Davis was my first friend in Louisville. My husband had accepted a new job in town, and the company brought us here for Derby before we made the move. My firstborn was only ten months old at the time, and still nursing furiously on demand. I had never left him for more than an hour or two. I couldn’t leave him with “just anybody”. I was a new Mom; neurotic, attached, nervous… and so I called the local Waldorf school. I figured that anybody trained in the ways of Rudolf Steiner would have a good feel for how I cared for my sweetly spoiled boy. That’s how I met Angie. She called me back and I interviewed her for an hour (can you imagine!). Even so, she agr... posted on May 3 2014 (15,309 reads)

Garfield draws on decades of experience to explore how to create the conditions for a good death. Some years ago, I helped tend to a friend of mine who was dying of cancer. Near the end of his life, he had reached a place of equanimity around dying. But instead of honoring his wishes for a peaceful death, his doctors ordered aggressive chemotherapy treatment, which did nothing to halt his cancer. The treatments caused him immense suffering, rendering him unable to sleep, eat, or converse with family and friends as he was dying. Unfortunately, deaths like my friend’s are not that rare. Though more than 70 percent of Americans surveyed say they want to die in their o... posted on Jun 24 2014 (85,415 reads)

about recognition. works: I think these things are not easy to articulate. Which leads me to this question: what is it that painting can do that words can’t? SC: Well, I think that the painting is a stand-in for the body. It becomes the host. That’s part of its conversion. It becomes a host for the spiritual. It’s a symbol for the life force, but I actually think it becomes that. That’s why some paintings have such longevity and people continue to make pilgrimages to see them. Good paintings enable us to believe in the palpability of its skin, of the existence of a body. works: The painting as "a stand-in for the body." I’ve never hear... posted on Jul 17 2014 (15,589 reads)

versus them” is not a paradigm that Jacques Verduin buys into. As the founder and director of the prison program Insight-Out, he believes that prison serves a purpose for people who cannot contain themselves when they act dangerously, but he has also learned that none of us is much different from the incarcerated. When a culture schizophrenically glorifies violence and discounts feelings, we project our own discomfort, fear, and rage onto others and must lock away the part of ourselves we don’t want to deal with. Paying a debt to society is one thing; being abandoned by it is quite another. “The Navajo have a way of describing someone who has committed a crime: he... posted on Jun 30 2014 (23,294 reads)

lovely this world is, really: one simply has to look.” Perhaps counterintuitively, the diaries of celebrated artists, writers, and scientists, private as they are, are often reminders not only of their humanity but of our own, brimming with deeply and widely resonant insights on our shared struggles and yearnings. Such is the case of The Journal of Joyce Carol Oates (public library) — a chronicle of Oates’scharacteristically self-reflexive, sometimes self-conscious, but always intensely intelligent and perceptive meditations on literature and life. One of her most beautiful reflections, penned on a cold December morning in 1977 — a pivotal time in Oat... posted on Jun 19 2014 (9,995 reads)

weeks back, Sam and I spoke at a local gathering in Oakland. In casual conversation, the convener of our circle, Syra tells us: "I love that so many people are talking about sharing. See, I'm always campaigning for it," handing us a card for local sharing event. "But you know, I tried to get into this sharing conference, and it was 500 bucks! Doesn’t that just feel wrong? Most of us can’t afford that kind of sharing." Like many, Syra consolidated two ideas into one: sharing and giving. Traditionally, sharing has much in common with giving, but in the booming phenomena of a ‘Sharing Economy’, they are significantly different. Sharin... posted on Jan 22 2015 (21,900 reads)

all know that hope is a good thing, even an essential thing: there is no life without hope, or so the saying goes. Psychologists believe hope might be the most important feeling, state, or emotion we can experience. Their studies show that hope is key to good health, the best predictor of a meaningful existence, and an indicator of academic and athletic performance. Yet we tend to think of hope as something you either have or you don’t, something you’re born with, or born into, through perfect parenting or perfect circumstances. But research spearheaded by Anthony Scioli, a professor of psychology at Keene State College in New Hampshire and author of The Power of ... posted on Aug 5 2014 (46,696 reads)

