott, your last hope for a place to lay your tired body down for the night. You are third in line at the front desk, where there is a single young woman on duty, doing everything she can to keep things under control. When you finally arrive at room 309, yo... posted on Dec 27, 4148 reads

Caped Crusaders
"At the age of four, my son Sam informed me that when he grew up, he wanted to be Robin Hood. And while I thoroughly approved of his notions concerning the re-distribution of wealth--I mean, let's talk flat tax--I didn't have the heart to tell him that forest outlaw was not exactly projected to be a big growth career in the twenty-first century. I figured he'd find out soon enough." More in this b... posted on Feb 2, 5347 reads

Conflict Resolution for Holy Beings
From United States poet laureate Joy Harjo comes this radiant poem titled, "For Calling the Spirit Back from Wandering the Earth in Its Human Feet." Harjo is a member of the Mvskoke/Creek Nation and belongs to Oce Vpofv. She is the first Native American to serve as poet laureate.... posted on Jan 3, 35551 reads

In Search of the Man Who Broke My Neck
When Joshua Prager was 19, a devastating bus accident left him a hemiplegic. He returned to Israel twenty years later to find the driver who turned his world upside down. In this mesmerizing tale of their meeting, Prager probes deep questions of nature, nurture, self-deception and identity.... posted on Jan 5, 12047 reads

United in Change
"The 2016 election laid bare how divided our country was, each side seemingly incapable of seeing the others' viewpoints. News reports were filled with stories about the raging poles of the political spectrum, no room any longer for the middle, on climate or anything else. The months leading up to the election and the time since had left me feeling beaten down, like a child of parents on the verge... posted on Jan 27, 4940 reads

Beyond Civilization
"I want to live in a world with more wild salmon every year than the year before. More migratory songbirds. More blue whales, slender salamanders, red-legged frogs. More prairies, canebrakes, native forests, beds of sea grass. I want to live in a world with less dioxin in every human and nonhuman mother's breast milk, a world with fewer dams each year than the year before. I'll never live in that ... posted on Feb 7, 4557 reads

The Park Where Families Meet on the US-Mexico Border
Suketu Mehta, Associate Professor of journalism at New York University, offers us a look at what family separation really feels like in his book, This Land Is Our Land: An Immigrant’s Manifesto. Do not miss his moving narrative of the Park of Tears, “the patch of land between San Diego and Tijuana, where loved ones reunite across a mesh fence, poking pinkies through the holes to touch... posted on Mar 6, 1691 reads

Why Singing in a Choir Makes You Happier
"In Stacy Horn's wonderful book, 'Imperfect Harmony: Finding Happiness While Singing with Others,' we get a first-hand account of how music uplifts and empowers, with various scientific evidence cited. Horn has been singing with The Choral Society of Grace Church (in New York City's Greenwich Village) since 1982; she evocatively describes her own experience while explaining how science is finally ... posted on Jan 7, 14810 reads

Serotiny: The Story of Lead to Life
Serotiny refers to the process of seeds using the destructive power of fire to trigger the germination of new growth. On the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination, the organization Lead to Life gathered in Atlanta to honor the life of gun victims by putting weapons of killing through fire to forge shovels; plant trees to honor those lives with shovels created from that process... posted on Jan 25, 1738 reads

Wild Soul: A Nature Poem
Here's a nature poem from one of the wild places of our amazing planet. A short poem that urges you to come closer to nature and add some wildness to your soul.... posted on Feb 1, 5287 reads

The Nature of Gratitude
The Nature of Gratitude is a portable program that has been exported to a variety of venues in communities committed to co-creating an atmosphere of gratefulness. The project also enlists participating artists from within those communities to share their gratitude in words and music.... posted on Mar 5, 6120 reads

