Myron Eshowky: A Deeper Listening
"When I was 6 years old, I began to go for an hour every day, before school had started, to work with a speech therapist who taught me to put my hand on her throat, and my throat, and then focus on matching her vibration as she would make a sound, because I had to learn how to talk. One of the things I noted right away was that when we matched vibration, I became really connected with her. It was ... posted on Oct 8, 9918 reads

Pearl Fryer's Unusual Legacy
Located on a short and quiet side street of the main road entering Bishopville, the garden sits on the left side of the road and a bank of pine trees lends shade and depth at the back of the property. An archway leads visitors to the left side of the property. It was through this archway that I stepped onto Fryer's garden for the first time. In life-sized letters cut into the grass and planted wit... posted on Jul 6, 10427 reads

How to Befriend the Universe
With unbridled exuberance and a zest for life, philosopher and comedian Emily Levine shares how she learned to love reality and death while facing her own injuries and terminal illness. Part quantum physics, part nature, some philosophy, and lots of laughs come together in this TED talk brilliantly presented by Maria Popova. In it Levine shares the revelation, "You have to understand that we don't... posted on Jun 10, 10496 reads

The Wisdom of South Korea's Garden Hacking Grandparents
Whether we wake up each morning under eaves beneath trees, or on the top floors of towers among a forest of more towers; whether we walk our children to school through a park, or drive our car down the traffic-clogged streets to the market; whether we spend our mornings closed in meeting rooms, or tending urban gardens, each of us are the potential builders of a new culture, and each of our action... posted on Jun 28, 6441 reads

Eager: The Secret Life of Beavers and Why They Matter
A beaver is a change agent. They build a dam, create a pond, then over the course of years, the pond fills in, becomes a wetland, wet meadow and the cycle starts again. Humans like things static, which is one reason beavers and humans have not gotten along. We have fundamentally different visions of how the landscape is supposed to work. The consequences have been the decimation of the beaver popu... posted on Aug 15, 8193 reads

You Are Me and I Am You
The idea that we are one unified whole on this planet is a growing awareness across the globe. This awareness is made palpable and even aided by one of the positive aspects of the internet; that is, the ability to share events, feelings and consciousness at the same time on a worldwide level. Pierre Pradervand is a writer and social justice activist who is dedicated to helping others live in this ... posted on Sep 10, 11064 reads

War No More: David Swanson
David Swanson is an author, activist, journalist, and radio host. He is the director of WorldBeyondWar.org, a campaign coordinator for RootsAction.org, a prolific writer, and the most recent recipient of the U.S. Peace Memorial Foundation's 2018 Peace Prize. The values he lives by are "be courageous but generous; try to make the world a better place; pack up and start over as needed -- physically ... posted on Jan 28, 6291 reads

The Man Who Moved a Mountain
Dashrath Manjhi lived in a remote town in northern India that lacked water supply, electricity, a school, and a medical center. "He was an outcast, a landless labourer who had to trek across an entire mountain every day, just to reach the farm that he worked on." The treacherous journey took hours and was filled with danger from falling rocks and steep paths. When his wife fell and injured herself... posted on Oct 9, 20061 reads

BJ Miller Understands Mortality
Oncologist and Executive Director of the Zen Hospice Project, B. J. Miller is a practitioner who is part of a Buddhist-informed, humanistic approach to care. The Zen Hospice Project is a place where medical staff and volunteers practice love, compassion, and empathy. In this interview, Miller, who has experienced deep, personal loss, advocates for respecting our grieving process and allowing it to... posted on Oct 29, 12745 reads

Letters from Max: A Book of Friendship
"In 2012, Sarah Ruhl was a distinguished author and playwright, twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; Max Ritvo was an exuberant, opinionated, and highly gifted poet in remission from pediatric cancer. Studded with poems and songs, their correspondence is a deeply moving portrait of a friendship, and a shimmering exploration of love, art, mortality, and joy." What follows is an excerpt from 'Le... posted on Nov 10, 4899 reads

