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, 6045 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, 1173 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

5 Tips on How to Live Like a Lichen
"I. Bow down.Bring your face, your heart, your hands, your belly, down, down, close to the groundto the rock of the world, the dirt, duff, sand. Let surface meet surface, warm cheek meet cool stone. Go ahead, belly flop flat on the sidewalk. Greet what you are not. Lichens love and adhere to their surfaces, love to sink into their substrates, mineral or wood, anything that stays still. Draw close.... posted on Sep 10, 1850 reads

Kintsugi: The Golden Joinery of Love
Sue Cochrane was a 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, poems,... posted on Oct 31, 54811 reads

Overcomer
This short film about self love by Hannah Grace animates a feeling of unworthiness that many of us have had at some point or another - or maybe most of the time - but we don't admit it to anyone. This simple and beautiful movie shows how destructive negative messages may become. We can absorb so many unhealthy messages from childhood that end up being reinforced by social media and more. Soon we a... posted on Nov 10, 2437 reads

How Sisterly Love Transformed a Brothel in Delhi
Fresh out of her university studies, Gitanjali Babbar embarked on a two-year fellowship that had her conducting health surveys with women in Delhi's red light district. Struck by the raw humanity she encountered in the brothel workers, Gitanjali began visiting the women in her free time, sharing meals and listening to stories from their harrowing life journeys, where they were often trafficked at ... posted on Apr 1, 2977 reads

Iris Murdoch: How to See More Clearly and Love More Purely
Maria Popova explores essays by Iris Murdoch around self-knowledge and relationships. She stresses that self-knowledge is a lifetime journey. When we do not see progress, or fail in our strivings, we may become anxious “where we feel the discrepancy between our ideals and our personality.” The discrepancies may show up as hurtful to others, and create more anxiety. She writes, “f... posted on Aug 13, 2677 reads

Arun-dada: I Just Love Thy Silently
Arun Bhatt, lovingly called "Arun-dada", dedicated his life to simplicity, service, and nonviolence. Born as the son of freedom fighters, Arun-dada spent parts of his childhood in jails, an unlikely setting where he encountered remarkable forces of love. At 19, he walked across India with Gandhi's spiritual successor, Vinoba Bhave, as part of the Bhoodan (Land Gift) Movement. His untiring equanimi... posted on Sep 3, 2886 reads

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Known as "the hugging saint," Ammachi, from Southern India, spends 15 hours a day spreading love and compassion through her hugs. For the past thirty years, crowds have lined up daily to experience her warm embrace. To this day, it is reported she has hugged over 20 million times.... posted on Jul 29, 1168 reads

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Our intention behind this daily e-mail has always been to bring inspiration and to help encourage each other in being good forces in the world. Our daily actions may be small, but they have a ripple effect. With anger in the world, there is a clear need to keep increasing the love in our actions, until the ripples reach every heart on this planet. Until that time, we can always do more. If you... posted on Sep 19, 515 reads

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A small San Francisco based group is collecting all the new and used children's books they can get and bringing them to small villages in the Phillipines where they are cherished! The program is called Books for Love.... posted on Oct 27, 483 reads

Linking Relationships and Physical Health
Research on the link between relationships and physical health has established that people with close interpersonal relationships recover more quickly from disease and live longer. And now the emerging field of social neuroscience, the study of how people’s brains entrain as they interact, adds a missing piece to that data. The most significant finding has been that of "mirror neurons," brain ce... posted on Nov 20, 2128 reads

Pedaling Banner
Josh Kinberg just finished his master's thesis and hit print. It read only "I Love New York." His adviser loved it. Of course, Kinberg's degree is an MFA in Design and Technology from Parsons School of Design in New York City, and his thesis is a bicycle that receives text messages and prints them in foot-high chalk letters, then blogs a digital photo and GPS map of the printing, all while the ri... posted on Aug 4, 1389 reads

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Built as an expression of one man's undying love for his wife, the Taj Mahal is, arguably, one of the most beautiful architectural structures on Earth. For a panaromic web tour...... posted on Jul 10, 799 reads

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A mom and her 3 year old son spent a harrowing seven days lost in the rugged forests of Oregan. Having been bitten by a snake, chased up a tree by a cougar, and confronted by hungry raccoons over a little cheese, their survival is a testament to a mother's love for her child.... posted on Jul 18, 431 reads

