From Tolerance to Appreciation, by Meghana Anand
the current Executive Director of the Charter for Compassion, which provides an umbrella for people to engage in collaborative partnerships worldwide. In December 2019, she spoke with MEGHANA ANAND about the organization, its partners, and the work done through the Charter in different countries. Marilyn is an educationist-author and writes about world religions and cultures, bringing out their diverse and uniting threads. MA: How did it all begin, your work with the Charter for Compassion? MT: Well, I think it all started when I was a child from a hyphenated American family, in this case Croatian-American. I grew up in an immigrant neighbo... posted on Aug 18 2021 (3,135 reads)

Fire Season, by Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
by Breno Machado. Courtesy of Unsplash.com We waited through the Winter of the pandemic, wearing masks, hiding from our darker fears. And then Spring came—apple blossom pink, pear blossom white. The wisteria falling lavender-blue over the garden shed, and then the jasmine, a wall of bright white, filling the evening air with sweetness. Here was another story, each year returning, and longed for as the garden comes alive with colors and fragrance, and in the vegetable garden harvesting the first lettuces, planting the tomato seedlings for later. And the California poppies painting the edge of the pathway orange and yellow, wild roses pink beside the roads. How we waite... posted on Aug 19 2021 (6,977 reads)

A Palestinian Woman Building Peace From the Bottom Up, by Fathom Journal
Abu Arqoub is Director of the Alliance for Middle East Peace (ALLMEP), a network of civil society organisations working in conflict transformation, development, and coexistence in the Middle East among Israelis, Palestinians, Arabs, and Jews. A Palestinian, she is also a leading supporter of Women Wage Peace (WWP). Fathom assistant editor Sam Nurding spoke to her about the challenges faced by a Palestinian feminist engaged in conflict-resolution activism. PERSONAL JOURNEY Sam Nurding: I read that your family defended Jews in the riots in Hebron in 1929 and that when as a young woman you wanted to join the First Intifada in Hebron your Communist-leaning mother told yo... posted on Sep 22 2021 (3,573 reads)

Place, Personhood & the Hippocampus, by Maria Popova
and a mind may interpenetrate till the nature of both is altered,” the Scottish mountaineer and poet Nan Shepherd wrote in her lyrical love letter to her native Highlands, echoing an ancient intuition about how our formative physical landscapes shape our landscapes of thought and feeling. The word “genius” in the modern sense, after all, originates in the Latin phrase genius loci — “the spirit of a place.” I find myself thinking about Shepherd as I return to the Bulgarian mountains of my own childhood, trekking the same paths with my mother that I once trudged with tiny feet beside her, astonished at the flood of long-ag... posted on Sep 26 2021 (4,279 reads)

Ten Ways to Make Your Time Matter, by Oliver Burkeman
our mortality helps us let go of busyness and focus on what’s most important to us in order to live a happier, more meaningful life. The average human lifespan is absurdly, terrifyingly finite. If you’re lucky and you live to 80, you will have lived about four thousand weeks. This truth, which most of us ignore most of the time, is something to wrestle with if we want to spend our limited time on this earth well. Given that, it follows that time management, broadly defined, should be everyone’s chief concern. Yet the modern discipline of time management (or productivity) is depressingly narrow-minded, focused on devising the perfect morning routine or trying... posted on Dec 12 2021 (13,852 reads)

Turn New Year's Resolutions into Revelations, by Kristi Nelson
is no other time of year that stirs our cultural and personal interest in self-improvement more than the shiny, clean slate of an impending new calendar year. For many of us, January 1st beckons with vast possibility; we are encouraged to front-load the year with an abundance of hopes lost and built up since the last New Year. It is the legitimated time for new beginnings, big dreams, lofty goals, and resolutions that can make us feel like this is deja-vu all over again. How many of us could simply cross out an old date and write “This year” at the top of dozens of lists of resolutions we have made over the years? New Year’s resolutions tend to be abo... posted on Jan 1 2022 (5,202 reads)