Say Grace
" I am deeply delighted to live on a planet that is so big and varied that I can confidently say that right this very minute somewhere in the world a crossword puzzle is being completed, a fortune cookie is being snapped open and a song just brought someone to tears. I love knowing that while I am fast asleep in California, a crowd is gathered around the Rosetta Stone at the British Museum, a marr... posted on Oct 30, 3808 reads

The Boy Who Wanted to Go to School
With hard work, determination, a little serendipity, and a lot of heart, Wubetu Shimelash made it all the way from a remote region of Ethiopia to a prominent U.S. university. This man who once fashioned sandals out of tires now dons a fedora and impresses everyone with his positive attitude, joyous spirit, and infectious smile. It is a story of true success--both for him personally, and for the co... posted on Nov 13, 19856 reads

Unity and the Power of Love
"Unity holds the essential vision that we are one living, interconnected ecosystem -- a living Earth that supports and nourishes all of its inhabitants. If we acknowledge and honor this simple reality, we can begin to participate in the vital work of healing our fractured and divisive world and embrace a consciousness of oneness that is our human heritage. This is the opportunity that is being off... posted on Nov 7, 9164 reads

Pope Francis' Encyclical: Hearing the Cry of the Earth
The Earth needs both physical and spiritual attention and awareness, our acts and prayers, our hands and hearts. Life is a self-sustaining organic whole of which we are a part, and once we reconnect with this whole we can find a different way to live -- one that is not based upon a need for continual distraction and the illusions of material fulfillment, but rather a way to live that is sustaining... posted on Dec 16, 8102 reads

Finding Hope in Hopelessness
In a time of uncertainty and increasing grief, suffering, aggression and violence, Margaret Wheatley proposes we release our hope of an outcome, walk without a vision of the future, and let hopelessness be our companion. In our insecurity, self-doubt, and groundlessness, we can orient our soul, spirit, and heart to transcend the experienced world and anchor ourselves in faith. The value, rightness... posted on Dec 26, 19996 reads

Okagesama
Okagesama is the awareness that what is inside the walls of your house or under the skin of your body or any aspect of your life and experience are elements that cannot be seen. They are in the shadows and in order to see them, we have to look very deeply. Gregg Krech writes that we have to see with more than our eyes. There are unseen forces in our lives that make them possible. When we reflect o... posted on Dec 23, 7581 reads

A Small Dark Light: Le Guin on the Legacy of the Tao Te Ching
Brain Pickings' Maria Popova explores Ursula Le Guins life long love affair with the Tao te Ching. Le Guins relationship with this ageless wisdom began as a young child. Ursula's interpretation of this work spans almost 70 years. Her work with distilling the essence of the Tao continues to teach us about personal and political power. This beautiful interpretation makes the Tao more accessible to ... posted on Mar 10, 7125 reads

Leftover Women Take Over the Marriage Market
In China, a woman who is unmarried by age 25 is considered a "leftover woman." She feels like an outsider, and in a culture with great respect for parents, she may feel like a failure. A group of such women went to the Marriage Market and put up large photos of themselves, and messages like "don't give up love for suitability" or expressing the wish not to marry. Their fundamental message is "Don'... posted on Dec 19, 2902 reads

What Does It Mean to Live Wisely and Well?
What does it mean to live wisely and well and what does it take? How can we cultivate qualities such as love, wisdom, kindness, and compassion? Dr. Roger Walsh's lifework, addresses these questions. A man with an eclectic past, Roger has explored contemplative life as a professor, physician, therapist, celebrated author, spouse, spiritual practitioner, and inquisitive human being. He is a for... posted on Jan 17, 6413 reads

Eight Inspiring Moments from 2018
As the year 2018 slowly fades into the rearview mirror, may we take one look back to see what greater good can be learned from this last year. Though we may remember the difficult or even awful things that happened, there was good that came out of some of the painful events that occurred. In these inspiring stories, one can see the bigger lessons to be learned: that we are not alone when we reach ... posted on Jan 27, 9125 reads

