Tara Brach: True Refuge
"Tara Brach is an author, clinical psychologist, and the founder and senior teacher of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Tara about "the Trance of Unworthiness" --a state in which we believe that we are too inadequate, incomplete, and broken to love ourselves. Tara explains why we are so tough on ourselves and the steps ... posted on Jan 5, 6132 reads

We Must Deepen Our Capacity for Healing
"Today I want to feature some friends of mine who represent the face of love, truth, and justice. Each of them has an upcoming online event that you may want to participate in. People of good will need opportunities like this as we absorb the insurrection and the pandemic rages on." In the wake of disturbing recent events in America's capital, community leaders, activists, authors, artists and tea... posted on Jan 9, 8956 reads

The Sword & The Shield: The Struggle for Black Freedom
"To most Americans, Malcolm X and Dr. King represent contrasting ideals: self-defense vs. nonviolence, black power vs. civil rights, the sword vs. the shield. The struggle for black freedom is wrought with the same contrasts. In his latest book, Peniel Joseph upends longstanding preconceptions to transform our understanding of the 20th century's most iconic African American leaders, and addresses ... posted on Jan 12, 2744 reads

To Walk in Beauty Once Again
"Fragility sticks to everything alive like the quiet wetness of morning dew
in this global pandemic
as a doctor
I see this fragility
Threatening to swallow so much of what we love
like a large red blanket covering a small bed
and I can't unsee it."
So begins this powerful poem by Sriram Shamasunder, a physician whose work takes him to the front lin... posted on Jan 17, 7640 reads

Don Berwick: Health Care as a Loving Relationship
For the past 30 years, Donald Berwick has been one of the nation's leading authorities and innovators of quality and improvement in the U.S. healthcare system. A pediatrician by training, a professor at both Harvard Medical School and the School of Public Health, and a top health care administrator during the Obama Administration, Berwick challenges administrators, policy makers, and doctors to go... posted on Jan 26, 5317 reads

Burned Pages Don't Lie: A Genealogy Search
"A genealogy search can yield many things and go down many paths, but at its core, it is a story waiting to be told and a person to tell it." Ten years ago, artist Pat Benincasa, received a unique mission, one that arrived in the form of a charred book of Italian love poems. It had belonged to her grandfather. "What was he doing with this book and why was it burned?" What follows is the story of P... posted on May 16, 4679 reads

The World Needs Your Cargo: Kozo Hattori & Sue Cochrane
In July of 2020, beloved ServiceSpace friends Kozo Hattori, and Sue Cochrane, came together for a virtual conversation in the presence of community. Both were navigating stark realities with cancer. Their luminous exchange was threaded with laughter, insight, tender truths, poignant moments and profound life-wisdom. Kozo peacefully "changed address," on March 1st, 2021. His transition came just we... posted on Mar 2, 8690 reads

All You Need Is Love?
"'Can we dare to think people are kind, and shape organisations around this view?' That's the question Rutger Bregman examines in his latest book 'Humankind', and it's one that anyone involved in youth and community work like me wrestles with on a daily basis. But is Bregman's optimistic analysis grounded in reality?" More in this piece from OpenDemocracy.... posted on Mar 8, 4746 reads

A Conversation with Americ Azavedo: The Truth Demands to Be Live
For ten semesters, Americ Azevedo's seminar, 'Time, Money, and Love in the Age of Technology,' cultivated in students an awareness of the larger issues that form a context for their lives. He was well qualified. Earlier in his life he was reading a passage from Krishnamurti, "Live the Truth." That same day he stood in front of a room full of trainees, uneasy with his job and its values. He turned ... posted on Mar 11, 2231 reads

She Convinced a Community to Love a 'Bad Omen'
Leptoptilos dubius is the name of a gangly stork, "Once close to extinction, the bird has rebounded in biologist Purnima Devi Barman's home state of Assam in northeastern India. And that success, according to widespread consensus, is primarily because of Barman, who has single-handedly transformed the species from a reviled nuisance to a beloved cohabitant among a surprisingly broad cross-section ... posted on Mar 19, 5769 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 Mar 21, 14512 reads

