and a sign that said " help yourself Wrote a letter of appreciation to my ex- husband Cleaned the dog park up and left plastic doggie poop bags Donated books and CD's to the library and left positive notes in library books- most in cancer and illness books wrote 5 letters to service people I deal with, telling them what I appreciated about them Made hot chocolate and pumpkin bread for our trash collectors Took our van and served hot chocolate and croissants to day workers waiting on the streets Gave a gift certificate for lunch to a struggling new cashier Made sandwiches to hand out to people on the street Made dinner for our new neighbor and her dog (... posted on Feb 13 2015 (36,881 reads)

realms of plants and animals have their dignity and rights as well the human. 4. Economic Simplicity: Simplicity means there are many forms of “right livelihood” in the rapidly growing market for healthy and sustainable products and services of all kinds—from home-building materials and energy systems to foods and transportation. When the need for a sustainable infrastructure in developing nations is combined with the need to retrofit and redesign the homes, cities, workplaces, and transportation systems of “developed” nations, then it is clear that an enormous wave of highly purposeful economic activity can unfold. 5. Elegant Simplicity: Simplicit... posted on Jan 5 2015 (72,443 reads)

walks around open to whatever needs to happen. This time, she said, it was us. I did not realize I was being kind to anyone...[More] A Rainy Evening at the Gas Station One rainy evening I went to fill up at the gas station. A pre-teen boy approached my car with a thick hoodie pulled around his face. He asked me for money to help him and his mother stay in their hotel for an additional week. He stated that if they did not come up with $25 they would be evicted that same evening. Having worked in social services before, and being a little skeptical, I asked how come his mother hadn't sought out social services for assistance. The boy said that they needed to remain in their hotel... posted on Jan 3 2015 (68,351 reads)

that, so many people came to us and asked “What about the United States?” and “What can I do?” We wanted to address that [in this new book], and it seemed that there are so many Americans who want to make a difference in some form, but the problems seem too vast. They are suspicious about corruption and [in]efficiency, and they don’t really know they can accomplish anything. In fact, we think there has been a pretty good evidence base that has emerged showing what works and doesn’t. Grant: That’s one of the big points that you hammer home in A Path Appears: We need to take evidence more seriously in this domain. Why aren’t we doing it, and ... posted on Sep 26 2015 (12,695 reads)

way to lead a joyful life is not to pursue happiness for ourselves, argues Christine Carter, but to pursue it for others “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” –Helen Keller Money doesn’t buy happiness. Obvious, right? On some abstract level, we know that money and other outward signs of success won’t ultimately make us happy—perhaps because we know wealthy or famous or powerful people who are deeply unhappy—but on another level, we don’t really believe it… or at least we don’t belie... posted on Feb 5 2015 (37,074 reads)

education, and even random strangers, just about everyone instinctively ‘gets’ the concept, even without any formal enquiry. It seems as though we instinctively feel that empathy is central to healthy, social, human life. Excitedly, our understanding of empathy is rapidly developing thanks to various thought leaders elevating the concept on a global scale. Thanks to this, the field of empathy is a challenging yet amazing emerging space to be involved in. During the course of my work and life, many people ask me for advice on where to begin their own explorations into empathy. Having personally consumed hundreds of articles, books, blogs, and video content, I thought I would ... posted on Feb 23 2015 (28,264 reads)

changing our stories, our beliefs, becomes the means by which we change ourselves - even our own genes - as well as the world we experience. Technology developed in the fiercely competitive mode has turned to seemingly endless Internet capacity for cooperation and collaboration. We talk to each other, empower each other, build community, become human again after an interlude of trying to turn ourselves into cogs within the wheels of industry, of mechanized society, even of a clockwork universe. We know there is something obsolete, something hopelessly immature, about the competing and fighting and grabbing going on at the highest levels of human society. After all, those ar... posted on Feb 26 2015 (22,794 reads)

do Shakespeare’s plays tell us about how to run classrooms in an unequal society? The school as factory was a predominant metaphor for education in the middle of the last century. Schools were to churn out young people ready for roles as workers and consumers. In current debates, the laboratory is the model, with successful education defined as controlling variables to produce desired outcomes. In Educating for Insurgency: The Roles of Young People in Schools of Poverty, Jay Gillen, a Baltimore public school teacher, vividly shows the limitations of both models. In each, authorities define successful outcomes in ways that reduce learning to a matter o... posted on Mar 10 2015 (15,774 reads)

significance we all depend on for our sense of mattering in the world. Individually and collectively, we need to recover a world that will nurture us, build a society that will sustain rather than erode us. Social and economic policies that prioritize real human need are priorities. But part of this task will also be to regenerate the possibilities of healthy nurturing touch in our lives and in our culture. There are many reasons to think this is possible, because a good half of the work here is to simply pay attention to our already existing tactile experience, and to edge it forward just a little. As we pick up the mug of tea, we notice the weight and shape, the particular bala... posted on Oct 16 2021 (45,529 reads)

that mirror neurons may play an important role in processing musical dynamics and affecting how we experience music. “Musical rhythms can directly affect your brain rhythms, and brain rhythms are responsible for how you feel at any given moment,” says Large. That’s why when people get together and hear the same music—such as in a concert hall—it tends to make their brains synch up in rhythmic ways, inducing a shared emotional experience, he says. Music works in much the same way language works—using a combination of sound and dynamic variations to impart a certain understanding in the listener. “If I’m a performer and you’... posted on Mar 6 2015 (30,960 reads)