Stories of Kindness from Wuhan
"I want to dedicate a thread to regular Chinese people who stepped up to fill in the gaps, helping fellow citizens in this fight against the #coronavirus. These stories dont make international headlines. But they are still important." A journalist at qz shares stories of ordinary people and their extraordinary acts of humanity. ... posted on Mar 8, 4785 reads

The Slow Joy of Jane Hirshfield's Ledger
""It's such a slow joy," says poet Jane Hirshfield, about the work of revising a poem. We've just left the trailhead for a hike on what she calls the "hem" of Mount Tamalpais. Already were deep in conversation about how Hirshfield produces the wise and tender poems that fill her nine poetry collections, including the newly-published Ledger.""... posted on Mar 11, 3617 reads

Canada's Caremongering Trend
"Just a few days ago the word "caremongering" did not exist. Now, what started as a way to help vulnerable people in Toronto has turned into a movement spreading fast across Canada. More than 35 Facebook groups have been set up in 72 hours to serve communities in places including Ottawa, Halifax and Annapolis County in Nova Scotia, with more than 30,000 members between them. People are joining the... posted on Mar 24, 7059 reads

How Does A Heart of Service Respond to These Times?
"Coronavirus has uprooted the fabric of our lives. How does a heart of service respond to an unknown cause and how do we build resilience when we can't be physically together? Uncertain times raise significant questions that can architect a new story for our future. Carbon emissions have dropped dramatically, but xenophobia is rising. Nursing homes are being evacuated, only to bring elders home to... posted on Mar 26, 3191 reads

Oriah Mountain Dreamer: The Call
"I have heard it all my life. A voice calling a name I recognized as my own.
Sometimes it comes as a soft-bellied whisper.Sometimes it holds an edge of urgency. But always it says: Wake up, my love. You are walking asleep.
There's no safety in that! Remember what you are, and let a deeper knowing color the shape of your humanness. There is nowhere to go. What you are looking for is r... posted on Apr 1, 3947 reads

16 Teachings from COVID-19
"A lot is being said these days. Clarity can be hard to come by, silence even more so. Overwhelmed by the cacophony of voices, I sat down to synthesize some perspectives that shine light on the corona crisis. Most of you will already have come across some of those ideas. They show us what we can learn from the current situation. Corona holds a mirror that reflects our relationship with ourselves, ... posted on Apr 5, 64304 reads

The Art of Waiting
""Time is the substance I am made of," Borges wrote in his spectacular confrontation with time, "Time is a river which sweeps me along, but I am the river; it is a tiger which destroys me, but I am the tiger; it is a fire which consumes me, but I am the fire." We are indeed creatures of time who live with it and in it, on the picketed patch of spacetime we have each been allotted. But if time is t... posted on Apr 7, 7228 reads

Phil Chan on Art, Civilization & Empathy
"It is no accident that all civilizations possess art. This is so because art is not simply a by-product of civilization; art is its necessary precondition. Without art mankind would less likely have developed the capacity for empathy, and without the capacity for empathy, individual lives would remain brutish. A collection of brutes cannot possibly come together to lay the groundwork for a civil ... posted on Apr 15, 2343 reads

Earth Day at 50
For the fiftieth anniversary of Earth Day, Orion Magazine asked ten authors-- including E.O. Wilson, Krista Tippett, Pico Iyer, and Amy Tan-- one question: "What earthly thing gives you hope at this point in history? ... posted on Apr 22, 6040 reads

SUPERHERO: A Music Video for Our Times
In times of global crises, it becomes increasingly clear that our lives are sustained by millions of gestures, big and small made by everyday people who simply show up to do their little bit, day after day in service of the greater good. This newly released music video 'Superhero' is an ode to everyone in our world who lives like "we are the ones we have been waiting for."... posted on May 10, 5400 reads

How to Be Alone
This charming video pays tribute to the happy wholesomeness of being alone. Tanya Davis recites her poem about the ways of solitude, gently cataloging all the places where aloneness can bring freedom and healing. Whether at a lunch counter, park bench, mountain trail, or on the edge of a dance floor - all you have to do is love yourself enough, to love being alone.... posted on Apr 27, 4679 reads

