my circumstances may not be exactly as I wish, I still have reason to be grateful. Right now, as I sit in my cell, it’s hot and the air is stale — but I hear a little bird chirping happily somewhere outside my window. ~ Scott Zirus, TX Does gratefulness truly make us happy? How does gratefulness serve us during difficult times? What is your experience of gratitude as a person who is incarcerated and denied so many of the freedoms and privileges associated with happiness?These are some of the questions we explored through Grateful Anyhow, a recent project in partnership with Prisoner Express (PE) that engaged approximately 350 incarcerated men and women ... posted on Aug 28 2019 (5,837 reads)

conversation is presented courtesy of TheGreenInterview.com, a website that has produced more than 100 feature-length interviews with many of the world's greatest environmental thinkers and activists. More about the site here.  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 only ... posted on Sep 12 2019 (6,984 reads)

follows is the transcript of an Awakin Call interview with Sr. Marilyn Lacey in August of 2019. You can listen to the recording of the entire call here.  Mercy Beyond Borders Micro-Ent moms in Uganda grateful for their business loans Pavi Mehta: Now it's my pleasure to introduce Sister Marilyn, who just flew in from Haiti six hours ago and graciously joined us this morning. Sister Marilyn Lacey is the Founder and Executive Director of Mercy Beyond Borders, a nonprofit organization that partners with displaced women and children overseas to alleviate their poverty. She's been a Sister of Mercy since 1966 and holds a Master's degree in Social Work from ... posted on May 6 2021 (3,664 reads)

as too many of us do, separated from  Nature, we forget that we are supported on this planet only insofar as we remain connected in relationship to Earth and all of her creatures. John Muir understood this deeply. He encouraged people to “stay close to Nature’s heart” for healing and solace. It takes patience, quiet, and a willingness to step away from the pull of technology to find the heart of Nature in real time.  He saw how Nature has been sustained over eons through storms, floods, and fires, but she will “not be saved from fools” – meaning humans who have lost their relationship with Life. This is a problem for our ag... posted on Sep 24 2019 (6,414 reads)

from the book Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche by Bill Plotkin. Published by New World Library, 2013 www.newworldlibrary.com. It’s time to take another look at ourselves — to re-enliven our sense of what it is to be human, to breathe new life into ancient intuitions of who we are, and to learn again to celebrate, as we once did, our instinctive affinity with the Earth community in which we’re rooted. We’re called now to rediscover what it means to be human beings in a wildly diverse world of feathered, furred, and scaled fellow creatures; flowers and forests; mountains, rivers, and oceans; wind, rain, and snow; Sun and Moon. Our I... posted on Sep 25 2019 (8,691 reads)

perhaps overrepresented, the setting for about half of the book’s selections. Europe and Asia are represented by seven entries each, and Australia features prominently in two essays. Just a handful of selections have ties to countries in Africa and South America. Pieces speak to each other in complex, surprising ways. A sense of interconnectedness is one of the anthology’s most striking features. In addition to the typical themes of identity, community, and place, other thematic images emerge and echo throughout. These include gardens; beehives; trees as companions; tigers; architecture; fathers and rivers; dreams and dreamscapes. The resulting concatenation creates a rich co... posted on Oct 5 2019 (5,067 reads)

Sun-hee finely crushes eggshells, dries and saves her coffee grounds, and separates large vegetable offcuts into smaller pieces. Later, the 55-year-old professional translator will bury them in her backyard, in rotating plots of earth that are given ample time to compost before being replenished. She will plant tomatoes, basil and corn in the resulting soil. She has a raft of little tricks to make it all work: In the summer, for example, her husband dices up the rinds of every watermelon he eats in order to make the composting process faster. “When we lived in an apartment, I would throw away all my food waste into the shared collection containers,” Chung said. “Bu... posted on Oct 24 2019 (10,448 reads)

Quilty is like any other human being: complex, flawed, obvious, messy, courageous, funny. As one of Australia’s best-known and internationally acclaimed artists, his public profile as an “artist activist” can invite intense public scrutiny. He gets fairly and unfairly described as all kinds of things, yet his modus operandi is humanity and compassion. In 2002, Ben won the Brett Whiteley Travelling Art Scholarship, and was a finalist in the Wynne and Archibald prizes. His success continued: he won the Doug Moran National Portrait Prize in 2009 with a portrait of Jimmy Barnes, and in 2011 he won the coveted Archibald Prize with a portrait of artist and mentor, Margaret... posted on Nov 20 2019 (5,129 reads)

Accountability for Social Change is a monthly series on Giving Compass exploring feedback in philanthropy with practical steps for donors. It serves as a primer for the 2020 publication of David Bonbright’s (co-founder and chief executive, Keystone Accountability) book on the emergence of mutuality — working on relationships and not just in them — as a breakthrough approach to philanthropy and social change. The stories and advice are based on a 40-year journey to mutuality craft. Part Five of this series has been syndicated below. As one of the world’s most famous moral leaders, Nelson Mandela’s larger-than-life struggle against aparth... posted on Nov 8 2019 (4,675 reads)