simple daily practices can alter the neural pathways in your brain and help you turn your thinking around In fourth grade I was placed in an advanced math group with four other students. Every day we gathered around a circular table at the back of the classroom and learned algebra. Being part of this special group felt good; when it came to math I was calm, confident, and competent. One day the teacher announced a math quiz: 12 addition problems (simple equations containing four numbers each) to be done in 6 minutes. “These are very easy,” the teacher explained. “If you can’t get all twelve correct, then you’re just plain stupid.” Stupid?... posted on Sep 26 2014 (111,580 reads)

I scan the room looking for my targets. Two sets of couples jump out: one that very much seem to be enjoying each others company in sweetly engaged conversation, and another set sitting in front of each other but both silently and totally absorbed by their mobile phones. Which couple’s lunch should I anonymously pay for, and more deeply, does anyone really need to go to such extra effort to practice kindness in the world? In our modern world, making a concerted effort to be kind is as vital as making a concerted effort to get some exercise. The parallels between a workout for your body and your spirit are uncanny, with analogous outcomes as material and mental consequen... posted on Aug 27 2014 (30,225 reads)

can be disarming. That’s what Carolyn North discovered. It started with an impulse to save the leftover Thanksgiving turkey her neighbor had discarded as trash. Thirty years later, she and a rotating team of friends-turned-volunteers have been quietly recovering surplus food and delivering it to free food shelters and pantries across the San Francisco Bay Area. At the surface, it’s a simple labor-of-love initiative called Daily Bread. Last year, its 90 local volunteers delivered 32 tons of food with little overhead and virtually no budget. For volunteers, it’s a straightforward weekly routine that takes less than an hour to complete. For food donors, it&... posted on Oct 30 2014 (16,643 reads)

executive David Campbell never imagined that a casual lunch with a friend in Boston in December 2004 would change the course of his life. Their conversation turned to the devastating Indian Ocean tsunami that had ravaged Southeast Asia two days earlier. It was a personal shock to his friend who had eaten lunch at a Meridien Hotel in Phuket, Thailand, just ten days before. The hotel had been damaged and several guests killed. The story deeply affected Campbell, who scoured the web to learn all that he could about the largest natural disaster of his lifetime. When he discovered a hotel in Bang Tao, Thailand, that had been damaged but, miraculously, still had Internet service, an ... posted on Dec 10 2014 (20,671 reads)

Bad to Good: You can get here from there. Ready, Willing and Able trainees in Liberty State Park, Jersey City, N.J. Let’s call him Joe. When I stopped to chat with him on the street one hot summer day, he was sweeping up New York City’s detritus, dressed in the familiar blue pants and shirt of Ready, Willing & Able. Joe told me he got out of prison four months ago. “I’ve learned my lesson,” he said dolefully, “but once I got out the situation was pretty dismal.” That’s when he turned to the Doe Fund, as tens of thousands of homeless men and ex-cons have done since 1990. One of some 700 current m... posted on Jan 4 2015 (31,411 reads)

my email one morning I found a note from Nipun Mehta: We’ve lined up an incredible guest for the July 5th Awakin Call, artist Lily Yeh, and we were wondering if you were available to interview?  I quickly Googled Lily Yeh and yes, I would be available. I’ve done a few other Awakin Calls and, thanks to the remarkable guests, each one has been inspiring. Awakin Calls are one of ServiceSpace’s several avenues for spreading social nourishment, and the guests are always well chosen. Writing now, some months after the conversation with Lily, I find myself struggling for a description that will capture my own experience of it. The language one t... posted on Feb 22 2015 (25,793 reads)