From Emergency to Emergence
"Discussions now underway in many community, national, and global forums suggest a significant widening of what is known as the Overton Window: the range of public policies that the mainstream population is prepared to consider at a given time.While there is an almost universal desire to move rapidly beyond the COVID emergency, the spectrum of what we want post-pandemic is broadening. Many are art... posted on May 2, 7878 reads

COVID Era Shows Gandhi's Ideal of Practical Idealism is Possible
A new society can be developed from the inspiring ways people around the world are responding to this unprecedented disaster, and this is what we should be planning right now in the spirit of Gandhi's 'practical idealism.' Read more from Gandhian scholar Michael Nagler.... posted on May 7, 7948 reads

Freedom from Addiction: The Presence of a Moment
"Millions of recovering addicts the world over can trace their spiritual lineage back to the Mayflower Hotel. Back to the exact moment when the psyche of the Western world slipped a cog, to the sliver of a choice of one man, when inevitable destruction, despair, and eventual death enveloping the world of alcoholics jumped into what Bill Wilson would come to describe as a fourth dimension. Back to ... posted on May 29, 5732 reads

7 Ways Protestors Showed Up For Black Lives
Amid the outpouring of outrage over George Floyd's killing, are glimpses of solidarity and hope around the world. YES! Magazine shares more.
... posted on Jun 4, 8212 reads

The Very Best Way to Pray for Peace
When a CIA analyst began an interfaith quest for citizen diplomacy by standing shoulder to shoulder with a veiled woman, and listening to the Imam ask, "Don't we all bleed when we're hurt?" she was grateful to be praying alongside Muslims instead of interrogating them in Afghanistan for the CIA after 9/11. She continues to work with Muslim communities in the belief that peace in the Middle East ca... posted on Jun 20, 19609 reads

No Victims, No Heroes: We Are Each Other
By some definitions, Jolanda van den Berg might be dubbed a philanthropist, a social entrepreneur, a life coach, or even a mystic. But Jolanda's expansive life resists reductive titles. Over the past quarter century her work has transformed the lives of thousands of children in Peru, supported by her three highly-rated hotels. She has 80 locals on payroll, and offers 1:1 sessions with people going... posted on Jun 24, 6094 reads

People Helped You Whether You Knew It Or Not
In 1964, William "Lynn" Weaver, joined 13 other black students in the integration of an all white high school in Tennessee. From the first day he was told he did not belong and he started to believe it until Mr. Hill, his former seventh grade science teacher, started tutoring him outside of school. Some of his other former teachers joined in this effort. Years later he discovered that Mr. Hill wa... posted on Jun 26, 2580 reads

Iris Murdoch on Storytelling & Why Art is Essential to Democracy
"A good society contains many different artists doing many different things. A bad society coerces artists because it knows that they can reveal all kinds of truths." This post from Brain Pickings shares more of Iris Murdoch's lucid views on storytelling, art and healthy democracy.... posted on Jul 16, 5862 reads

John Lewis on Love & the Seedbed of Personal Strength
"Once in a generation, if we are lucky, someone comes about who in every aspect of their being models for us how to do that, how to be that how to place love at the center, the center that holds solid as all around it breaks, the solid place that becomes the fort of what is unbreakable in us and the fulcrum of change. Among those rare, miraculous few was John Lewis (February 21, 1940July 17, 2020... posted on Jul 21, 9030 reads

Reduced or Realigned?
Right now life is reduced to the essentials: to caring for loved ones, finding food, getting exercise without being with other people, staying well, celebrating those who help and mourning those who have succumbed to illness. But let’s think of this as a realignment rather than a reduction. Lucky for us, being reduced to the essentials gives us the opportunity reconnect with who I am beyond... posted on Jul 23, 5777 reads

