originally by non-living molecular structures. These protocells essentially staged a temporary, local reversal of the Second Law of Thermodynamics which describes how the universe is undergoing an irreversible process of entropy: order inevitably becomes disordered and heat always flows from hot regions to colder regions. We see entropy in our daily lives every time we stir cream into our coffee, or break an egg for an omelet. Once the egg is scrambled, no amount of work will ever get the yolk back together again. Those first protocells, however, learned to turn entropy into order by ingesting it in the form of energy and matter, breaking it apart, and reorganizi... posted on Sep 12 2021 (4,861 reads)

because I take everything in my stride, smile through everything, doesn’t mean I don’t feel pain, loss or get hurt, it just means that every day I make a choice to transcend the negative and use every moment there is breath in this body to positively impact the world around me."  -- Preethi Srinivasan Born in 1979, Preethi was a very gifted and hard working child. She became the captain of the under-19 Tamil Nadu women's cricket team, and led the state team to the national championships in 1997 at the age of 17. She was also a gold-medalist national level swimmer. She excelled academically in her school life which spanned 9 countries across 3 cont... posted on Sep 18 2021 (4,698 reads)

is the second in a series of articles: Enduring Wisdom in Times of Great Change. In the spring of 2013, during my decade+ journey with chronic fatigue and vertigo, I stumbled across the work of Francis Weller, a grief therapist and self-described “soul activist,” who facilitated daylong grief workshops. Though wrestling in the muddy realm of the soul with strangers was hardly how I wanted to spend one of my weekends, I imagined there were invisible, inaccessible stresses I had to contend with. Stresses that made me unpleasantly reactive instead of thoughtfully responsive. Stresses that kept me in a fearful state rather than a healing one. What is chronic fatigue, any... posted on Oct 7 2021 (12,487 reads)

plasticity of the hippocampus. After the now-iconic 2000 study of the brains of London taxi drivers — which found that their elaborate qualification exam, requiring the memorization of thousands of city landmarks and 25,000 streets, resulted in significant increase in synapses and gray matter in the hippocampus — scientists have been studying what we can do to protect and even bolster our primary instrument for navigating space and selfhood. O’Connor points to the work of McGill University neuroscientist Véronique Bohbot, who has devised a hippocampal health regimen of recollection and navigation exercises of incrementally increasing difficulty that deli... posted on Sep 26 2021 (4,338 reads)

you’re a movie buff, as I am, you might remember Awakenings (1990). The main character, played by the late Robin Williams, is Dr. Malcolm Sayer. Though inexperienced, Sayer cares deeply about the residents in the mental hospital where he works as a neurologist. He’s especially curious about the patients who have been immobilized, or even comatose, since an epidemic of “sleeping sickness,” decades earlier. Eventually Dr. Sayer discovers that a drug called L-Dopa can “awaken” these patients from their strange state. A character named Leonard, portrayed by Robert De Niro, returns to normalcy after thirty years in a coma. He even falls in love,... posted on Oct 1 2021 (4,160 reads)

comes like a heron to fish in the creek, and the fish in the creek, and the heron who manlike fishes for the fish in the creek, and the birds who sing in the trees in the silence of the fisherman and the heron, and the trees that keep the land they stand upon as we too must keep it, or die. This knowledge cannot be taken from you by power or by wealth. It will stop your ears to the powerful when they ask for your faith, and to the wealthy when they ask for your land and your work. Answer with knowledge of the others who are here and how to be here with them. By this knowledge make the sense you need to make. By it stand in the dignity of good sense, whatever may follo... posted on Oct 31 2021 (17,447 reads)

isn't just untrue, it's dangerous, because it erases the very real challenges of recovery.  Now, don't get me wrong -- I am incredibly grateful to be alive, and I am painfully aware that this struggle is a privilege that many don't get to experience. But it's important that I tell you what this projection of heroism and expectation of constant gratitude does to people who are trying to recover. Because being cured is not where the work of healing ends. It's where it begins.  I'll never forget the day I was discharged from the hospital, finally done with treatment. Those four years of chemo had tak... posted on Nov 5 2021 (9,751 reads)

while also drawing them inward into the dazzling potentials of the human spirit. Theirs is a music that believes deeply in our fundamental interconnection, and the capacity we have to heal together. They embody the messages of their music in every aspect of their lives. It is this authenticity perhaps, that gives their music wings, allowing it to touch and inspire thousands across the world. Based in Bonn, Germany they both weave multiple traditions into their work. Nils grew up with extensive training in western classical music, and as an adult was profoundly influenced by his travels in West Africa where he had the rare chance to st... posted on Dec 8 2021 (5,125 reads)

this be the day We come together. Mourning, we come to mend, Withered, we come to weather, Torn, we come to tend, Battered, we come to better. Tethered by this year of yearning, We are learning That though we weren't ready for this, We have been readied by it. We steadily vow that no matter How we are weighed down, We must always pave a way forward. * This hope is our door, our portal. Even if we never get back to normal, Someday we can venture beyond it, To leave the known and take the first steps. So let us not return to what was normal, But reach toward what is next. * What was cursed, we will cure. What was plagued... posted on Dec 31 2021 (52,643 reads)

dear,” I thought. “What a loving but absurd vow.” I was reminded of being a small child, seeing with such tenderness my mother’s awkwardness in the world, and wanting so much for her to have a sense of her absolute belonging. Here I was, a helpless child, leveraging the only thing I had, my own nervous system, to create the world I wanted to live in.  I decided to follow along with this process that was creating itself. What was the next logical step in working with the contract? Somehow the way that I had begun the wording, it sounded so legal and contingent, and the ritual unbinding of contracts came into my head. Since every contract has at least ... posted on Jan 3 2022 (7,034 reads)