Embracing the Great Fullness of Life
"We all have our ideas about how life should go. Ideas painted within us as hopes, longings, opinions. Those painted around us as cultural norms, trajectories, worthwhile goals. We have ideas in mind about most everything how our bodies should work, how love should work, how the world should work. Politics. Sleep. Weather. What we want and do not want. Ideas that make things bad or good, yes or n... posted on Feb 10, 10657 reads

Maria Popova: Books are the Original Internet
Maria Popova is a Bulgarian-born writer, blogger, literary and cultural critic living in Brooklyn, New York. She writes Brain Pickings, a blog she calls "my one-woman labor of love." In this interview by Oscar Schwartz, she says "Books are the original internet." Schwarts calls her "switched on, irresistibly articulate, fully engaged...She talks about complex ideas in a way that transforms them in... posted on Feb 17, 9089 reads

Who Gets to Cry?
Climate change is destroying many places we love points out Trebbe Johnson, and while some of us turn away from admitting this, others are filled with sorrow. But here's what's most difficult: "Many of us are simply afraid that if we allow ourselves to wade, even for a moment, into the feelings of sadness for the living world that lap at the edge of our consciousness, we will find ourselves pulled... posted on Apr 1, 6548 reads

Seven Generations of Love
"The ranch, it turns out, is no ordinary ranch. It is a 13,000-acre property nestled next to Laramie Peak that Mark's grandfather bought in 1945. It is made up of hills and valleys, meadows and creeks, plains and buttes, caves and waterfalls. Sage and cheat grass cover the ground, and pine trees spring up near the hills. Giant granite boulders give way to cliffs and streams. All kinds of wildlife ... posted on Mar 7, 8547 reads

Holding Circles of Healing
"In 2017, we released our labor of love film, "TeachMeToBeWILD: A Story of Hurt Children and their Animal Healers". This film is a universal healing story that brings together many interconnected elements: children, animals, nature, silence and the power of safe, non-judgemental listening spaces. One of our greatest inspirations to make the film was witnessing how Steve Karlin and John Malloy do n... posted on Mar 20, 8575 reads

Befriending Our Despair
Joanna Rogers Macy is an environmental activist, author, and scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. In this short video she advises that pain alerts us to what needs attention. Pain is not the enemy of cheerfulness, but tells us there is suffering. When we face suffering, our hearts and eyes open to beauty. We are not alone in our despair and when we have the courage to spe... posted on Mar 31, 3560 reads

All My Best Words Were Hers: A Tribute to Ursula Le Guin
The impact of literature and specifically, an author, on a person can be "unfathomable." In this tender tribute, Isaac Yuen recounts the many ways Ursula K. Le Guin influenced his life and his writing. He admits he is "only a fan." He confesses his inadequacy in expressing how her work guides his: "I write about how reading her words transported me to strange worlds and into new souls, how that sp... posted on Apr 30, 7013 reads

A Good Death: An Interview with Stephen Jenkinson
Author of Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul, and subject of the documentary Griefwalker, palliative care counselor and theologian Stephen Jenkinson invites us to contemplate the mystery and meaning of a "good death" so we may more fully embrace life. Drawing on Buddhism and the ancestral wisdom of indigenous people, Jenkinson ponders the ways in which Western individualism has contributed ... posted on Apr 26, 22016 reads

Stress and the Social Self
"Relationships, Adrienne Rich argued in her magnificent meditation on love, refine our truths. But they also, it turns out, refine our immune systems. That's what pioneering immunologist Esther Sternberg examines in The Balance Within: The Science Connecting Health and Emotions--a revelatory inquiry into how emotional stress affects our susceptibility to burnout and disease." Maria Popova shares m... posted on Mar 2, 6512 reads