Picture a Face
"Your phone rings in the middle of the night. As you reach blindly to answer, do you fear that someone you love has been in an accident? Has suddenly died? For a time, early in my marriage to Jihong, such calls would often wake us. The phone was on Jihong's side of the bed. He'd lift the receiver to his ear and mumble a dazed hello. "Go back to Japan!" a loud male voice would yell, or something wo... posted on Mar 31, 4604 reads

Four Winged Poems
"This time of year, the birds catch my attention and hold it. The robins are back, or maybe they're just bolder. I see them most in this early spring season, when the worms are warming up out of the soil. The goldfinches are muted still, their diets not yet offering the delights that turn their plumage bright. And the mourning doves are crying all day long...I love the way that watching them helps... posted on Apr 14, 4091 reads

Crisis Kitchen
Crisis Kitchen is a mutual aid group that has emerged during the coronavirus pandemic in Portland, Oregon, as a means to help people thrive. It was begun by laid off restaurant workers as the COVID-19 pandemic worsened and caused more and more people to become food insecure. High quality, delicious meals are prepared and delivered by volunteers, utilizing donated space and are available for free. ... posted on Apr 16, 1784 reads

The Voice of the River
In 1973, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers prepared to open a new dam project, flooding miles of the Stanislaus River Canyon, a beautiful, pristine river valley flowing from the western Sierra Nevada mountains into California's Central Valley. In 1979, Mark Dubois chained himself to a boulder behind the New Melones Dam and threw away the key. "If you guys are going to flood 9 million years of evolu... posted on Apr 22, 2467 reads

Karma Quilts: One Woman's Labor of Love Offering
"In her heartwarming book, My Grandfather's Blessings, Rachel Remen says, "You do not need money to be a philanthropist. We all have assets. You can befriend life with your bare hands." I am grateful for being able to befriend life with my bare hands through the making of quilts and prayer shawls." Jane Jackson is a mother, grandmother, former mid-wife, writer and much more. Over the decades she h... posted on Apr 29, 7261 reads

Love is the Last Word
"To understand anything -- another person's experience of reality, another fundamental law of physics -- is to restructure our existing knowledge, shifting and broadening our prior frames of reference to accommodate a new awareness. And yet we have a habit of confusing our knowledge -- which is always limited and incomplete: a model of the cathedral of reality, built from primary-colored blocks of... posted on May 21, 5805 reads

How to Write Love
"Stranger Care is Sarah Sentilless heartbreaking, heart-expanding account of her relationship with her foster daughter, Coco--although saying that is a bit like saying Walden is a book about a pond. It is, but ponds are just the beginning. It is, and yet, well never look at ponds the same way again. After Stranger Care, Ill never look at mothers the same way again. Or daughters. Or parenting. Or c... posted on Jun 12, 3472 reads

Lament for Syria: A Young Poet Looks Back
"I wrote about all my memories: how I woke up in the morning to my grandmother drinking coffee next to the jasmine tree listening to the music of the Lebanese singer Fairuz. I wrote about how my siblings and I walked to school with our neighbors and how we saw a boy smoking and then hiding the cigarette from his older brother.
I didn't want Syria to be known just for its war. I wanted to co... posted on Jun 24, 3617 reads

The Extra Mile
At 85 years old, Oom Hollie embodies the spirit of Ubuntu, "I am who I am because of who we are." Known as The Iron Man because of the strength and resilience of his body, mind and spirit, he and his family suffered great loss many years ago. With the support of their community they were able to move forward and thrive. He is in love with the land and with growing food, not for profit but to share... posted on Jun 26, 2225 reads

