explanations, our educated knowings. Why love? Why illness, why healing? Why grace, birth and death, beauty, color, music, kindness – all moments of mysterious ripenings of life, and time. Why does one portal open, and another simply close? What in us gives birth to the unimaginably astonishing? How do we refuse, hinder, obstruct the emergent miraculous, the ache of the sacred in human events? No single theory can fully explain it. So we awake each day, and we watch. We live, we work, we do what we can, we have mercy. Sometimes, at the end of the day, the virga will claim everything, before it can reach us. So when the air drinks the rain, and the world is full of thunder,... posted on Nov 21 2015 (18,013 reads)

pierces the heart of something I myself worry about daily as I witness the great tasks of human culture reduced to small-minded lists and unimaginative standards that measure all the wrong metrics of “productivity” and “progress.” Palmer urges: Take on big jobs worth doing — jobs like the spread of love, peace, and justice. That means refusing to be seduced by our cultural obsession with being effective as measured by short-term results. We all want our work to make a difference — but if we take on the big jobs and our only measure of success is next quarter’s bottom line, we’ll end up disappointed, dropping out, and in despair. ... posted on Nov 3 2015 (60,622 reads)

reduce the muck. Given the extraordinary complexity of this task, wouldn’t it be great to hand principals a “silver bullet” for building a learning environment in which everyone thrives? But alas, no silver bullet exists. For principals who aren’t sure where to start, the Greater Good Science Center’s new website,Greater Good in Action, offers many research-based practices that can easily be adapted for use in staff meetings and professional development workshops, and for developing principals’ own social and emotional capacities as they work with students and staff. Here are a few examples. If you want to help everyone slow down, you mig... posted on Nov 11 2015 (13,997 reads)

are sharks. And the reason that there are still sharks — hundreds of millions of years after the first sharks turned up — is that nothing has turned up that is better at being a shark than a shark is. Ebooks are absolutely fantastic at being several books and a newspaper; they’re really good portable bookshelves, that’s why they’re great on trains. But books are much better at being books… I can guarantee that copy of the first Sandman omnibus still works. But stories aren’t books — books are just one of the many storage mechanisms in which stories can be kept. And, obviously, people are one of the other storage mechanisms. Il... posted on Nov 18 2015 (14,625 reads)

people prefer to stay in the fight-or-flight mode, honing their “edge” and paying the price for it in physical fatigue and mental strain. I used to do that too. But even in the middle of the myriad demands to perform at your best, telling yourself “I have time” can provide a mini-break to the nervous system. It offers a moment of choice in spite of the fact that you have to finish the job. It reminds you to attend to your body-being as you press forward with your work, inviting you to release the tensions gathered at the back of your head, and let your thoughts latch onto your body movements. You can interrupt whatever you are doing for just a second to stretc... posted on Dec 3 2015 (22,063 reads)

into other people’s shoes has been a catalytic force for social change throughout human history. Credit: www.intentionalworkplace.com. All rights reserved. You can always tell when a good idea has come of age: people start criticising it. That’s certainly the case when it comes to empathy. Empathy is a more popular concept today than at any time since the eighteenth century, when Adam Smith argued that the basis of morality was our imaginative capacity for “changing places in fancy with the sufferer.” Neuroscientists, happiness gurus, education policy-makers and mediation experts have all been singing its praises. This has, of course, got the ... posted on Dec 14 2015 (12,527 reads)

enjoy the light. The bonus was that the windows faced hilly forestland that was raw and undeveloped. On the small balcony outside my window, bright red cardinals flitted from the railing to a bird feeder a neighbor had hung. Ingenious squirrels had figured out how to leap from the balcony railing onto the feeder, make withdrawals and time their dismounts from the swinging platform so as to land safely back on the railing. I had positioned a comfortable chair facing the window where I could work at any time of day or night. Birds, light, privacy. A lifetime making photographic images has engrained in me the habit of squinting at the world. It is my way of answering the question: Is t... posted on Dec 16 2015 (10,884 reads)

