of the Sheikh Lotf Allah Mosque in Isfahan, Iran. Credit: By Phillip Maiwald (Nikopol) - Own work. I say ‘Allahu akbar’ dozens of times a day. I say it during prayer. I say it as an expression of reaffirmation and gratitude to God. I said it when my daughter was born, and there will be someone to say it over me when I am buried. I say it when I witness beauty. ‘Allahu akbar.’ In 1985, Lutheran Bishop Krister Stendahl, in defending the building of a Mormon temple by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Stockholm, enunciated “Three Rules of Religious Understanding:” “When tryin... posted on Mar 14 2020 (3,723 reads)

wait to soften in the rain. At last they dream of nothing and simply unfurl.  Photosynthesis is how this waiting is described in the physical world.  The mystery of waiting is what turns light into food.  To wait beyond what we think we can bear is how things within turn sweet. ********* Mark Nepo is the author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. Beloved as a poet, teacher, and storyteller, Mark’s recent work includes, The One Life We’re Given (Atria, July 2016), Inside the Miracle (Sounds True, November 2015), and his book of poetry, The Way The Way Under the Way: The P... posted on Apr 8 2018 (27,327 reads)

walk is a sort of crusade,” Thoreau wrote in his manifesto for the spirit of sauntering. And who hasn’t walked — in the silence of a winter forest, amid the orchestra of birds and insects in a summer field, across the urban jungle of a bustling city — to conquer some territory of their interior world? Artist Maira Kalman sees walking as indispensable inspiration: “I walk everywhere in the city. Any city. You see everything you need to see for a lifetime. Every emotion. Every condition. Every fashion. Every glory.” For Rebecca Solnit, walking “wanders so readily into religion, philosophy, landscape, urban pol... posted on Jan 27 2018 (12,736 reads)

in what constitutes happiness in countries around the world, there are some common threads. The most notable has to do with material wealth: Few, if any, people around the globe find happiness through personal possessions and financial success. Rather, they tend to attain it by appreciating the little things in life and, more importantly, the people in their lives. Here are some of the secrets to happiness, from a variety of countries around the world, and the research behind why they work for the people who practice them. So read on, and find a multiculural approach to happiness!   The Secret to Happiness Around the World, courtesy of Home To Go ... posted on Feb 21 2018 (21,442 reads)

we’re going to be continually humbled. There’s not going to be much room for the arrogance that holding on to ideals can bring. The arrogance that inevitably does arise is going to be continually shot down by our own courage to step forward a little further. The kinds of discoveries that are made through practice have nothing to do with believing in anything. They have much more to do with having the courage to die, the courage to die continually. In essence, this is the hard work of befriending ourselves, which is our only mechanism for befriending life in its completeness. Out of that, Chödrön argues, arises our deepest strength: Only to the extent that we... posted on Mar 13 2018 (17,738 reads)

of bone, the tea-colored stains left by earth. Here, no layers of soil obscured the find. To get to the daybed, I had only to move the piles of bedding. Her hall closet must now be empty, for here were ironed sheets, blankets, table linen, and the kind of embroidered and crocheted cloths that are found in old women’s attics. When I saw these, my own mourning resumed.     Evenings at my grandmother’s had been spent with the two of us huddled together on the divan, working needles of colored thread through squares of muslin, as she taught me how to give shape to the birds and flowers we ironed onto future kitchen towels. The few I have left are like gold to me. ... posted on Apr 1 2018 (1,243 reads)

gift land to their brothers. In fact, our real strength lies in the fact that we are servants. The divinity in each and every person can be witnessed and reached, only when you approach them as a faithful servant. Think of how the various organs and limbs come together as servants to our body. If somebody tries to strike your head, the hand comes forth to protect it. It does not do so out of an expectation or out of fear. It does it because it sees itself as part of the whole and therefore works out of a sense of duty. When we will all see our role in society as servants, we will all light up the sky together like countless stars on a dark night. Don’t think of society as the s... posted on May 2 2018 (5,790 reads)

where she was eventually taken to Auschwitz, they found copies of both the Koran and the Talmud in her bag. The result of her spiritual journey was a growing inner peace that allowed her not only to accept the horrible truth of what was happening to her people, but to thrive in spite of it. On 3 July 1942 she wrote: “Very well then, this new certainty that what they are after is our total destruction, I accept it. I know it now and I shall not burden others with my fears… I work and continue to live with the same conviction and I find life meaningful, yes, meaningful.” It might seem perverse that someone could find life meaningful amid the senseless horror of th... posted on May 14 2018 (15,924 reads)

one would generally move across in relationship to the geological forms: wash, ridge, gentle slope, ragged steps, slot canyon, or stone bridge. When the way is somewhat hazardous, rather than concentrate on the obstacles, my body focuses on the route through. Maybe I leave a kind of wake in the imaginal field as I wander, singing praise to bitterbrush and basalt. Maybe everything we do initiates a wave in the sea of psyche, moving beyond our own moment and time. Maybe an aspect of the great work of our time is to cultivate the capacities of our forward-seeing imagination in coherence with the rest of life. My letters, phone calls, and modest support of particular environmental organiz... posted on Mar 15 2018 (19,460 reads)

an instrument—the Planck Space Telescope—that has detected the dim remnants of radiation emitted when the cosmos was a mere 380 thousand years old—or 0.00002 billion years after its birth. Said another way: if the entire history of the cosmos were compressed into a year, we human beings have peered all the way back to the first ten minutes. These Olympic feats of enhanced perception are among the crowning achievements of our species. Yet even as we celebrate them, our workaday senses remains stubbornly parochial. Walking down the street, we easily sense changes that occur at a one or two meters per second, especially if those changes occur where our experience t... posted on Aug 5 2018 (10,766 reads)