Surprising Lessons from the Science of Motivation, by Knowledge@Wharton
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 (3,425 reads)

Experiments with Wild Grace, by Chelan Harkin
WHAT WAS THAT?! WHAT JUST HAPPENED THROUGH ME?! That was 21 year old me tingling from head to toe and gaping in shocked awe at the computer screen after conducting an experiment on myself that saved, liberated and transformed my life. I had been in a place of acute hopelessness and inner anguish in which I felt so profoundly alone in the world and disconnected from even the possibility of authentic connection. Somehow amidst all that I found the wherewithal to listen to an inner prompting that urged me to try an experiment. This experiment was to allow myself to write a “bad poem” every day for a month. Writing poetry had been an important practice of m... posted on Apr 6 2022 (4,545 reads)

When Love Breaks Your Heart, by Jill Suttie
is inevitable. Romances end, loved ones die, friends let us down. These experiences might be universal, but their impact can still be devastating. 
This is what science journalist Florence Williams discovered after her husband of 25 years unexpectedly asked for a divorce. William found herself in a daze, shocked and miserable, and even ill. 
 “Physically, I felt like my body had been plugged into a faulty electrical socket,” she writes. “In addition to weight loss, I’d stopped sleeping. I was getting sick: My pancreas wasn’t working right. It was hard to think straight.” To help understand what was happening to her, she t... posted on Apr 13 2022 (7,786 reads)

How to Break the Cycles of War and Violence, by Jeremy Adam Smith
all seen the images of violence coming from Ukraine, as the Russian invasion continues. They’re hitting Anastasiia Timmer harder than most of us, because she was born and raised in Ukraine. Now a criminologist at the California State University, Northridge, Timmer studies why people commit acts of violence. “Growing up in Ukraine and learning our history shaped my desire to better understand causes of behavior, beliefs, and generational trauma,” she says. â€¨ She and her team of Ukrainian, Russian, and American researchers went to Ukraine in 2017, after the Russian invasion of the Ukrainian provinces of Crimea and Donbas. At that ... posted on Apr 23 2022 (3,291 reads)

They Still Draw Pictures, by Paul Morrow
in war-torn Ukraine, Laos or Spain, kids have felt compelled to pick up crayons and put their experiences to paper In 1970, a 16-year-old Laotian boy drew a picture of his school being bombed. ‘Many people’ died, he wrote, ‘But I didn’t know who because I wasn’t courageous enough to look.’ Legacies of War, CC BY-SA “They still draw pictures!” So wrote the editors of an influential collection of children’s art that was compiled in 1938 during the Spanish Civil War. Eighty years later, war continues to upend children’s lives in Ukraine, Yemen and elsewhere. In January, UNICEF projected that 177 million chi... posted on May 28 2022 (3,731 reads)

Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Health Issues, by Stephen Hinshaw, Jeremy Adam Smith
people in the United States know far more about mental illness than did previous generations. They might know what it looks like: changes in emotions, thinking, or behavior that make function in daily life difficult, if not impossible. They’re much more likely to understand that most of us will experience some form of mental illness in our lifetimes, like depression or anxiety. And they know that smaller numbers of people will experience more severe conditions like bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, or PTSD. Despite this progress, for decades attitudes toward people with mental disorders have hardly budged. How do we know this? One of the crucial ways we measure preju... posted on Jun 14 2022 (2,779 reads)

Murmurations: Returning to the Whole, by Adrienne Maree Brown
time is it on the clock of the world?” My mentor Grace Lee Boggs used to ask this question all the time, to anyone who came to visit and learn with her, in any meeting she attended, or speech she gave. She wanted us—her students, comrades, and community—to keep a wide, long lens about our work. To remember, all of the time, that this moment is not the only moment. Human development moves in these massive cycles and phases, and there are always agents of change who ideate and practice and push and grow those shifts. She reminded us that there are changes available to us that are distinct to this time, and she urged us to be present to the opportunitie... posted on Jun 30 2022 (3,769 reads)

