act of gratitude is a living whole. To superimpose on its organic flow a mental grid like a series of “steps” will always be somewhat arbitrary. And yet, for the sake of practice, such a delineation can be helpful. In any process, we can distinguish a beginning, a middle, and an end. We may use this basic three-step grid for the practice of gratitude: What happens at the start, in the middle, and at the end, when we experience gratitude? What fails to happen when we are not grateful? Before going to bed, I glance back over the day and ask myself: Did I stop and allow myself to be surprised? Or, did I trudge on in a daze? To be awake, aware, and alert are the beginning, ... posted on Jul 19 2016 (25,245 reads)

and a half years ago my grandmother was placed in a nursing home where she will live out the rest of her life. She has dementia and so her memory capacity has been marred.   Somehow though she remembers kindness.  She is my constant teacher.  One of things we like to do is walk down the halls in the nursing facility saying hello to the other residents.  We stop say hello and wait for an answer.   We rarely get a verbal response. My grandmother will put her face up real close so she and the neighbor will be looking eye to eye then, she will say hello again as she squeezes their hand.   She doesn't actually understand anymore that most of the residents are... posted on Jul 22 2016 (15,840 reads)

a profound feeling that shifts us outside the box of the routine and familiar and opens us to something much larger than ourselves writes Homaira Kabir. We’ve all felt it – the goose bumps on our arms when standing below towering Eucalyptus trees or the expansive feeling in our chests when watching the sun slowly set in the horizon. Researchers define it as the emotion of awe. Like most positive emotions, it boosts physical health and inspires altruistic action. And yet, awe is more – because it recruits both motivations of the paradoxical human brain. It gives rise to a feeling of fear that is initiated in the more primitive parts of the brain. B... posted on Jul 23 2016 (13,564 reads)

CROOKER’s poems have appeared widely, in magazines such as The Green Mountains Review, Poet Lore, The Potomac Review, Smartish Pace, The Beloit Poetry Journal, Nimrod,The Denver Quarterly, and anthologies such as The BedfordIntroduction to Literature, Good Poems for Hard Times (Garrison Keillor, editor), and Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania. Her poetry has been read on the BBC, the ABC (Australian Broadcasting Company), and by Garrison Keillor onThe Writer’s Almanac, and in Ted Kooser’s column, American Life in Poetry. A highly awarded poet, her prizes include the 2007 Pen and Brush Poetry Prize, ... posted on Jul 26 2016 (11,197 reads)

a story: A man has a burning question. He decides to seek out a famous Hasidic teacher, a man everyone says is the wisest person of his era. For a long time he walks by foot, carrying his question. He gets rained on; he gets hungry. He keeps walking. Finally, he arrives in the village where the teacher lives. The students, though, won't let him into the study house. How can this man's question be serious, when he has just arrived? They've been working for years to be found worthy of the teacher's attention. Finally, the man's question is stronger than his politeness. He breaks in, corners the teacher and asks, "What is the essence of truth?" The teach... posted on Aug 1 2016 (19,348 reads)

one year and one day ago today, doctor-poet Sriram Shamasunder was asked to share a poem on the wedding day of two friends, who in joining their lives together were also making a commitment to combine their energies, gifts and talents in service of the greater good.  Below is the special poem that he wrote and shared that day. Togetherness 8/1/15 somewhere right now so many someones are closing their eyes for the last time and so many others summon a first cry a birth a death an entrance an exit like a train station continuous but To travel together in this life carries a sweetness if only for a little while our travel... posted on Aug 2 2016 (21,099 reads)

medicine is an ecosystem of support for pursuing your own health and well-being. Inside that ecosystem is someone who cares about you. Integrative medicine is emerging from a successful history of treating physical ailments that often eluded Western modalities of care to become an ecosystem of support for health and wellness. Possibly the most visible sign of this development is the increasing attention of integrative medicine to primary care, where prevention and regard for the whole person is most critical. What distinguishes integrative medicine as an approach is that it distances itself from the traditional model of a patient dependent on an expert. Rather, it embraces a g... posted on Aug 4 2016 (16,359 reads)

are inviting a dozen writers such as yourself to meditate upon something they have stolen and upon the motives and consequences of this act, and to share their insights with our readers.” Well, I confess, I got caught.  And now I stand convicted.  At first, that invitation seemed harmless enough: Parabola is planning an issue on “theft:”  “We are inviting a dozen writers such as yourself to meditate upon something they have stolen and upon the motives and consequences of this act, and to share their insights with our readers.”  Fair enough.  I glanced at the deadline, glanced at my calendar, carefully avoided g... posted on Aug 8 2016 (11,986 reads)

this month, Shareable posted a short article about the Little Free Pantry in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Created by Jessica McClard, the Pantry is an easy way for people to share surplus food and household goods, and access items they may need. The response to the post has been incredible. In the first week, over 21,000 people read the article and it has been shared over 700 times on Facebook. Our hunch is that people love the low-cost, direct action approach that McClard is taking to fighting food insecurity on a neighborhood level. As we face overwhelming global issues, seeing a simple, human-scale project addressing problems on a local level is a welco... posted on Aug 11 2016 (15,856 reads)

Hempton is an acoustic ecologist. He has traveled the globe three times recording the vanishing sounds and silences of nature—from the songbird chorus that greets the dawn to the crash of waves on a rocky shore; from the call of a whale in the ocean depths to the drip of rain on a forest floor. After 30 years recording the natural world, he reports that “There are fewer than a dozen quiet places left in the United States. Even in our wilderness areas and national parks, the average noise-free interval has shrunk to less than five minutes during daylight hours.” Hempton makes his home in Joyce, Washington, so as to be near Olympic National Park, the place he calls ... posted on Aug 12 2016 (17,807 reads)

recently came across an excerpt from the “The Power Paradox” by Dacher Keltner. The paradox, he says, is that whenever any of us find ourselves in a position of leadership, a position where we can make a positive difference for others, “the very experience of having power and privilege [can lead] us to behave, in our worst moments, like impulsive, out-of-control sociopaths.” The way out of the paradox, he says, is using “power that is given to us by others...” Reflecting on this, I shared the following story at that week’s Awakin Circle I attend in the bay area: In the early 1990s I was excited to land a job as a principal with a prestig... posted on Aug 19 2016 (14,970 reads)

