Sister Lucy: The Mother Teresa of Pune
Sister Lucy Kurien founded Maher in 1997, one small home in a village outside of Pune. This humble beginning has blossomed into over 30 homes in over 85 rural communities around Pune, India as well as locations in Ratnagiri, Kerala and Jharkhan and has served over 4,000 women, men and children. Maher means mother's home in Marathi. Sister Lucy has created the warmth and love of a mother's home for... posted on Jul 1, 12059 reads

5 Ways to Step Up Your Love for Nature
Writer Melissa Hellmann discusses 5 ways to take your love of the outdoors to the next level, including activities such as volunteer work and activism. In order to increase our positive experiences with the outdoors, she recommends we fix the trails, count animals, restore history, take activism outside, and ditch the car. ... posted on Sep 3, 6145 reads

Joserra Gonzalez: A Re-Love-Ution Blooms in Spain
"We are at the verge of many changes, and if we stay together in this journey, we can really face this big current which is taking us in a direction we don't know" Joserra's first question was "How can I serve?" He soon found the answers to why humans suffer and how to lessen our own suffering and that of those around us. From spending two years working in the slums of Ahmedabad, India to becoming... posted on Jul 21, 8766 reads

Algorithms & Love: Dancing with the Creative Tension of Our Time
"The data we can extract, the data we handily give up for the sake of short-term convenience or simply out of ignorance, is of monumental proportions. But we extract all this data to what end?" In a recent talk, ServiceSpace founder Nipun Mehta paints a vivid picture of today's world -- a world where algorithms powered by big data undergird almost every field of human endeavor, and have brought us... posted on Aug 17, 22063 reads

21 Lessons on Leadership and Love from an Uncommon Master
Frederic Pignon and his wife, Magali Delgado, travel the world performing and leading horsemanship and dressage clinics. Magali dazzles audiences with her ability to perform high-level dressage moves without so much as a bridle. Together the duo invite humanity into an altogether different approach to relationship. Their philosophy towards horses is actually a way of life: love, respect and unders... posted on Feb 13, 1626 reads

Ninety-Six Words for Love
Imagine if we had a richer vocabulary to describe a feeling we readily express, but fail to articulate: love. Sanskrit has 96 words for this emotion, the meaning of which varies with each giver and recipient. The English language lacks a deep vocabulary for feelings, at the expense of our rapid advances in thinking, science, and technology, suggests Robert Johnson. Are we depriving ourselves of a ... posted on Feb 4, 27313 reads

Jean Vanier: The Wisdom of Tenderness
Jean Vanier's life demonstrates tenderness. A philosopher, a Catholic social innovator, and the founder of The L'Arche movement, which is centered around people with mental disabilities, he has devoted his life to the practical application of Christianity's most paradoxical teachings: that there's power in humility, strength in weakness, and light in the darkness of human existence. The 147 L'Arch... posted on Feb 23, 12712 reads

Mister Roger's Message of Love
The release of the Mister Rogers documentary Won't You Be My Neighbor? calls to mind the essential message of Rogers' long-running children's program, Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. Fred McFeely Rogers, who died in 2003, was also an ordained Presbyterian minister. Over the course of three decades on public broadcasting, he brought to millions of children what his faith's General Assembly referred to... posted on Jul 19, 20680 reads

Getting Proximate to Pain and Holding the Power of Love
In this interview, On Being's Krista Tippett speaks with Lucas Johnson and Rami Nashashibi about the impact of growing up in minority communities, the influence of social change leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X, the ideas of justice, love, and more. Lucas Johnson is an ordained minster, writer, and social activist in Amsterdam, who serves as the coordinator for the Internation... posted on Aug 19, 5519 reads

The Price on Everything is Love
When the city of Detroit was going through a rough time, neighbors banded together to help each other. Now, the organization has become a community shop called Detroiters Helping Each Other, which offers services for free. Learn how love has become the greatest currency of all. ... posted on Aug 21, 6110 reads

Gandhi 3.0: A Grand Rehearsal of Unconditional Love
In the heart of Mahatma Gandhi's homeland, is a modern-day experiment of the timeless Law of Love. They call it Gandhi 3.0, where "Gandhi" stands for the age-old principle of leading with inner transformation, and "3.0" represents the many-to-many networks that are popularized by Internet. In January 2018, around the 100th anniversary of the Gandhi Ashram, the experiment culminated in a global ret... posted on Oct 2, 3090 reads

Maira Kalman: Daily Things to Fall in Love With
Maira Kalman would describe her life as very boring. "If most people had to live it, they would go, 'Oh, that's it?'" she says. Yet the visual storyteller, and author and illustrator of over 20 books for adults and children leads a life that would leave many with feelings of awe and fascination. Paying keen attention to its details, she is a master of introspection, curiosity, and awareness. In th... posted on Feb 14, 6761 reads