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Bruce Stephan was on San Francisco’s Bay Bridge when an earthquake hurled his car off the bridge and Stephan towards death. Both he and his wife were in the World Trade Center when terrorists struck on September 11. So what is like to survive two terrifying disasters? For Bruce, it was a learning experience in the power of love.... posted on Aug 13, 2018 reads

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Having been bullied as a sensitive child in the segregrated South, nine year old Vernon Kitabu Turner vowed "to become the protector of the weak," giving himself to the art of self-defense "with no less devotion than the samurai of Japan." With 'a mind like water,' he is now able to defeat the greatest of opponents -- with a single finger -- leaving them unharmed and himself with a heart full of ... posted on Sep 5, 1206 reads

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One of Geneen Roth’s perhaps most well-known and controversial exercises helps people to experience what they have as "enough": in conjunction with her advice to "carry a chunk of chocolate everywhere," Roth teaches how to eat that chocolate slowly and with complete awareness. The exercise, she writes, "reminds us to wake up, pay attention, stop reaching for what we don’t have, and focus on wh... posted on Oct 15, 1138 reads

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On Christmas Eve 1983, she suddenly lost her father to bladder cancer. Travelling the world to find answers, she came to this realization of life's purpose: love in action. In 1997, she started a nonprofit organization called Airline Ambassadors. In 1999, she was World Woman of Peace. Meet Nancy Rivard.... posted on Dec 21, 1126 reads

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In the summer of 1952 Mildred Norman, traveling alone, hiked the entire length of the 2050 mile-long Appalachian Trail. She was the first woman to accomplish this feat. It turned out to be a practice run. From 1953 until 1981, she walked more than 25,000 miles across the United States , bearing the simplest of messages: this is the way of peace-overcome evil with good, and falsehood with truth, a... posted on May 6, 1075 reads

Thai Flavors
They call him "Pak". In Iowa City, he runs an unusual Thai restaurant that has got the pollsters of DC, editors at NY Times, and the community in Iowa, all knocking on his doors. Many people will go to 'Thai Flavors' for its great food, many will go there to answer his polls -- ranging from controversial political and religious questions to "Do you believe in love at first?" and "Do you like to ... posted on Nov 16, 1275 reads

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A tidy father. A messy bedroom. And a determined teenage daughter. These ingredients spawned a grass-roots charity run by a 17-year-old girl who is donating 400 backpacks stuffed with notebooks, Pokémon folders and pencil boxes to needy kids. Winnie Kao's 'Packs of Love' began in spring 2002 when her father lectured her about the mounds of school supplies cluttering her room and about how privil... posted on Sep 9, 994 reads

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Luxury spending in the United States has been growing four times faster than overall spending. In "Living it Up: Our Love Affair With Luxury", James Twitchell says that this necessary consumption of unnecessary items and services is going on at all but the lowest layers of society: J.C. Penney now offers day spa treatments; Kmart sells cashmere bedspreads. He even finds ways to compare hotels to... posted on Sep 10, 1141 reads

Work is Love Made Visible
He owns several successful cloth factories - yet he seldom wears any clothes himself. Lush green, rolling hills surround Mr Fabre's retreat. He is a French citizen of India, a Hindu holy man, who has renounced the material world - yet he is also a business tycoon who employs thousands of people and runs a hermitage. Still, that's only half the story. The other half -- 'I do not keep a single p... posted on Sep 17, 3062 reads

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It's just the kind of dilemma that entrepreneurs like David Green love. The West has cutting-edge, high-tech medicine, but the poor of the world, who sorely need it, can't come close to affording it. To bridge that gap, Green, a quiet idealist, is doing something revolutionary: applying market forces to Third World health care. In the process he has driven the prices of medical devices such as hea... posted on Oct 31, 2366 reads

A Limitless Love
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Hunger For Love
Abundance, not scarcity, best describes the world's food supply. Enough wheat, rice and other grains are produced to provide every human being with 3,500 calories a day. That doesn't even count many other commonly eaten foods-vegetables, beans, nuts, root crops, fruits, grass-fed meats, and fish. Enough food is available to provide at least 4.3 pounds of food per person a day worldwide. Yet 800 m... posted on Nov 27, 1337 reads