Runkle is an author, an activist, an investor, and a nonprofit leader. He founded Mercy for Animals when he was 15 years old and, at the time, was part of a beginning of a plant-based farm animal advocacy group movement that has now become the largest plant-based environmental advocacy organization in the world. This came out of an experience Milo had when he was young, growing up in rural Ohio, where a teacher brought in a baby piglet for dissection. That baby piglet was not fully dead and he saw it recklessly thrown against the floor in standard factory farming practices to kill it. He wanted to press charges around that treatment of the animal.  Seeing that the legal system woul... posted on Dec 5 2019 (5,132 reads)

past July, I decided to leave the San Francisco summer fog, and head across the Golden Gate Bridge to a retreat center in warm Marin county. The Santa Sabina Retreat Center, tucked away in a corner of the Dominican College campus, feels likes a large home, with 40 single bedrooms surrounding a lovely courtyard with a center fountain.  I was first introduced to the Center over a decade ago when I was coordinating retreats for tenured public-school teachers here in San Francisco, and for half a decade, I held six week-long retreats a year there until the funding ended. Throughout those years, the Center began to feel like a second home to me and was a place that comforte... posted on Dec 7 2019 (6,661 reads)

the village and the people in the community form a circle around them. Then they sing their song to them. The tribe recognizes that the correction for antisocial behaviour is not punishment; it is love and the remembrance of identity. When you recognize your own song, you have no desire or need to do anything that would hurt another. A friend is someone who knows your song and sings it to you when you have forgotten it. Those who love you are not fooled by mistakes you have made or dark images you hold about yourself. They remember your beauty when you feel ugly; your wholeness when you are broken; your innocence when you feel guilty; and your purpose when you are confused. You ma... posted on Dec 16 2019 (12,229 reads)

you listen, how you validate, and how you explore options. To go into listening more the way I visualize it, think of a box—think of a big box, maybe the size of a room. If you’`re standing on one side of that box, you can only see one, maybe two sides of that box. If you could visualize that what people are saying to you, they’`re talking to you from another side of the box. Let me go further and say imagine that this box, on each side of the box there are ever-changing images, completely changing constantly, so even if you go around and try to see that person’`s side, there’`s going to be other stuff on another side that you don’`t see. If we can r... posted on Feb 9 2020 (6,493 reads)

down that bag of potato chips, that white bread, that bottle of pop. Turn off that cellphone, computer, and remote control. Open the door, then close it behind you. Take a breath offered by friendly winds. They travel the earth gathering essences of plants to clean. Give it back with gratitude. If you sing it will give your spirit lift to fly to the stars’ ears and back. Acknowledge this earth who has cared for you since you were a dream planting itself precisely within your parents’ desire. Let your moccasin feet take you to the encampment of the guardians who have known you before time, who will be there after time. They sit before the fire that has bee... posted on Jan 3 2020 (35,768 reads)

right now to do whatever we can to help prevent or mitigate the horrific scenarios that we have set in motion. What could be a greater moral imperative? Only human beings can protect and defend the future of life on Earth from human beings. It will take conscious individuals making deliberate choices based on the best information available—people presuming responsibility to make a difference. Nothing could be more honorable and worthwhile. The word “activist” conjures images of sit- ins, people circulating petitions and raising money and marching and organizing and meeting and getting people to the polls. But it also means doing research, starting businesses, makin... posted on Feb 3 2020 (9,140 reads)

powerful need to feel your presence. I think you would be happy to know that I’m doing okay, I’m moving forward, “guarda avanti, non fermarti,” (look ahead, not back) an expression Rossano taught me some time ago, even if I am dragging that withered limb. For the most part only you and I and God can see it. By the way, I just looked up from the bed where I’m sitting writing and noticed that the mirror on the wall in this room, my room, has three little sunshine images with smiley faces, and they make me smile back at them! Another thing that makes me smile is the fact that Angelo, the dear owner of Il Campo dei Papaveri, my Mornese home, had on my bed waitin... posted on Feb 14 2020 (4,885 reads)

it through music, spoken word, photography and beyond. The more that our gratitude is experienced through many senses at once, the more deeply it resonates, and the more it persists. To sing our gratitude turns it into a melody we can carry inside later, which helps inspire our kindness and motivates us in our daily actions. To hear gratitude spoken by others in their own poetic terms deepens our perspective on our own experience. To see gratitude visually represented in photographic images, reminds us of the persistent beauty of the damaged world. It all coalesces.  Personally, I find that The Nature of Gratitude has inspired my grateful actions on a daily basis. I’... posted on Mar 5 2020 (6,241 reads)

is quiet as I write this. It is so quiet that I can imagine the cries of those who suffer: the pangs of hunger in Yemen, the hundreds of Rohingya who continue to flee Myanmar to the world's largest refugee camp, children pining for their parents at the U.S. border, and so many more. Our earth cries out for relief as its trees burn and its glaciers melt. News of yet another school shooting, this one in Santa Clarita, California, has just appeared on my newsfeed. When I read the news, I am filled with frustration at the endless cycles in which we appear to be caught, and humanity's seeming inability to grow and change. Many of the structures of society appear to be organized to m... posted on Mar 23 2020 (7,127 reads)

Waves" -- Three Sisters Pioneer A New Kind Of Lemonade Stand In Orinda, California Warm greetings of peace, hope, and healing to you and yours.  As we navigate these perilous waters of our common life – with all the grace and gratefulness we can muster – you might find support in exploring these thoughts on “Caring for Self and Others in Times of Trouble: Some Spiritual Tools and Tips.” Please share these wherever you wish, taking what you need and leaving the rest. If you would like to share your own best practices, please do so in the reflection area below. Breathe. Breathe. Breathe some more. Take time in your day, at any moment, to ... posted on Mar 27 2020 (13,844 reads)

if this virus had a hidden agenda other than spreading fear about how it might compromise our health? What if, hidden in its drive to be contagious there was another message, urging to be heard? Whether we come running or are being dragged, this virus teaches us to consider each other in a whole new way. Much like prisoners, we are being asked to give up our personal freedom to protect society from ourselves. We get a brief taste, with these temporary 'shelter in place' orders, what it might be like to be confined for decades on end. Please consider what it is like, to be elderly or in bad health—and trapped inside prison? How does it feel to be punished for being ... posted on Apr 24 2020 (7,779 reads)