world may sound slightly dismal from certain vantage points. In the United States, a large amount of money is devoted to incarceration compared to education. California spends $47,421 per inmate, as opposed to $11,420 per student. The latest report from Alliance for Excellent Education states, “The nation could save as much as $18.5 billion in annual crime costs if the high school male graduation rate increased by only 5 percentage points.” But I would like to invite you to our little world in a suburban city within the Los Angeles County. We are like a community within a community. This is our public school adventure…. Wisdom from 10-Year-Olds I am someo... posted on Feb 27 2015 (19,686 reads)

studies are suggesting that music can be more powerful than medication. When I gave birth to my first-born, I listened to CDs of classical music in the hospital. I figured that music would help calm me and distract me from the pain. You might use music to distract yourself from painful or stressful situations, too. Or perhaps you’ve listened to music while studying or working out, hoping to up your performance. Though you may sense that music helps you feel better somehow, only recently has science begun to figure out why that is. Neuroscientists have discovered that listening to music heightens positive emotion through the reward centers of our brain, stimulating hi... posted on Mar 17 2015 (31,657 reads)

back at 10 years of writing about the science of human goodness for Greater Good, Jeremy Adam Smith discovers that the bad and good—and the inner and outer—go hand in hand. I’ve been covering the science of human goodness, off and on, for almost 10 years. In that time, I’ve seen a dramatic transformation in the way scientists understand how and why we love, thank, empathize, cooperate, and care for each other. Of course, “goodness” doesn’t seem like a very scientific concept. It sounds downright squishy to many people, and thus unworthy of study. But you can count acts of goodness—and all science begins with counting. It&rsquo... posted on May 24 2015 (15,364 reads)

by U.S. Department of Education Kyle Schwartz, an elementary school teacher in Denver, recently came up with an activity for her third-grade class that went viral. Employed at a school where 92 percent of kids qualify for free or reduced lunch , Schwartz was looking for a way to better understand her students. She handed out notecards and asked them to finish this sentence: “I wish my teacher knew…” The results were heart-wrenching: Although it’s a minor problem in comparison to what some of Schwartz’s students are going through, to this day I still wish my teachers had known how hard it was for me to give presentations. ... posted on May 28 2015 (27,648 reads)

and golden, was burning. Suddenly all the newspapers, the television programs were aware of them. Newspapers were filled with their story. The storytellers, the neighborhood and the city are now in a whole new process together. When I returned home to a different group in the USA we made a story about the transformation of an arsonist, which we sent down to them in Brazil.  Anne: What a powerful story. Nancy: We shall see how all this evolves. Their peace birds were flying and images of fiery transformation were living in their midst as they met this drama. And like the Iroquois nations, we had been working in a council circle all the time, listening to each other in new wa... posted on Jun 27 2015 (17,889 reads)

Ward Mailliard’s students had a chance to visit Desmond Tutu in South Africa, one of them asked, "Bishop Tutu, what was it like to hold Nelson Mandela's hand as he was introduced as the first president of post-Apartheid South Africa?" "Oooo, that's something you can't describe," Desmond Tutu spontaneously remarked. And then quietly added, "I had a conversation with God and said, 'This is enough. Thank you.'" How can we engage with that which can't be described? In our incredibly rich circle of 40 educators, we probed into the question of "Cultivating Compassion Quotient." The challenge with a qu... posted on Aug 14 2015 (20,582 reads)

Control Dubbed the “fear collector” by Modern Weekly, Elman describes how what began as an experimental exercise evolved into an ongoing creative undertaking. “It didn’t take me long to get past any fears I had about pumping something out and putting it out there. The good, the bad, and the ugly—I posted them all.” The subsequent pieces range from the fear of moths to the fear of peeing in front of others. She always follows her gut, creating high-impact images through the use of vibrant, screaming color. The majority of her pieces include passages from actual submissions while others feature what is called “asemic writing.” This kind o... posted on Sep 17 2015 (9,940 reads)