KINGSNORTH explores the ways we can improve our relationships with others at home, at work and with friends, by improving the way we communicate. 1. An intention for connection. Aim for a respectful and compassionate quality of connection, so that everyone can express themselves, be heard and understood. Trust that the connection is more important and more nourishing than being right, or even just having your say. Connection means to try to be open and stay in touch with what matters to the other person – and to yourself – in each present moment. 2. Listen more than you speak. We have two ears and one mouth – a reminder of what is important! Listening is... posted on Aug 20 2016 (176,378 reads)

(“Pancho”) Ramos-Stierle was pursuing his Ph.D. in astrophysics at the University of California at Berkeley when he learned that the University’s Los Alamos and Livermore Laboratories had contracted with the federal government to develop the next generation of nuclear weapons. The news transformed his life: he “stopped cooperating” with the institution and became a more involved activist. As a result of that decision, he has at times been houseless, living with friends, or in what he calls “the Redwood Cathedral.” For the past three years he has lived in the East Oakland neighborhood known as Fruitvale—a gang-torn and graffiti-tagged ... posted on Aug 23 2016 (17,303 reads)

central, final, inescapable fact is that inspired words create life in us because they are themselves alive,” wrote English classical scholar Cecil Maurice Bowra in 1955. Did he have a point? Is inspiration contagious? Do inspired works of art inspire the audience to create works of their own? There is a long tradition in the humanities that suggests it does. Plato once argued that inspiration is transmitted to the audience through the Muse. Remarkably, however, this has only just been tested scientifically. In a recent study, Todd Thrash and colleagues conducted the first ever test of “inspiration contagion,” using poetry as the vehicle. They look... posted on Aug 24 2016 (7,963 reads)

The title, and only the title, was inspired by the poem “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” by Wallace Stevens (see www.poetryfoundation.org/poem/174503). The subtitle was inspired by late-night TV infomercials. I. Whether we know it or not, like it or not, honor it or not, we are embedded in community. Whether we think of ourselves as biological creatures or spiritual beings or both, the truth remains: we were created in and for a complex ecology of relatedness, and without it we wither and die. This simple fact has critical implications: community is not a goal to be achieved but a gift to be received. When we treat community as a product tha... posted on Aug 29 2016 (28,579 reads)

night I saw a swashbuckling production of TREASURE ISLAND, that wild tale of adventure on the high seas and mayhem on tropical islands with buried treasure, and good guys and bad guys mixing it up with every mishap in the world you could imagine. It reminded me a bit of my marriage. It has been a year and a half since Herb died, and all the ups and down, triumphs and tragedies of our long life together are peeling off me one by one, as I remember and let go, releasing him bit by bit as I grieve and heal from the loss of the half-century journey we took together. It feels like removing petals from a daisy, or an artichoke one by one down to the heart, where, surrounded by yet one m... posted on Sep 14 2016 (19,597 reads)

the last two decades, much research has been published about the positive impact of forgiveness, particularly on the forgiver and in relationships. Now, a new study—building on a smaller but growing body of research in the workplace—supports the power of forgiveness to potentially improve well-being and productivity in professional settings. Conflict among colleagues is inevitable, and—left unheeded—associated with significant stress, health problems (both mental and physical), and poor productivity.  Researchers set out to explore the role of forgiveness in ameliorating these negative impacts. The participants—more than 2... posted on Sep 15 2016 (13,628 reads)

& the Monk won the 2016 Emmy Award for Most Outstanding Short Documentary. As a tribute to the compassion at the heart of this story, the filmmakers are offering the film in its entirety for viewing here. Lobsang Phuntsok is a former Tibetan monk who trained with His Holiness the Dalai Lama and spent years teaching Buddhism and meditation in the West. In 2006, he disrobed and moved back to his native India, establishing a community in the Himalayan foothills for orphans and impoverished children. Jhamtse Gatsal Children’s Community—“jhamtse gatsal” means “the garden of love and compassion” in Tibetan—is the sc... posted on Oct 18 2018 (122,957 reads)

my children were babies, I worried about every cough and fever. I frantically thumbed through my dog-eared copy of How to Raise a Healthy Child in Spite of Your Doctor (a powerfully helpful book written by an iconoclast pediatrician dedicated to the empowerment of parents), and spent hours on the Internet to assuage my anxiety. It was then I stumbled upon the miracle of homeopathy. Precisely how homeopathic medicines work remains a mystery, and yet, nature is replete with mysteries and with numerous striking examples of the power of extremely small things. Packed into tiny sugar balls the size of cupcake sprinkles, this natural form of nanopharmocology dilutes remedies to t... posted on Sep 25 2016 (15,262 reads)

we only realize our deepest values once we’ve contradicted them. For Tina, an up-and-coming African-American woman and associate professor at a prestigious private university, one of those moments came just after she had earned a coveted administrative post.  I met Tina at a five-day Multi-Cultural Competence workshop. Tina was the one who skillfully voiced the racial and gender bias that was occurring in the room, most challengingly by the famous founder and facilitator of the workshop.  As one of the most courageous women I know, she’s a perfect example of how easy it is for any of us to betray important values in challenging situations at ... posted on Oct 1 2016 (17,537 reads)