text is an adaptation of the first chapter in The Courage to Teach: Exploring the Inner Landscape of a Teacher’s Life (Jossey-Bass, 2007) by Parker J. Palmer. We Teach Who We Are I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom when I can hardly hold the joy. When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illumined by the lightning-life of the mind—then teaching is the finest work I know. But at other moments, the classroom is so lifeless or painful or confused—and I am so powerless to do anything about it that my claim to be a teacher seems a tra... posted on Oct 3 2016 (37,301 reads)

harvest time. Plums are falling from the trees every day. Tomatoes, cucumbers, zucchini and beans need daily picking along with the plums, or they become too ripe too quickly. I’m making sauces, soups and stews to freeze, and blanching chard and the last broccoli. Sometimes it feels overwhelming. A friend phoned a couple of days ago and invited me out to Alberta for a few days. “Sounds wonderful and impossible,” I say. I explain about the garden and harvest, but can tell it doesn’t make any sense to her. She mutters something, not for the first time, and not without kindness, that I’m a slave to the garden. “It’s not meant to be like that... posted on Oct 12 2016 (12,469 reads)

it possible that two words can change someone’s day, someone’s life? What if those same two words could change the world? Well, I’m on a quest to find out – and, with your help, this quest will be a success. This quest inadvertently began last November in a grocery store. I was standing in the checkout line behind a woman who looked to be in her 60s. When it was her turn to pay, the cashier greeted her by name and asked her how she was doing. The woman looked down, shook her head and said, “Not so good. My husband just lost his job and my son is up to his old tricks again. The truth is, I don’t know how I’m going to get through the holida... posted on Nov 10 2020 (107,168 reads)

Linnaeus, an 18th-century Swedish botanist, became so enamored with the rhythmicity that lives within the rhythms of plants, he deigned, planned and grew a garden by which he could tell the time. He planted flowers that opened or closed their blossoms at specific intervals, precisely marking the hour, from morning to evening, throughout the day. All life vibrates to these inner rhythms. These daily rhythms guide most living things, and they often approximate a 24-hour cycle - even when isolated in a laboratory. These circadian rhythms (from circa, "about," and dies, "daily") live deep inside us all. They are nearly impervious to alteration, and refuse to be ext... posted on Nov 20 2016 (17,879 reads)

January 2000, the Navajo Nation Council decided to revamp the Navajo Nation Criminal Code. The Council eliminated jail time and fines for 79 offenses, required the use of peacemaking in criminal cases, and required that the courts see to the rights of victims. The Council also incorporated the traditional concept of nalyeeh into the criminal code. Nalyeeh refers to the process of confronting someone who hurts others with a demand that they talk out the action and the hurt it caused so that something positive will come of it. This decision represents a serious challenge to the courts of the Navajo Nation, whose jurisdiction includes tribal members in Arizona, New Mexico, and Utah. Navaj... posted on Nov 1 2016 (17,555 reads)

you believe that people are basically good? For many of us, this election is making that a tougher question than it used to be. I teach and study compassion. I see the good in others for a living. In fact, you could say that both my professional niche and my greatest personal refuge is “finding the good.” And yet, this election is testing my capacity to trust in basic goodness. I’m not alone in this struggle. It seems as though everyone I talk to has a story about a low point in this election cycle. Many of them are feeling moral distress—that potent combination of moral outrage, worrying about harm that may be done, and feeling powerless to do anything ab... posted on Nov 6 2016 (38,867 reads)

following is an excerpt from 'The Way of Aikido: Life Lessons from an American Sensei' by George Leonard.  "What do you do when somebody pushes you? "Over the past twenty-five years, I've posed this question to groups totaling more than fifty thousand people in workshop sessions, and the first answer in every case has been 'Push back.' I've heard 'Push back,' as a matter of fact, in four languages: English, French, German, and Spanish. From this experience, I've concluded that the practice of pushing back whenever pushed is ubiquitous in Western culture — and, I suspect, in other cultures as well. "And here, of course... posted on Nov 8 2016 (16,442 reads)