Gus: A Story of Loss and Love
There is a saying that when we know better, we do better. Such was the case for Gus Mojica, a former gang member. As a young teen, he did what others in his neighborhood were doing without seeing or knowing a better way to live. He recalls vividly the night that changed everything for him. After being in a gang for almost 20 years, he suffered a loss that showed him he had to change. What he has d... posted on May 9, 7165 reads

Farewell to Jean Vanier
Jean Vanier, philosopher, theologian, humanist and founder of L'Arche departed our physical world on May 7, 2019 at the age of 90. His heart, his love and his compassion live on in the hundreds of communities that have sprung from his love and compassion for humanity. This world wide movement is based on Vanier's belief that people with disabilities are teachers, rather that burdens to society.... posted on Jun 30, 6325 reads

Diane Ackerman: 100 Names for Love
Diane Ackerman, best selling author of A Natural History of the Senses, An Alchemy of Mind, and The Zookeeper's Wife, has built a reputation on her poetic sensibility and uncanny knack for scouting out connections between the heavens, Earth, and everything in between. In her latest memoir, One Hundred Names for Love: a Stroke, a Marriage, and the Language of Healing, Ackerman navigates between the... posted on Sep 23, 2997 reads

What Does it Mean to Love Someone?
What does it mean to love someone? In this heartwarming animated short film produced by Cecilia Baeriswyl and directed by Julio Pot, the dynamics of relationships are explored through an ordinary couple as they learn about the power of giving and receiving. Selected in more than 100 international festivals, this film is at once lighthearted and insightful.... posted on Oct 4, 5389 reads

Kintsugi: The Golden Joinery of Love
Sue Cochrane is a former family court judge who sought to bring more love into the practice of law. The forces she battled were not confined to the court room -- among them, poverty, violence, addiction, abuse, a terminal diagnosis and more. In this powerful piece, she explores kintsugi -- a stunning Japanese art form in which broken pottery is repaired by filling the cracks with gold. Kingtsugi, ... posted on Dec 26, 0 reads

While I Yet Live
The quilters of rural Gee's Bend, Alabama, many of whom are descendants of slaves, learned to quilt from their mothers and grandmothers. They also learned, sitting under the quilting table as small children, valuable life lessons, and the hopes and dreams their families had for them. Their brightly colored quilts speak of love, peace, joy, and the value of hard work. Like their mothers and grandmo... posted on Oct 20, 2824 reads

One Love
At five minutes to midnight on June 14, 2018, about 800 people waited to enter Jerusalem's Tower of David Museum. Jews, Muslims and Christians, young and old, most of them strangers to one another, they were forgoing a night's sleep for the chance to sing Bob Marley's "One Love" in three languages and three-part harmony as a show of unity from Israel.... posted on Jan 8, 10561 reads

Love in the Time of Coronavirus
"Pandemics are powerful phenomena. One moment, life proceeds per usual routines, and the next, we find ourselves scrambling over toilet paper. The coronavirus (COVID-19) has affected our lives in every way, and preventing transmission, while far from assured, appears to be straightforward. An equally daunting challenge, however, is about how we are going to interact with one another as this crisi... posted on Mar 22, 9005 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, 4690 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, 3425 reads

bell hooks: Love as The Practice of Freedom
Social commentator, essayist, memoirist, and poet bell hooks is a feminist theorist who speaks on contemporary issues of race, gender, and media representation in America.In Black Looks (1994), she writes, "It struck me that for black people, the pain of learning that we cannot control our images, how we see ourselves (if our vision is not decolonized), or how we are seen is so intense that it ren... posted on Jun 7, 4241 reads

Amisha Harding: The Accidental Activist
"Amisha Harding was reluctant to join the crowd after seeing how some protesters clashed with police, vandalized property, and left shattered glass and burning cars in their wake opposite Centennial Olympic Park early in the Black Lives Matter protests. She took heed when Atlanta Mayor Keisha Lance Bottoms held a press conference and said, "If you love our city, go home." It was her love for her h... posted on Jun 25, 4517 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, 9117 reads

How to Love a Country
The Cuban American civil engineer turned writer, Richard Blanco, straddles the many ways a sense of place merges with human emotion to make home and belonging -- personal and communal. The most recent -- and very resonant -- question he's asked by way of poetry is: how to love a country? At Chautauqua, Krista Tippett invited him to speak and read from his books. Blanco's wit, thoughtfulness, and e... posted on Nov 22, 4561 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, 5804 reads