7 Principles of Meaningful Relationships for Servant Leaders
"A company is a collection of people working toward a shared goal that they couldn't otherwise do on their own. In essence, the foundation of work is relationships.
However, often when we are stuck, especially in work, it is because we interact with others transactionally instead of engaging with them, human to human. And when we are unhappy at work, we might blame it on someone else but th... posted on Jun 9, 5544 reads

The Fragrance of Prayer
"I was having some downtime in a high place. Having slowed, I could see how much a rushed life had whiplashed my body. When I'm caught in that frame of reference, everything seems whiplashed. Birds fly scattershot and even ants seem indecisive, irritable. The earth grows blurred because I grow blurred. The old rhythms, of course, persist. Things move fast, like larks or light. But none of it rushe... posted on Jul 26, 4934 reads

Connect & Find Joy While Social Distancing
"Social distancing recommendations will remain in place for months to come, and until there's a vaccine, limits on big gatherings will likely continue. For the elderly or those who live alone, the isolation can be particularly grueling. But, people are finding new ways to interact with each other, even under extraordinary circumstances." NPR offers some strategies to connect with others.... posted on Aug 11, 8847 reads

The Phone Call
In 1992 Auburn Sandstrom was 29, the mother of a three-year-old son, caught in an abusive marriage and an addict. One night she hit rock bottom. She was writhing in pain on the floor of her filthy apartment wrestling with withdrawal from a drug she had been addicted to for several years. In her hand, she gripped a ragged piece of paper with a phone number of a counselor her mother had mailed to he... posted on Aug 21, 6889 reads

Grounding Yourself on Mother Earth
"Shamans, Native Americans, and wisdom teachers all over the world see the earth as a giant, conscious, living being. They say pollution sickens her in the same way cancer spreads slowly through a human body. Debilitated though she may be, our Mother Earth still retains tremendous power to heal. When we physically ground ourselves on her surface we are gifted with her vital energies." In her new b... posted on Sep 9, 14705 reads

Of a Different Yarn
Kelly Lim, a crochet artist from Singapore, takes the traditional craft with hook and yarn to new heights. Having learned to crochet when she was seven years old, her art extends from her Creatures, a series of soft sculptures, to large scale installations which add unexpected visual impact to urban spaces. Landscapes, which she launched in 2019, explores textures from nature. A visit to Japan ins... posted on Sep 6, 2555 reads

Barbara Kingsolver on Knitting as Creation Story
"It starts with a craving to fill the long evening downslant. There will be whole wide days of watching winter drag her skirts across the mud-yard from east to west, going nowhere. You will want to nail down all these wadded handfuls of time, to stick-pin them to the blocking board, frame them on a twenty-four-stitch gauge. Ten to the inch, ten rows to the hour, straggling trellises of days held f... posted on Sep 14, 20208 reads

Where Do We Go From Here? Chaos or Community
In 1967, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his "Where Do We Go from Here?" sermon at the annual convention of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Georgia. The country was at a crossroads. The "evil triplets" of the times, militarism, racism, and poverty called for what King called a "radical revolution of values." Will we move in the direction of chaos or community? The qu... posted on Sep 16, 3325 reads

Zen TV
""How many of you know how to watch television?" I asked my class one day. After a few bewildered and silent moments, slowly, one by one, everyone haltingly raised their hands. We soon acknowledged that we were all 'experts,' as Harold Garfinkle would say, in the practice of 'watching television.'"This short excerpt by Bernard McGrane provides a profound thought experiment that can help us "wake ... posted on Oct 4, 0 reads

Charlie Chaplin: Let Us Free The World
Some call it the greatest speech ever made. This remix puts Charlie Chaplin's climactic address from "The Great Dictator" (1940) into present-day context, showing how the spirit of liberty, brotherhood, and equality that defeated fascism seven decades ago must be urgently reclaimed.... posted on Oct 10, 3207 reads