Leaf Seligman: On Redemption and Beautiful Scars
"As humans, we inevitably experience harm: we feel hurt, we get hurt, and we hurt others. We free ourselves from this experience not by imagining we can escape harm but knowing we can heal it--moving from wound to scar--and then learning to love the scars. This can, of course, be the work of a lifetime. Luckily, I have long loved scars. When I was four, I accidentally cut my left eye. As a result,... posted on Jul 4, 5327 reads

For Love of Wild Horses
Wildife biologist, Craig Downer's, childhood experience with his trusted horse, Poco, and their many adventures in the wild lands of Nevada, led to a lifetime of passionate advocacy for the protection of wild horses and burros in the Western United States. His is often a lonely struggle between raising consciousness about the long term ecological benefits these animals bring and the forces more co... posted on Jul 29, 1817 reads

Vandana Shiva: For Love of Mother Earth
"Vandana Shiva started out in quantum physics, something her school didnt even teach, but which she taught herself well enough to eventually study for a PhD in Canada. Somewhere in there, she met the tree huggers of the Chipko movement in the forests of Uttarakhand, the forests her father worked when she was a child, and it became clear that a life other than the one she intended lay in front of h... posted on Aug 23, 4896 reads

Where I'm From...
Appalachian poet George Ella Lyon's poem, "Where I'm From," evokes the particular world of a particular childhood through a poem quilted from scraps and patches of memory... Memories of specific sights and sounds, objects, instructions, tragedies, and delights. It has been used in classrooms around the world as a prompt for people to write their own versions of, "Where I'm From." More recently in ... posted on Sep 23, 6835 reads

Place, Personhood & the Hippocampus
"'Place and a mind may interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered,' the Scottish mountaineer and poet Nan Shepherd wrote in her lyrical love letter to her native Highlands, echoing an ancient intuition about how our formative physical landscapes shape our landscapes of thought and feeling. The word 'genius' in the modern sense, after all, originates in the Latin phrase genius loci -- 'the s... posted on Sep 26, 4295 reads

For Love of Nectar: The Dazzling Sunbirds of India
When the sun is out in India, and if one is lucky to have access to a dense patch of native trees in flagrant, fragrant bloom, one is quite likely to see darting sunbirds. Sunbirds are to India what hummingbirds are to the Americas. Small birds with curved beaks that guzzle flower nectar. Dressed in an astounding colour palette that include hues as vivid as metallic green, lime yellow, deep hibisc... posted on Oct 22, 5867 reads

Inhabiting the Ground of Being
"The Realization Process is a way of uncovering an experience of this very subtle consciousness that we actually can experience pervading our whole body. We experience that and we transcend that individuality at the same time. We experience oneness, this ground of being, pervading our own body, and everything around us. So, in other words, our consciousness becomes subtle enough to pervade all of ... posted on Oct 19, 3159 reads

Ecosystems & the Practice of Love
"One of the things that I have tried to do in my work is to understand our reality as a 'commons' -- to see the whole of reality as a shared process of mutual transformation and productivity. This term '"commons" has been coined to express the idea of shared culture and resources being accessible to all members of a community. I use the term because being alive means that we are always participati... posted on Nov 1, 2441 reads

Listen: Four Love Songs
Kathleen Dean Moore is a writer, moral philosopher, and environmentalist. Her many books and awards include Holdfast: A Home in the Natural World, and Great Tide Rising: Towards Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change, and, most recently, Earth's Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World. In the following essay, "she considers the looming loss of wild mus... posted on Nov 21, 3783 reads

ThanksBeing with Rumi
"It's Thanksgiving time...the holiday of humility and togetherness. The holiday that asks us to look within toward that ever-present beacon of gratitude which is often obscured by the frenetic world we've created. It reminds us to give, to make amends, to repair ruptured friendships and family ties. It leans into sustenance and nourishment. The table becomes the altar. The family become precious g... posted on Nov 25, 7613 reads