October 3, 1863, President Abraham Lincoln set aside the last Thursday of November as a day to give thanks, a new national holiday, Thanksgiving. He urged his fellow citizens then embroiled in civil war to not lose sight of the gifts surrounding them, among them "fruitful fields and healthy skies." Lincoln understood that, even in the worst of times, gratitude is essential. As we celebrate Thanksgiving this year, 153 years after Lincoln's pronouncement, perhaps it is just as important to set aside time for deep reflection and gratitude as it was during the Civil War. To help you find a deep sense of gratitude in this holiday season, we look back thr... posted on Nov 24 2016 (15,097 reads)

September 2 1867, a 29-year old Scottish immigrant called John Muir sat alone in an oak wood on the shore of the Ohio River, a pocket map spread in front of him, his forefinger tracing an arc through the deep South of Kentucky, Tennessee, North Carolina and Georgia, and finally pausing along the Florida Gulf coast a thousand miles away. He planned to walk there. A lover of wild nature, Muir had long fantasized about visiting Florida, the “land of flowers” as he called it in his journal, and from there board a ship to South America. His immediate plan was to take the wildest and “least trodden” path he could find. “Folding my map,” he w... posted on Nov 22 2016 (20,774 reads)

I was six or seven years old, growing up in Pittsburgh, I used to take a precious penny of my own and hide it for someone else to find. It was a curious compulsion; sadly, I’ve never been seized by it since. For some reason I always “hid” the penny along the same stretch of sidewalk up the street. I would cradle it at the roots of a sycamore, say, or in a hole left by a chipped-off piece of sidewalk. Then I would take a piece of chalk, and, starting at either end of the block, draw huge arrows leading up to the penny from both directions. After I learned to write I labeled the arrows: SURPRISE AHEAD or MONEY THIS WAY. I was greatly excited, during all this arrow-drawin... posted on Dec 1 2016 (28,066 reads)

Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today my guest is Mark Nepo. Mark is a poet and philosopher who has taught in the fields of poetry and spirituality for over 35 years. As a cancer survivor, Mark devotes his writing and teaching to the journey of inner transformation and the life of relationship. A New York Times #1 bestselling author, he has recorded eight audio projects and published thirteen books, including The Book of Awakening, which made the list of Opera’s “Ultimate Favorite Things.” With Sounds True, Mark has created an eight-session audio program called Staying Awake: The Ordinary Art, where he... posted on Dec 10 2016 (27,084 reads)

Mysterious B. Virdot “The year was 1933 and Christmas was just a week away. Deep in the trough of the Great Depression, the people of Canton, Ohio, were down on their luck and hungry. Nearly half the town was out of work. Along the railroad tracks, children in patched coats scavenged for coal spilled from passing trains. The prison and orphanage swelled with the casualties of hard times. “It was then that a mysterious “B. Virdot” took out a tiny ad in the Canton Repository, offering to help the needy before Christmas. All he asked was that they write to him and tell him of their hardships. B. Virdot, he said, was not his real name, and no one would ... posted on Dec 13 2016 (14,624 reads)

paternal grandmother who raised me had a remarkable influence on how I saw the world and how I reckoned my place in it. She was the picture of dignity. She spoke softly and walked slowly, with her hands behind her back, fingers laced together. I imitated her so successfully that neighbors called me her shadow. "Sister Henderson, I see you got your shadow with you again." Grandmother would look at me and smile. "Well, I guess you’re right. If I stop, she stops. If I go, she goes." When I was thirteen, my grandmother took me back to California to join my mother, and she returned immediately to Arkansas. The California house was a world away from that littl... posted on Dec 16 2016 (25,000 reads)