For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing: A Meditative Poem
The origin story of "For the Sake of One We Love and Are Losing" lies in a dream that writer Phyllis Cole-Dai had last year. This remarkable poem was published in the early days of the pandemic that has now claimed over 2 million lives worldwide. Cole-Dai's words have comforted many people through the grief and loss of these challenging times. What follows here is the poem's backstory in her own w... posted on Jan 28, 13439 reads

John Lewis: Love in Action
"Here is an extraordinary conversation with the late congressman John Lewis, taped in Montgomery, Alabama, during a pilgrimage 50 years after the March on Washington. It offers a special look inside his wisdom, the civil rights leaders spiritual confrontation within themselves, and the intricate art of nonviolence as 'love in action.'" More from On Being.... posted on Feb 1, 6201 reads

The Only Real Antidote to Fear
"That in love and in life, freedom from fear -- like all species of freedom -- is only possible within the present moment has long been a core teaching of the most ancient Eastern spiritual and philosophical traditions. It is one of the most elemental truths of existence, and one of those most difficult to put into practice as we move through our daily human lives, so habitually inclined toward th... posted on Apr 4, 7622 reads

Love Letters from Seaweed
"Love Letters from Seaweed was created during the summer months I spent exploring mid-Coast Maine. Each day just before sunrise, I biked to Birch Point Beach to witness the shores changing topography and the traces of ocean life spilled by the tide. Intrigued, I photographed spontaneous configurations of seaweed and natural artifacts in unworldly colors, brought together by spume and sand." Visua... posted on May 31, 4940 reads

The Wanting Memories Project
We have all lost someone we love and wondered how our lives could go on without them--without their touch, their encouragement and their wisdom. In this song, composer Ysaye Barnwell gives voice to our deepest longings to remember our departed loved ones and to find the strength to carry their deepest lessons into our lives now. "Songs have intention in themselves but when we sing together, we def... posted on Jun 19, 2984 reads

The Frightfully Wondrous Experience of Being Here
Ra Avis didn't call herself a writer till she was accused of the crime that would eventually result in 437 days of incarceration. In the four years between the accusation and the handcuffs, after a friendly push from her husband--a writer himself--she started a blog and named it Rarasaur (frightfully wondrous things happen here). It became a space for writing about love and grace and grief, and wo... posted on Jun 23, 4486 reads

Be Earth Now
"In Rainer Maria Rilkes seminal collection of poetry, The Book of Hours: Love Poems to God, the great twentieth-century poet explores the nature ofand his relationship toGod through divinely received prayers. Nearly twenty-five years ago, Anita Barrows, an award-winning poet and translator, and Joanna Macy, a Buddhist scholar and eco-philosopher, collaborated to translate this collection. Now, on ... posted on Aug 29, 3316 reads

While I Yet Live
The quilters of rural Gee's Bend, Alabama, many of whom are descendants of slaves, learned to quilt from their mothers and grandmothers. They also learned, sitting under the quilting table as small children, valuable life lessons, and the hopes and dreams their families had for them. Their brightly colored quilts speak of love, peace, joy, and the value of hard work. Like their mothers and grandmo... posted on Dec 10, 2325 reads

Love Letters to Presence: Three Poems
"My name is Micheal 'Moley' O Suilleabhain. I am a poet from Ireland. These three poems are love letters to presence. That presence we feel when we are close to the source of this life. Gratitude, Wisdom, Determination, and Belief. The first poem, Turas d'Anam, means 'journey of your soul'..."... posted on Dec 16, 7482 reads

Thich Nhat Hanh: Ten Love Letters to the Earth
"Dear Mother Earth, I bow my head before you as I look deeply and recognize that you are present in me and that I'm a part of you. I was born from you and you are always present, offering me everything I need for my nourishment and growth. My mother, my father, and all my ancestors are also your children. We breathe your fresh air. We drink your clear water. We eat your nourishing food. Your herbs... posted on Feb 3, 11347 reads

When Love Breaks Your Heart
When science journalist Florence William's husband of 25 years unexpectedly asked for a divorce, William found herself feeling dazed and ill. ""Physically, I felt like my body had been plugged into a faulty electrical socket," she writes. "In addition to weight loss, I'd stopped sleeping. I was getting sick: My pancreas wasn't working right. It was hard to think straight."To help understand what w... posted on Apr 13, 7822 reads

Four Poems Born from Stillness
"When I was a child and my mother needed me to entertain myself, she would give me a poem to memorize. So began a lifelong love affair with poetry. There are so many poets I love; and new ones I discover each day. I've written poems for most of my adult life. They emerge through deep stillness. Through paying attention to what is stirring in my heart, and what is happening in the world around me. ... posted on Apr 14, 5403 reads