to you, May a flock of colours, Indigo, red, green, And azure blue, Come to awaken in you A meadow of delight. When the canvas frays In the currach of thought And a stain of ocean Blackens beneath you, May there come across the waters A path of yellow moonlight To bring you safely home. May the nourishment of the earth be yours, May the clarity of light be yours, May the fluency of the ocean be yours, May the protection of the ancestors be yours. And so may a slow Wind work these words Of love around you, An invisible cloak To mind your life. [Note: "Beannacht" is the Gaelic word for "blessing." A "currach" is a large boat use... posted on Jan 1 2016 (238,366 reads)

us.” In other words, gratitude isn’t merely about reward—and doesn’t just show up in the brain’s reward center. It involves morality, connecting with others, and taking their perspective. In further studies, Fox hopes to investigate what’s going on in the body as gratitude improves our health and well-being. “It’s really great to see all the benefits that gratitude can have, but we are not done yet. We still need to see exactly how it works, when it works, and what are the best ways to bring it out more,” he says. “Enhancing our knowledge of gratitude pulls us closer to our own human dignity and what we can do to benefi... posted on Jan 2 2016 (16,337 reads)

operating at five different locations, and a third vehicle is scheduled to launch in early 2016. A man who identified himself as Bobby said trying to get clean in the past has been a dirty, sometimes violent problem. He described his experience after his first shower in this video. "It was clean, it was quiet, I was not bothered … it was personal, I had enough time, people were courteous, they were kind, and I feel brand new," he said. Another guest named Ron, who worked as a painter before a fall off a ladder left him disabled and eventually homeless, seemed hopeful for the future after his visit. "Even in the shelters, some of the showers are really, rea... posted on Jan 6 2016 (11,698 reads)

casts love as something that happens to us passively and by chance, something we fall into, something that strikes us arrow-like, rather than a skill attained through the same deliberate practice as any other pursuit of human excellence. Our failure to recognize this skillfulness aspect is perhaps the primary reason why love is so intertwined with frustration. That’s what the great German social psychologist, psychoanalyst, and philosopher Erich Fromm examines in his 1956 masterwork The Art of Loving (public library) — a case for love as a skill to be honed the way artists apprentice themselves to the work on the way to mastery, demanding of its practitioner both ... posted on Jan 12 2016 (19,224 reads)

it as high as it would go. One of them climbed to the top. "It was like saying, 'Look, you're on your way to heaven," Trujillo told HuffPost. Toward the end of the visit, Bopsy turned to Fireman Bob. "Am I a real firefighter?" he asked. "Well, yeah," Walp responded. "Of course you are." Bopsy passed away the next morning, with his mother, grandmother and aunt by his side. After Bopsy's death, Trujillo distracted herself with work and graduate school. She earned her PhD in 1991, became the first chairwoman for the Pascua Yaqui Tribe of Arizona in 1994, and was hired as a professor of American Indian education at Northern A... posted on Feb 4 2016 (18,550 reads)

to Darshan. “This is the moment that changed me forever. The smile on the faces of those children left me touched. And that is when I decided to do something about it,” he says. Thus, the BhookMitao campaign was born. On June 7, 2015, Darshan and his friends went and fed a couple of children in a slum in Vadodara, Gujarat. Today, the BhookMitao movement provides nutritious lunch to as many as 1,200 children in Vadodara. How they do it? As the volunteer network grows, Darshan has divided it into groups. Each group takes up a particular spot in the city. For instance, in Vadodara there are 10 spots, usually in slums, where the children are fed. Volunt... posted on Feb 6 2016 (25,214 reads)

to Kolkata? How often do you go to India? My parents left Kolkata when I was two years old to settle in the United States. We were the only ones from our family living in the U.S. so we would travel back to India every four years or so to visit relatives. I grew up speaking Bengali at home. What prompted you to tackle the project now? My brother was getting married in Kolkata and my children had quite a bit of time off for winter vacation. Also, my husband had a break from his hectic work schedule and could help document the project. A good friend of mine and talented photographer, Julie Black, agreed to accompany us. I had just quit a very stressful job producing a live news radi... posted on Feb 27 2016 (11,642 reads)