Parker Palmer Muses on the Season
"I will wax romantic about spring and its splendors in a moment, but first there is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck. I have walked in the early spring through fields that will suck your boots off, a world so wet and woeful it makes you yearn for the return of ice. But in that muddy mess, the conditions for rebirth are being create... posted on Apr 20, 0 reads

The Jai Jagat Journey
This spring, 17 children from six slums in India are embarking on a one-of-a-kind journey to share a message of love and oneness with the world. The Jai Jagat Show they will present is a 90-minute dance, drama and musical production celebrating the values that Mahatma Gandhi embodied. The show includes inspiration from other global heroes, like Malala Yousafzai, Wangari Mathai, Masahisa Goi, Yusra... posted on Apr 22, 1835 reads

The Seasons of the Soul
In The Season of the Soul: The Poetic Guidance and Spiritual Wisdom of Hermann Hesse, Ludwig Max Fischer, Ph.D., makes Hesse's vivid, evocative poems on love, imagination, nature, the divine and the passage of time available in English. Through his commentaries, Fischer helps readers understand Hesse's poetry and wisdom within the context of his life. Although Hesse, author of the novels Steppenwo... posted on Jun 9, 8925 reads

George Orwell: Some Thoughts on the Common Toad
Novelist and essayist Eric Arthur Blair, pen name George Orwell, is perhaps best known for his prescient depictions of creeping totalitarianism and social injustice as captured in 1984 and Down and Out in Paris and London. Blair is also recognized as an avowed appreciator of the living world who intuitively understood nature's role in transforming the human spirit in the aftermath of war: "I think... posted on May 29, 5740 reads

The Courageous Mary Oliver
Lisa Starr shares her insights from the last years of her friend Mary Oliver's life. From this deep perspective of love - we see Mary's courage, strength and generosity. She lived her craft - listening for the words - to the very end - using them to transform the heartbreak of living into things of beauty.... posted on May 26, 32092 reads

Mother's Day: Belonging to Each Other
"Mother's Day offers us opportunities to express our love and thanks to the women who have cared for us in our lives --the birth or adoptive mother, the grandmother, the teacher, or the elder friend who have helped grow us up. But it's not all Hallmark cards and breakfasts-in-bed. This particular holiday can stir up feelings of grief and pain for some of us. We may suffer for the mother we have lo... posted on May 12, 8425 reads

Trailhead
In their award-winning short film Trailhead, documentary filmmakers Emily Fraser and Henry Weiner offer an exploration of the history and heart behind the creation of hundreds of miles of interconnected wildland trails minutes from downtown Oakland, California. Profiling the volunteer network of hikers, bikers, dog walkers, historians and educators who donate their time to help maintain this cheri... posted on May 15, 2167 reads

The True Life of the Forest
Dr. Diana Beresford-Kroeger, botanist, medical biochemist, writer and broadcaster, combines medical training with a love of botany. She is an expert on the medicinal, environmental and nutritional properties of trees, and author most recently of The Global Forest. When her parents died, she was raised by an uncle who taught her everything from physics to Buddhism and Gaelic poetry. She was one of ... posted on Sep 12, 6956 reads

Coastal Communication: A Mother and Son's Moving Collaboration
When New York based author and social activist, Jane Jackson suffered an aneurysm, it affected both her memory and language skills. Over the months that followed she recovered through the unconditional support of her family, and the power of poetry. As a way to promote healing and reestablish language skills, she and her son began writing poems together. The poems were crafted line by line in emai... posted on Jun 29, 9444 reads

Befriending Ourselves: An Invitation to Love
Is self-improvement sometimes a disguised version of self-agrression? If the focus is always on how I might be "better" in the future, it can be hard to extend toward myself a hand of friendship and compassion. I miss out on the present miracle of who I am NOW. Maybe moving from a perspective of improvement toward one of healing actually begins with loving my current messiness.... posted on Jul 28, 9055 reads