flow of compassion.” Perhaps one of the most universal, yet most ignored teachings in religion is to “love thy enemy.” Obviously, Jesus Christ exemplifies this when he said, “God forgive them for they know not what they do” on the cross. The Tibetan Buddhist practices of compassion for “difficult others” echoes Jesus along these lines. I’ve found it very difficult to see my enemies as human, much less love them, so every day I work hard to remind myself that we are all the divine at different levels of understanding. I want my sons to have easier access to loving their enemies, so I’m starting their training in this t... posted on Mar 14 2015 (19,066 reads)

they had very good cell phone service, these people in the towns were on Facebook all the time, they're surfing the web on their phones, and this sort of got me thinking that in fact it would be possible to use the sounds of the forest, pick up the sounds of chainsaws programmatically, because people can't hear them, and send an alert. But you have to have a device to go up in the trees. So if we can use some device to listen to the sounds of the forest, connect to the cell phone network that's there, and send an alert to people on the ground, perhaps we could have a solution to this issue for them. 3:37     But let's take a moment to talk abou... posted on Jun 19 2015 (11,561 reads)

nerve applies this heart-rate brake in a dynamic cyclic manner, slowing things down while we exhale, allowing it to beat faster when we inhale. The strength of a person’s overall Vagal activity can be indexed as the difference in heart rate during inhalation (faster; less Vagal brake) and exhalation (slower; more Vagal brake)—this measure is called respiratory sinus arrythmia, and is the most common way to measure overall Vagal tone. The two new studies extend Porges’s work by suggesting that the Vagus may be key to the emergence of compassionate behavior during development as well as day-to-day experiences of compassion. Zoe Taylor’s Purdue team invited fa... posted on May 19 2015 (13,650 reads)

and left. Little was stunned. Where were they supposed to go? In that moment, she realized their vulnerability and marginalization, and felt a passionate calling to provide them with a community that would feel like a home. “My life,” Little says, “was forever changed.” It was then she left behind her congregation of 14 years to create a refuge for the homeless that would become the “church without walls” called the Welcome Church. Years of experience working in pastoral care and psychological counseling bolstered her belief that she could. “It was like a tapestry,” says Little, 61. “It was a combination of everything in my life l... posted on May 6 2015 (15,714 reads)

and hygiene officer. And then the final introduction, which came from a seemingly shy 15-year-old girl at one end. “My name is Natalia. I’m the President.” Ahem. I don’t know what your reaction to that was just now, but I had to pick my jaw up off the ground. I’ve visited more than 25 communities with charity: water, and never had I met a 15-year-old water committee president before. What it came down to was Natalia’s education, leadership, and work ethic. Having access to clean water gives her more time to spend in school, and as a result, she’s become better educated than many of the adults in her community. Now she’s a leader.... posted on Apr 7 2015 (19,325 reads)

what is really important . . . true love is really the same as awareness. They are identical”. If we can learn the lesson that love will further our evolution and that the greater our love the greater our awareness, then we are aligned for success in our journey home. With love—or a maturing awareness—as a foundation, the hallmark of the emerging era could be the healing of our many fragmented relationships. If that were to occur, it truly is possible to imagine a future that works for everyone. A compassionate or loving consciousness has ancient roots, but it is taking on a new importance as our world becomes integrated ecologically, economically, and culturally. Becau... posted on Aug 7 2015 (17,013 reads)

of generosity have sparked many others to join the gift economy movement and gained international attention. His story resonates deeply with many people because he shows that not only can you live your values, but life might be so much happier, healthier, and more rich, even under adverse circumstances (i.e. the worst case scenario everyone worries about). These kinds of stories can create such a dramatic psychological shift that some people (three I know personally) have changed careers to work on the new economy after hearing such stories. While not everyone can be just like Brice, he can help us take a little leap of faith that gets us all closer to an economy and culture we actually ... posted on May 25 2015 (23,472 reads)

rates successfully while achieving better outcomes, saving money, and protecting public safety. These programs have already demonstrated a reduction of recidivism to eight per cent, compared to national averages of 65 per cent to 70 per cent. Fania Davis and the Restorative Justice for Oakland Youth program is a good example, with a proven track record of diverting young people from detention and the likelihood of entering the ‘school to prison pipeline.’ Gregory Ruprecht’swork in Colorado is another, showing how police officers with conventional views of justice—‘lock them up and throw away the key’—can change over time as a result of direct exp... posted on May 18 2015 (12,689 reads)

of language and names. Among the many examples of linguistic imperialism, perhaps none is more pernicious than the replacement of the language of nature as subject with the language of nature as object. We can see the consequences all around us as we enter an age of extinction precipitated by how we think and how we live. Let me make here a modest proposal for the transformation of the English language, a kind of reverse linguistic imperialism, a shift in worldview through the humble work of the pronoun. Might the path to sustainability be marked by grammar? Language has always been changeable and adaptive. We lose words we don’t need anymore and invent the ones we need. ... posted on Jun 6 2015 (18,133 reads)

now, but it would have been so much easier (and cheaper) if someone had understood and intervened when I was young. In order to explore this issue further, I embarked on a project of my own and asked some of my friends to finish this sentence: “I wish my teacher had known…” Here are some of their responses, which have been lightly edited: “I wish my teacher had known how much it hurt me emotionally and intellectually when they would teach other subjects and work on projects, which I missed while I was in my special class for dyslexia.” Janelle has the common learning disability dyslexia, which affects about10 percent of the human population. Bec... posted on May 28 2015 (27,654 reads)