The Golden Rule & The Transformation of Being
"The most ancient of principles that binds all religious and philosophical traditions together is what we have come to call 'The Golden Rule.' Simple in its statement, its actual practice seems at best fitful and, for many, difficult to impossible, from the level of our ordinary consciousness. To be able to practice the principle even with those we already love is not always easy. To practice it w... posted on Nov 29, 4274 reads

An East-West Approach to Transformation
This film chronicles a coming together of U.S. and China leaders in the consciousness and wellbeing sector, led by Mina Lee. At the heart of Minas life and work is the permission to be stretched by love. She is guided by the question of how to bridge cultural and intergenerational divides the ways in which we dehumanize each other through misunderstanding, whether between investors and investees,... posted on Dec 14, 1636 reads

The Wide-Angle Legacy & Vision of bell hooks
"The news that bell hooks had died at 69 spread quickly across social media on Wednesday, prompting a flood of posts featuring favorite quotes about love, justice, men, women, community and healing, as well as testimonials about how this pioneering Black feminist writer had changed, or saved, lives. If the outpouring felt more intense than the usual tributes to departed scholars, admirers say that... posted on Dec 17, 3617 reads

What Defines You
Danielson Okeyo of Cape Town, South Africa, saw himself as something of a Superman because of his physical abilities. A series of injuries made him question who he was when he was no longer defined by what he could do. Okeyo takes us along on his journey to connect with the healing power of nature by befriending the ocean. In the process he realizes that nature accepts us as who we are. As he open... posted on Dec 18, 2522 reads

10 Insights from 2021 That Give Us Hope
As 2022 sets sail, the editors of the inspiring news portal KarunaVirus, share ten insights gleaned over the past year, as they witnessed everyday people all over the world choosing love over fear in a multitude of different ways. Read on for a dazzling constellation of stories of compassion, resilience, ingenuity, sportsmanship and more!... posted on Jan 4, 15127 reads

Desmond Tutu: Father of South Africa's Rainbow Nation
"Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Mpilo Tutu has died at the age of 90. Archbishop Tutu earned the respect and love of millions of South Africans and the world. He carved out a permanent place in their hearts and minds, becoming known affectionately as 'The Arch.' When South Africans woke up on the morning of 7 April, 2017 to protest against then President Jacob Zuma's removal of the respected Finance... posted on Jan 7, 3318 reads

Legendary Cellist Pablo Casals, at Age 93, on Creative Vitality
"Long before there was Yo-Yo Ma, there was Spanish Catalan cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (December 29, 1876-October 22, 1973), regarded by many as the greatest cellist of all time. The recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the U.N. Peace Medal for his unflinching dedication to justice and his lifelong stance against oppression and dictatorship, Casals was as much an extraordinary... posted on Jan 20, 4365 reads

On Death and Love
"I met Death in my early twenties. I had already lost loved ones before this time. A friend at school was taken by leukemia in a breathtaking six weeks one strange, hot summer. My grandfather, Eric, and my uncle, Tim, both died before their time. But none of us truly meets Death until we are ready to understand what it means. My first meeting came while sitting in a recording studio with a Holocau... posted on Jan 24, 4912 reads

His Back Pocket & Other Poems
Mick Cochrane is a professor of English and a longtime teller of stories. His published works include novels, short stories, essays, and poetry. His work is compelling, candid, and cuts straight to the heart of what it means to be human, what it means to experience love, loss, limitation, and transcendence. Here is a selection of three of his poems.... posted on Jan 27, 5209 reads

Hargila: A Story of Love & Conservation
In an age of massive global extinctions, a remarkable wildlife biologist in Indias Northeast shows the life-saving impact of simple, direct local action. When Dr. Purnima Devi Barman decided to dedicate herself to the survival of the Hargila, Assam's resident greater adjutant crane, the local population in Guwahati was a mere 20 nests. The scruffy, prehistoric bird was detested and routinely kille... posted on Feb 11, 2103 reads