breath-based meditations, and I’m always surprised at how centered it makes me feel. I also love to see the downstream effects this practice has in my interactions with others and my patience with my own foibles, too. Judson Brewer, associate professor at the University of Massachusetts Medical School: Loving-kindness! It took me years to bumble my way into noticing how sweet this practice is. During my psychiatry residency training, I literally learned on the go: While biking to work, I started playing with offering kindness to drivers that honked at me, and found that when I got to the hospital I was peaceful and happy instead of angry at “those drivers.” Life-ch... posted on Aug 8 2018 (23,847 reads)

communicate the joy I felt as a young boy exploring nature; a sentiment that is still quite alive within me as I approach my seventieth birthday (how fortunate to still be here now!). Sadly, “My Song to Nature” is currently unfinished, its progress having been delayed by my recent ordeal with throat cancer. While I had managed to set the tone of the poem by writing a number of verses, I was forced to take a break as I healed from the cancer treatment. Once I became active again, work on the poem was further delayed as other projects came to the fore including my current focus on healing soundscapes. Rest assured, however, that I fully intend to complete my poem before th... posted on Jun 6 2018 (8,185 reads)

to help us think better. In particular, I found his reflections on how we should think with others to be salutary. As he points out, we can’t think for ourselves—inspirational posters to the contrary—so we should learn how to think well with others. One of the chief dangers of thinking with others is that we find it easier to think with people who think pretty much like we do. It can be threatening to encounter people who think differently from us. Drawing on the work of anthropologist Susan Friend Harding, Jacobs relies on the term “Repugnant Cultural Other” to describe how we tend to think against certain groups that our tribe considers... posted on May 21 2018 (9,340 reads)

while behind bars himself. WITO is now present in six New York City correctional facilities. Since its conception, 140 inmates have graduated from the six-month program. So far, 43 percent of those have found jobs post-incarceration. But perhaps the biggest measure of WITO’s success is the recidivism rate for its graduates, which stands at 23 percent — compared to 67 percent for New York State as the whole. Baez shows no plans of slowing down, describing his mentoring work as his calling. “These men and women will never break out of this cycle,” says Baez, “if somebody didn’t take the initiative.”... posted on Dec 5 2018 (4,364 reads)

we 'call people out'? Or call them in? How should a white anti-racist respond to racist remarks by another white person? Betsy Leondar-Wright. Photo: Rodgerrodger via Wikimedia How should a white anti-racist respond to racist remarks by another white person? How does it change things if the anti-racist is middle-class, and is reacting to the prejudice of someone who is working-class? In her book Class Matters, long-time activist and trainer Betsy Leondar-Wright tells an arresting story that turns the conventional wisdom on its head. Betsy, who is white and middle-class, was the organiser for an anti-nuclear power group in a mixed-race, mixed class neighbourh... posted on Aug 4 2018 (10,210 reads)

20,000 books is open to the kids in the low-income neighborhood where he lives on the weekends.  “This should be in all neighborhoods, on each corner of every neighborhood, in all the towns, in all departments, and all the rural areas,” Gutiérrez told The Associated Press in 2015. “Books are our salvation and that is what Colombia needs.” Gutiérrez started salvaging discarded books 20 years ago, according to the AP. He credits his work to his mother, who read to him every night despite not being able to afford keeping him in school.  “The first book I found was Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, and that little book ig... posted on Oct 16 2018 (13,656 reads)

things of all. Once we stop taking things for granted our own bodies become some of the most surprising things of all. It never ceases to amaze me that my body both produces and destroys 15 million red blood cells every second. Fifteen million! That’s nearly twice the census figure for New York City. I am told that the blood vessels in my body, if lined up end to end, would reach around the world. Yet my heart needs only one minute to pump my blood through this filigree network and back again. It has been doing so minute by minute, day by day, for the past 75 years and still keeps pumping away at 100,000 heartbeats every 24 hours. Obviously this is a matter of life and ... posted on Sep 15 2018 (9,329 reads)

could win “Yard of the Month”. Unfortunately, he lived just outside the city limits so was told he was not eligible. Undeterred, Fryer kept looking for something unique for his new garden. He found it a short drive away in Camden. A local plant nursery had some topiary for sale and Pearl asked him how they were created. So the owner gave Fryer a three minute lesson and the rest is history. From that brief study, he went back home and with every spare moment in his time off from work at the local aluminum can factory he created topiary. An amazing feat considering he did not even know the meaning of the word until that lesson. Webster’s dictionary defines topiary as ... posted on Jul 6 2018 (10,479 reads)

in the world. “The group were awarded on the basis of their unique approach to creating a community space in the heart of urban East London,” Grow Wild spokesperson Hannah Kowszun said in an email. In 2016, Nomad Projects and the Teesdale & Hollybush TRA came together to establish the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve Trust, a charity that looks after the interests of the site and makes decisions about its use. Species protecting one another Since Nomad Project began to work in the Bethnal Green Nature Reserve in 2012, it has created a model for how humans and other species can find symbiosis in an urban setting. In 2015, Phytology built a network of small ponds t... posted on Jun 13 2018 (7,106 reads)

Kosovo, is socially and physically divided, with a bridge separating Kosovo-Serbian north and Kosovo-Albanian south. It’s dangerous for Kosovar-Serbian and Kosovo-Albanian youth to meet openly, but a group of students have found a clever way to work together. Musicians without Borders created The Mitrovica Rock School to bring hostile groups together, and students initially traveled to the neighboring country of Macedonia to play in bands together.  Program manager Wendy Hassler-Forest said the initiative is about shifting people’s focus. "The whole point of the project is to take the emphasis off ethnic identity and say 'You are Dan, and ... posted on Oct 4 2018 (6,415 reads)