shopper covets the expensive item and worries vaguely about the credit card bill. The dieter contemplates the fine dessert. The ex-addict looks longingly at the cigarette, the bottle, or the drug, recalling the sweet feelings but also the problems and promises. The man and woman prepare to kiss, warm with alcohol and new intimacy, but are held back by thoughts of their respective spouses back home.  The procrastinator thinks of the tough, worrisome task ahead but notes the deadline is still a week off, so perhaps it is fine to leave it one more day. Such moral and practical dilemmas pervade daily life. Doing what is right requires strenuous effort to resist the alluring temptatio... posted on Dec 19 2016 (14,390 reads)

uses photography as a way to help others around the world. For the background scenes, she used several photos she had taken around Australia and put them together with Photoshop. She also worked with her “team of elves” (and Santa, of course) to print, frame, wrap and deliver the photos to the families in the hospital. Alsop told The Huffington Post she wanted to make sure they had “a true keepsake” for the holidays. “The families did not expect the magical images and there were many happy tears when they opened their special gift,” she said. The photographer said she was moved every step of her project, from taking the photos to interacting wit... posted on Dec 25 2016 (10,583 reads)

Angel Garcia Rodriguez (right) claps beside homeless people eating a free dinner at the Robin Hood restaurant in Madrid. — AFP It is early evening at a restaurant in central Madrid and Jose Silva sits down for a meal of rice, meatballs and vegetables as waiters flit from one table to another. All very normal, except for one crucial detail: Silva, 42, cannot afford to pay. He lives rough under the platform of a cable car station in Madrid’s sprawling Casa del Campo park, one of dozens of homeless people who have started dining for free at the “Robin Hood” restaurant that earlier opened this month. The project is the brainchild of the “Messe... posted on Dec 29 2016 (14,151 reads)

article is the third in a series exploring the effects that unconscious racial biases have on the criminal justice system in the United States. Officer Tina Latendresse of the Hillsboro Police Department in Oregon meditates during a mindfulness training program for police. Benjamin Brink/The Oregonian When I was promoted to tenured full professor, the dean of my law school kindly had flowers sent to me at my home in Pacific Heights, an overpriced San Francisco neighborhood almost devoid of black residents. I opened the door to find a tall, young, African-American deliveryman who announced, “Delivery for Professor Magee.” I, a petite black woman, dres... posted on Jan 5 2017 (11,953 reads)

of Experience, George Vaillant writes that “there are two pillars of happiness revealed by the seventy-five-year-old Grant Study. One is love. The other is finding a way of coping with life that does not push love away.” We all do things — perhaps daily — that push the people we love away from us. We sneak “harmless” glances at our smartphones while playing games with our children. We forget to take thirty seconds to greet our spouse warmly when we haven’t seen her or him all day. We decline a call from our friend or grandmother because we don’t feel like mustering the energy to truly listen. This modern world we live i... posted on Jan 8 2017 (20,158 reads)

Miles hadn’t had a stable job in years. He bounced around from temp agency to temp agency, never sure when his last day would be. Sometimes, he lost a position with less than a day’s notice. This wasn’t due to a poor work ethic—from arriving early to staying late, Miles says he did everything he could to build a good rapport with employers around Lancaster, Pennsylvania. But because Miles had a criminal record, he was always cut loose when it came time to let staff go. “It was like walking on eggshells. You just never knew when you’d be gone,” he recounted. He says it’s the best job he’s ever had. After his release from pris... posted on Jan 9 2017 (10,326 reads)

year, about fifteen of us had a breakout call with some visionaries of World in Conversation and Laddership Circles, around working with volunteers.  Below is a glimpse of the Q&A that emerged, on the call and afterwards.] Our efforts attracts many volunteers, but we don't use them effectively. What do you suggest? The most fundamental design principle is our mindset. Typically, volunteers are used as a means to an end -- this is our mission, we need this stuff done to achieve our mission, and you can help us do these chores. ServiceSpace doesn't work that way. For us, volunteer experience is an end in itself. We believe that if a volunteer ha... posted on Jan 12 2017 (20,015 reads)