Neurodiversity and Creativity
"If we put neurodiversity with creativity together, what can we get? At the moment, what is dominant is what we call the deficit approach meaning, that we see neurodivergent processes as problems, disorders and abnomality. We have a medical model. There is a process of diagnosis, and various remedies are prescribed such as special equipment and human support, medication, etc. This essentially put... posted on May 16, 1959 reads

Surrendering and Opening to Hope in Times of Crisis
When Anna-Zoe Herr's father passed four years ago, she grappled with almost unbearable pain and grief and was finding it difficult to find hope. One night, she had a dream in which her father appeared, sitting opposite her. "I came back because you have a question for me," he said. Zoe was taken aback and then said quickly, "Yes, I do. How do I overcome your death?" "You don't overcome my death," ... posted on May 24, 3164 reads

For One Day of Freedom
""Even if life stops, love goes on." This quote of Bishop Steven Charleston's has never been more real to me than this year, which has seen the posthumous publication by ANTIBOOKCLUB of my husband Blyden B. Jackson Jr's final novel, 'For One Day of Freedom,' completed before his death in April of 2012. The publication of this novel, which was passed over by mainstream publishers when we tried unsu... posted on May 31, 2792 reads

Mary Ruefle's Stunning Color Spectrum of Sadnesses
"Nearly two centuries after Goethe contemplated the psychology of color and emotion, Mary Ruefle's chromatic taxonomy of sadness cracks open the eggshell of our fragility to reveal within it a kaleidoscope coruscating with irrepressible aliveness. What emerges is the feeling -- something beyond the reasoned understanding -- that sadness is not the tip of the Atlantis-sized iceberg of our hard-wire... posted on Aug 21, 6044 reads

Horse Medicine, Horse Mystery
"Whether we love horses or not, whether we have contact with horses or not, they can teach us a lot about wisdom, love, and beauty. How do we get close to an honest openness to the potential magic of horses? And what does it even mean? The horse as a mirror for the soul and a vehicle for the soul could show us our true nature, and carry us into sacred spaces, initiating us into transformational he... posted on Oct 19, 3871 reads

Satish Kumar: In Service of Humanity and Mother Earth
In 2020, a dialog was held at Plum Village with environmental, and multi-faith peace activist Satish Kumar. What follows are two excerpts from that evening, the first titled, "Activism -- Caring without Burning Out," and the second, "Encouragement to Young Activists -- on Anger, Love and Grief." In these excerpts Kumar shares "how he has been able to find an inexhaustible source of energy to conti... posted on Nov 28, 1585 reads

Fishpeople: Lives Transformed By The Sea
This breathtaking film tells the story of people who are dedicating their lives to the sea. From Hawaii, Tahiti, Catalina Island, Antarctica, Australia and San Francisco, we witness spectacular images of the ocean as we are introduced to: a woman spearfisher who expresses compassion for her prey, an endurance swimmer, a photographer who captures the vast expansiveness of the ocean with his camera,... posted on Dec 17, 1625 reads

That's My Jazz
A father's love is center stage in this magical video of reflections from the renowned pastry chef Milt Abel II as he describes his relationship with his father, legendary Kansas City jazz musician Milt Abel, Sr. This relationship formed Milt as he strove to be the best in his chosen field just like his father, "a great man, someone to aspire to be just like," was in his own field. The memories of... posted on Dec 23, 1172 reads

The Quid for Which There is No Quo
"When one considers the facts, it appears undeniable that the human capacity to earn affects the human capacity to yearn. Purchasing power renders us prey to the sales pitch. And sales pitches befuddle the soul's longing. Animals have no purchasing power. They cannot easily be manipulated into yearning for things that are not aligned with their essence. This is why advertisers leave them alone. A... posted on Jun 3, 3766 reads

The Donkey & the Meaning of Eternity: A Love Letter to Life
"Beneath our anxious quickenings, beneath our fanged fears, beneath the rusted armors of conviction, tenderness is what we long for -- tenderness to salve our bruising contact with reality, to warm us awake from the frozen stupor of near-living. Tenderness is what permeates Platero and I (public library) by the Nobel-winning Spanish poet Juan Ramon Jimenez (December 23, 1881-May 29, 1958) -- part ... posted on Jul 25, 4302 reads

Shrine
Tracey Schmidt performs her poem Shrine, an evocative poem about love, about self, and about fitting into the world. Her whole being becomes a shrine through which divisions between herself and the rest of the world recede and "then the love fits perfectly," and her life shines brilliantly.... posted on Sep 8, 1900 reads