or do a grocery or drugstore run for them; you might also consider sending them a gift card for their meals. DO celebrate their wins, including the small ones  When a person is struggling with their mental health, every day can be full of challenges. So cheer on their accomplishments and victories. This can help affirm their feelings of agency and efficacy. This could look like thanking them for being so honest and vulnerable with you or  congratulating them for going to work or for taking their dog out for regular walks. DO read up on what they’re struggling with There’s another important burden you can remove from their plate: Having to teach you a... posted on Jan 5 2022 (7,568 reads)

again. Rampaging wildfires have displaced thousands of people in Colorado. Thousands more are without power after record snowfall in California. The nation’s had another deadly shooting spree. My family’s holiday travels across the country were, um, adventurous. Before our return home, my 82 year-old mother gifted me with her wedding ring, “in case I lose my mind and forget to do it later.” Busted my heart. Still, there are joys: Nathan, home from college, working his usual wizardry in the kitchen. Jihong, across the room, his cold thankfully just a cold. Beautiful snow, sifting down on the sub-zero world outside our snug house. Companionable cats, purr... posted on Jan 15 2022 (8,024 reads)

A weaver, she raises sheep for wool which she shears, cards, cleans, spins and dyes with plant dyes before weaving it into blankets and shawls.  She made a shawl for me, determining my colors from that one time we met – bright autumn shades – and designing it for the person she remembered. My hands touched heaven when I unwrapped the shawl, and for several minutes I simply stared, speechless with both the beauty of it and the magnitude of the gift. I imagined the months of work she had done, all the while imagining the person who would receive it at the end of the process. It was as if someone had been praying for me all this time, while I had had no idea it was happeni... posted on Feb 2 2022 (4,186 reads)

as I would have with other patients, instead of leaving the curtain in place in case his roommate returned, I pushed back the curtain and moved the chair to a spot where I could be seen from the doorway, a place from which I could escape if I needed to. M. began by ordering me to get him his birth certificate so that he could apply for public housing. He berated me loudly and at length when I told him that this wasn’t something I knew anything about, and that the hospital social worker would be able to help him get that done. Then he moved to the other side of the bed and faced the wall, his back to me, and began a torrent of stories, pouring out like the bitter water of a... posted on Jan 21 2022 (4,602 reads)

so we can be sensitive to the suffering of others and hopefully come to respect the basic human dignity of all. John Paul identifies four kinds of imagination that support rehumanization. The first is “the grandchild imagination.” By this he means that we can project ourselves into the future and see that our grandchildren and the grandchildren of our adversaries could easily have an intimate and common future. Through this process, we can imagine ourselves in a relational network that includes our adversaries. This kind of imagination can allow us to see beyond our current conflicts and biases. It prompts us to work for the common good of all. It also motivates us to unde... posted on Feb 6 2022 (4,556 reads)

are plenty of books that teach how to influence the behavior of others, but anyone who’s set a personal goal knows it’s a lot tougher to apply those lessons inward. Ayelet Fishbach, a behavioral science and marketing professor at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business, has written a new book that can help. Get It Done: Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation, which was released in January, offers a framework for setting and attaining goals, working through roadblocks, and keeping the temptation to quit at bay. “It’s really important to set goals that are not so abstract that you cannot come up with a plan,” Fishba... posted on Feb 15 2022 (3,485 reads)

— a state called “coherence,” distinct from simple relaxation. When we are in coherence, our bodies function optimally. What’s more, HeartMath scientists measured the electromagnetic field of the human heart to extend some six to eight feet outward. While in a state of coherence, someone can bring others in his or her field into coherence, thereby amplifying the healing potential. I imagined ten people in coherence in a single space. What if the subtler qi energies worked similarly, which is what qigong practitioners had been experiencing for millennia? A hundred people in coherence across vast distances. A thousand. A million. This wasn’t a private mind-b... posted on Mar 17 2022 (5,518 reads)

direct action is perhaps better understood as a powerful tool for resilient local people—one that demanded courage and discipline but that also drew on, cultivated, and sustained power for rank-and-file demonstrators. But if nonviolent direct action proved to be an effective method for how local people might challenge Jim Crow, the philosophy of nonviolence be- came an answer to why many struggled in this way. Angeline Butler recalled the power of learning about nonviolence in a 1959 workshop taught by James M. Lawson Jr. “In these workshops what we were talking about was our future,” Butler remembered. “A new phase of my life began as we ad- dressed the truth ab... posted on Mar 23 2022 (2,840 reads)

who’d gone before, I experienced my first taste of what you might call “wordless presence.” And I knew I could trust it. Fast forward thirty years, to 1989. I am by now an Episcopal priest, with ten years of service under my belt. I have a Ph.D. in Medieval Literature, earned nearly a decade earlier and never put to full use, though I have done a fair bit of scholarly writing on the fourteenth-century spiritual classic The Cloud of Unknowing. I have at this point worked in a variety of parishes from Philadelphia to coastal Maine, chiefly in a teaching capacity. My parishioners are by and large well educated, verbal, and contentious. They like to argue about th... posted on Apr 3 2022 (3,550 reads)

age 4 Paulus Berensohn asked his parents for dance lessons. "Boys in our family don't dance," was their response. That didn't deter him. When his mother complained to a friend about his persistence, her friend exclaimed, "But Edith, to dance is to spring from the hand of God!" Berensohn would go on to study dance at Juilliard, but his life took another unexpected turn when he witnessed Karen Karnes, a famous potter of the time, at work. The play of breath, energy and movement in her practice of the craft led him to a deep revelation of his own aspiration. Says Berensohn, "I was suddenly overwhelmed with a longing to learn that dance. The bridge for me at f... posted on Apr 12 2022 (13,051 reads)