Love and Power
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Love Everything
... posted on Sep 6, 1150 reads

Note and a Duffel Bag
More than 28,000 foster children have received the note, a duffel bag and the cuddly friend. "I want you to always know that you are loved, especially by me," the letter says. "And always remember to be positive, polite and never give up. Love, Your Friend, Makenzie." Makenzie Snyder is 13 and it has been her mission since the age of 7 to comfort neglected children; she doesn't meet the children... posted on Dec 19, 1064 reads

Dog's Life Over Christmas
Josie was in bad shape by the time the veterinarians at the University of Minnesota saw her after her accident: broken back, dislocated hip, internal injuries. Surgery would be expensive, they told the dog's owner. Death would be much cheaper. But Stella Twedt borrowed $3000 from her Dad, explained to her 14 and 5 year olds that they won't get Christmas gifts this year, told her 15 year old that ... posted on Dec 24, 992 reads

Love Actually
... posted on Jan 19, 2445 reads

Measuring Emotions
Can you measure anger, love, joy? After 20 years of research, Dr. David Hawkins says yes. In his book "Power vs. Force", he presents a tool for assessing value and motive and creates a "Map of Consciousness" that illuminates the spiritual ladder we must follow as a race and as individuals. Using this method, Dr. Hawkins has made a logarithmic scale ranking of different levels of energy, from sh... posted on Jan 24, 1192 reads

Locks of Love
Sometimes it's hard to find a way to help. But since Dominic Bizak was already taking the abuse for his long hair, it wasn't too tough for the 11 year old to decide to grow his hair for 20 months. The hair, then, is donated to a group that provides free wigs to children who, for various reasons, have suffered hair loss.... posted on Jul 6, 857 reads

Mother of Thirteen
Susan isn’t a saint. She is far from wealthy. Her husband walked out shortly after the second child was adopted. But somehow -- with no steady income or savings, but with tremendous love, compassion, and dedication -- Susan provides a home and family for children so outwardly damaged, their biological parents can’t or won’t care for them. At 53, Susan is the mother of thirteen, including el... posted on May 11, 2303 reads

Land of Thousand Hills
In 1949, when Rosamond Carr first arrived in Africa, she had no idea that she would spend the rest of her life there. Back then, she was just a young fashion illustrator from New York City, who packed four cotton dresses and a lifetime supply of cold cream to accompany her husband on a trip to Congo. As she journeyed to find herself, Rosamond experienced everything from near-bankruptcy to tribal... posted on Oct 8, 1197 reads

Hot Wheels
It's cute, tiny, and plastic. The kids love it (especially in Europe). It also gets 70 miles per gallon, and you can fit three side by side in a standard parking spot. Move over, Mini: The Smart microcar could be the next big thing on America's roads.... posted on Oct 26, 1510 reads

Puppies Behind Bars
When Gloria Gilbert Stoga quit working for Rudy Guiliani's office, very few folks supported her new venture -- train inmates to raise guide dogs! Prisoners can get unconditional love as they train some of the young puppies, Gloria thought. Turns out, she was right. Today, the program is not only delivering well-loved, well-trained guide dogs, it's also having a positive effect on its inmate pup... posted on Nov 5, 1649 reads

What You Love
... posted on Dec 20, 1251 reads

Love blooms in NYC cab
So, for the lovelorn who are burned out by the bar scene, fed up with personal ads or tired of scouring the Internet, there's another place to look for that perfect date: the back seat of a taxicab. Specifically, Ahmed Ibrahim's cab. The 50-year-old Egyptian immigrant sets up blind dates for his single passengers through a free, impromptu matchmaking service he runs out of his yellow cab. ... posted on Feb 2, 2235 reads

Fruits of Love
With the hullabaloo of the December holidays over, food donations at the Second Harvest Food Bank have dwindled. But one child has stepped forward to provide the fruits of California's winter. Jacob Olian, 8, dreamed up the plan to collect the oranges, grapefruits, tangerines and lemons from people's backyards and give them to the food bank. Jacob typed up a flyer that read “Got Fruit?” and a... posted on Feb 11, 947 reads

Love's Beginning
... posted on Feb 14, 2240 reads