Pete Hagerty founded a Russian-American yarn company during the height of the Cold War, he wasn’t trying to save the world. He was trying to save himself. The sun is just beginning to cut through the chill autumn air as Pete Hagerty, founder of Peace Fleece in Porter Maine, begins his daily chores. Moving with an agility that belies his 64 years, he tugs on a pair of worn leather work gloves, pulling them up over the cuffs of his blue and white checked shirt and faded wool sweater. Beneath a well-worn cowboy hat, his gray hair and mustache are neatly trimmed, framing delicate Irish features made rugged by years of outdoor labor. His expression is echoed in a framed black... posted on Mar 1 2016 (11,270 reads)

to undo the socialization of perfection, but we've got to combine it with building a sisterhood that lets girls know that they are not alone. Because trying harder is not going to fix a broken system. I can't tell you how many women tell me, 08:00"I'm afraid to raise my hand, I'm afraid to ask a question, because I don't want to be the only one who doesn't understand, the only one who is struggling. When we teach girls to be brave and we have a supportive network cheering them on, they will build incredible things, and I see this every day. Take, for instance, two of our high school students who built a game called Tampon Run -- yes, Tampon Run -- to figh... posted on Mar 25 2016 (25,938 reads)

we revel in but hide from others, the confused self we re ashamed of, and even the downright crazy self we sometimes are. But it also includes the Other Side: what-we-don’t-know-or-suspect in ourselves. By this I mean the forces that come up under us and get us to say or do things we truly didn’t mean or want to do. Sometimes it’s hard to believe how much more there is to us than the day-to-day solver of our life’s problems. While certain parts of ourselves are at work every day, pushing the darker aspects aside whenever they pop up, there are friends within that we never think to contact. Perhaps because we don’t believe they are there or maybe because w... posted on Mar 26 2016 (16,713 reads)

rent Renters around the country are financially and physically vulnerable. While half of them pay more than 30 percent of their income in rent, according to the Center for American Progress, they have nothing to show for it on the other end compared to homeowners, who build equity as they pay down their mortgages. Renting Partnerships gives Cincinnati renters a third option: Build equity through social capital. In exchange for fulfilling commitments in an equity lease agreement—like work assignments on the property, timely payment of rent, and participating in resident meetings—renters earn financial credits. Money saved by low turnover is invested in a financial fund. Afte... posted on Mar 31 2016 (14,944 reads)

here? I wanted to know their stories.And as the prosecutor read the facts of each case, I was thinking to myself, we could have predicted that. That seems so preventable... not because I was an expert in criminal law, but because it was common sense. Over the course of the internship, I began to recognize people in the auditorium, not because they were criminal masterminds but because they were coming to us for help and we were sending them out without any. My second year of law school I worked as a paralegal for a defense attorney, and in that experience I met many young men accused of murder. Even in our "worst," I saw human stories. And they all contained childhood trauma... posted on Apr 3 2016 (15,682 reads)

am a second-generation Mexican American leadership coach and elder living in California. I experienced so much prejudice and racism during my young adulthood that for years I avoided even being in the presence of white people. Finally, well into my 30s, I realized that the wounds and pain I carried were robbing me of my full potential. I could do better than be angry at other people; I could work to transform the ignorance beneath the racial injustice. During the ensuing years, while I grew to accept the love within me, I also realized the necessity of extending this love to all others. I decided to make my daily conversations opportunities to learn and heal. Racism is extremely complic... posted on Apr 8 2016 (11,048 reads)