Soft Power: A Magnetic Approach to Practice
"The desire to be in control is a normal survival response, but what I love about the art of aikido is that we can move beyond survival to a vast and universal perspective in which all life is connected and interwoven. Such an orientation is not self-conscious. Since it relates to the connecting aspect -- that of the space and energy -- rather than individuals, there is no thing that needs to be o... posted on Jul 18, 9528 reads

Jane Baker: An Artist Who Gives It All Away
One day, San Francisco artist Jane Baker realized something. Now she operates from a new place -- new, but also very old: "I don't know art history that well, but it is only in the last few hundred years that art has been a commodity. Before that, most artists were doing it out of their love for, frankly, for God or their church. Most of the art that's been made has not been made for money. So I'm... posted on Aug 6, 2177 reads

The Power of MLK's Anger
Unlike many who struggle to channel their anger into positive action, Martin Luther King Jr. learned from an early age how he could transform this emotion into something greater. In this compelling article from NPR, King's complex relationship with anger and injustice is explored. "Looking at how King dealt with anger reveals its dual nature--how it can be a motivating force for change, while also... posted on Aug 18, 4181 reads

Love and Philosophy Between Prison Walls and Ivory Towers
In 1987, while teaching a class at MIT [the Massachusetts Institute of Technology] on nonviolence, philosophy lecturer Lee Perlman had a novel idea: "Why not take the students to a prison, to talk with men who had committed extreme forms of violence?" Now, 30 years later, through the MIT Prison Initiative that he founded, Perlman teaches classes to a mixed cohort of both MIT students and prisoners... posted on Dec 28, 7052 reads

Janwaar Castle: A Modern Skate Park in Rural India
When is a skatepark more than a skatepark? When it is Janwaar Castle, a local playground in Janwaar village. Between 50-60 children visit the park every day where they learn English, music, dance, painting, 3D modelling, and general life skills. It is a place where Adivasis and Yadavs, boys and girls, and all age groups play together. There are two rules: no school no skating and girls first. Sinc... posted on Sep 10, 4345 reads

Look With Your Heart: Lessons from My Time with My Grandmother
In 2003 theater artist Mia Tagano relocated to California from NYC to be with her grandmother who was living with dementia. Over the next sixteen years she would navigate the poignant territory of loving and caring for someone she could not build shared memories with, someone who would open Mia's heart to life's deepest lessons, someone she would learn to love tenderly, diligently, and uncondition... posted on Sep 1, 50313 reads

The Beginner's Guide to the End
“If you knew that you were going to die tomorrow, would you still be holding on to those grudges? Have you healed the old wounds with people that you love in your life?” These are questions that Shoshana Berger asked a captive audience after her book, "A Beginner's Guide to the End: Practical Advice for Living Life and Facing Death" was published. Co-authored by BJ Miller, the book exp... posted on Mar 7, 3852 reads

The Butterfly Effect: Detained Children Spark a Youth-Movement
11-year old Kaia and 10-year old Lily were heartbroken when they first heard about the 15,000 kids at the US-Mexico border locked up and separated from their parents. With the help of friends and family, they aspired to gather 15,000 butterflies to help raise awareness. To date, this kid-led effort has gathered over 30,000 love-filled butterflies, and The Butterfly Effect is quickly gaining trac... posted on Nov 16, 5017 reads

13 Life Lessons From 13 Years of Brain Pickings
"On October 23, 2006,Brain Pickings was born as a plain-text email to seven friends. It was then, and continues to be, a labor of love and ledger of curiosity, although the mind and heart from which it sprang have changed --have grown, I hope -- tremendously. At the end of the first decade, I told its improbable origin storyand drew from its evolution the ten most important things this all-consumi... posted on Oct 31, 17566 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, 2752 reads

Falling in Love With the Earth
"The natural world is one of the most resplendent and consistent sources of generosity in our lives whether we experience it directly moment-to-moment or not. When we allow ourselves to tune in and pay attention, our Earth is perpetually nourishing and providing for us, sustaining life and offering its abundant gifts with a breathtaking and consistent flourish. We are fed, literally and figurativ... posted on Nov 25, 6718 reads