What Can We Do When a Loved One is Suffering?
"What can we do when a loved one is suffering? This question has come up a lot so I wanted to share some thoughts in case it may be helpful to you or a loved one. First, I acknowledge how challenging it is to witness any kind of suffering, whether it is physical, emotional or existential pain. But let me throw in a specific curveball...What if they are suffering yet there is not much that you can ... posted on Apr 15, 11914 reads

I No Longer Sing With Only My Voice
"After I listened to a recording of Chelan Harkin's poem, called "I no longer pray," the words "I no longer sing with only my voice..." flashed into my head like a stroke of lightning. The qualities in the poem are like the seven synonyms for God, (Love, Mind, Soul, Spirit, Truth, Life, Principle) I learned about in Sunday School, except I only used six of them." 8-year-old poet Afton Wilder share... posted on Apr 20, 6304 reads

Becoming Who You Are Meant to Be
"In this podcast, Dr. Bolen joins Sounds True founder Tami Simon to reflect on her many years as a writer, teacher, and activist, and how doing our soul work becomes the path to self-actualization, connection, and contribution throughout our lives. They also discuss our innate capacity for love and awe; becoming a whole-brain person; speaking up as a key aspect of individuation; gratitude and appr... posted on May 9, 4118 reads

Why Rivers Should Have The Same Rights as Us
Who is water? This question presents a fundamental change in thinking by giving legal personhood to water and will transform our approach to water as a culture. In this TED talk, Kelsey Leonard argues that water needs legal rights just as people do. Leonard is a legal scholar and scientist in the the Shinnecock Nation--an indigenous tribe of people in the state of California, USA. Her tribe believ... posted on Jun 10, 1207 reads

Down By the Riverside
What if we as a society could say we were going to live in the Spirit of Love, cooperation and nonviolence and "study war no more"? This song performed by the Playing For Change organization has inspired many people all around the planet to work together for a better world. Playing For Change (PFC) is a movement created to inspire and connect the world through music, born from the shared belief th... posted on Jun 17, 1686 reads

Earth's Wild Music: Celebrating & Defending Nature's Songs
"I started thinking about how I could open people's hearts without breaking them. How I could point to the onrushing extinctions and not force people to turn away in absolute grief. I decided that I was going to have to write in a way that was like a wave -- I would lift people and smash them at the same time. What is it that reaches people without breaking them? What is it that goes straight into... posted on Aug 18, 1534 reads

We the People
Through hopeful lyrics and joyous dance, Nimo Patel and Ellie Walton's "We the People" video is a call to unity, togetherness and equality. It reminds us that if we learn to love, if we learn to listen, the good will indeed come someday. Sing along and let your spirit be lifted.... posted on Sep 23, 1803 reads

Peace Pilgrim: A Life of Service
"On January 1, 1953, at age 44, Mildred Lisette Norman changed her name to Peace Pilgrim, put
on a pair of canvas sneakers, donned dark blue slacks, blouse, and a tunic--on which she had
sown her new name--and set out to walk the length of the country leaving from Pasadena, CA...She would walk non-stop for the next 28 years, weaving back and forth across the country, and
makin... posted on Sep 25, 2358 reads

Spirituality, Art and Innocence
"Nothing can be loved at speed, and I think we might be looking at the loss of love in the world due to the increased velocity of ordinary life; the loss of care, skill and attention enough to ensure the health and happiness of each other and the planet earth. It is a baffling problem and governments seem unable to recognize it, or do much about it at present. To put it as a bleak modern metaphor,... posted on Oct 31, 2118 reads

Love Song
"Whether we accept it or not, the land itself is our earliest predecessor, the main character of all our stories, and listening to it, after all, is not a onetime undertaking but a practice." Chris Dombrowski's book, "The River You Touch," begins with a profound and timely question, "What does a meaningful, mindful, sustainable inhabitance on this small planet look like in the anthropocene? What f... posted on Nov 2, 1971 reads