Original Wisdom: Stories of An Ancient Way of Knowing, by robert wolff
or two generations ago most of us made our own choices how to relate to our immediate environment. Certainly influenced by the group we belonged to: family, village, tribe, customs. And until four or five generations ago cultures were the way a tribe had worked out, over time, how to survive in a unique environment. Cultures were a way to deal with finding food, how to hunt, what to hunt, how to find edible plants and fruit, and how to be sure that the useful plants and trees would survive so that we would survive. And all cultures are a way we manage to live together more or less harmoniously (usually ‘more’). Our modern world is surprisingly different. Somehow we have ac... posted on Aug 17 2022 (3,832 reads)

Activating Moral Discomfort & Spiritual Community for the Earth, by Awakin Call Editors
no spiritual life that does not involve, does not start, intimately and inescapably, with the Earth.” The Rev. Fletcher Harper believes that he felt God while mourning his father’s death on a solo camping trip in Montana. A violent hailstorm struck one night, and he sought shelter in the lee of a rock. “At about three in the morning, I felt this deep sense of well-being,” he recalls. “I realized that I was going to be OK. I thought, ‘I can move on with my life now.’” Later in his life and career when interviewing hundreds of people from a broad spectrum of religious and non-religious backgrounds, he discovered th... posted on Nov 17 2022 (2,061 reads)

Finding Fulfillment in a Purpose Larger than You, by Tami Simon
follows is the transcript of an interview between Tami Simon and Lynne Twist. You can listen to the audio recording here. Tami Simon: Hello friends, my name’s Tami Simon, and I’m the founder of Sounds True. I want to welcome you to the Sounds True podcast, Insights at the Edge. I also want to take a moment to introduce you to Sounds True’s new membership community and digital platform. It’s called Sounds True One. Sounds True One features original, premium, transformational docuseries, community events, classes to start your day and relax in the evening, special weekly live shows, including a video version of Insights at the Edge with an af... posted on Dec 31 2022 (4,176 reads)

A Eulogy For My Mother, by Mickey Lemle
FUERTH LEMLE April 11,1916---April 17, 2011 For the first 58 years of my life, I would have to say that my relationship to my mother was a complex and difficult one. She was a huge personality, full of great passions, creativity, rages, and generosity. I remember saying to friends that I loved my mother in small doses, but that she didn't come in small doses. She was a force of nature. She had no sense of boundaries; my memory of going to restaurants with Edna, was that as the waiter placed my plate in front of me, her fork would be in my food before I was even able to lift my own. She would often just show up at my house anywhere in the world, uninvited. She was also very contro... posted on Jul 1 2016 (46,968 reads)

Gabor Mate: Healing Into Wholeness in a Toxic Culture, by Tami Simon
is the transcript of a SoundsTrue Insights at the Edge interview between Tami Simon and Gabor Mate. You can listen to the audio version here. Tami Simon: I am absolutely thrilled about having the opportunity to host this particular edition of Insights at the Edge Live with Dr. Gabor Mate. Let me tell you just a little bit about Gabor. One thing is that Hungarian born, he lives now around the corner from where I am, here in Vancouver, Canada. He is a physician who, after 20 years of family practice and palliative care experience, worked for over a decade in downtown Vancouver’s East Side with patients challenged by drug addiction and mental illness. I h... posted on Feb 26 2023 (7,446 reads)

Asymmetry, Ikebana, Writing and The Mind, by Andy Couturier
following is an excerpt from the essay, "Asymmetry, Ikebana, Writing and The Mind," by Andy Couturier As an artist or writer, how do you compose a work that is generous?       How do you place a group of rocks together in a garden, or branches, berries and blossoms together in an ikebana arrangement, — or ideas and language on a page — to invite real participation?       The artist is giving a gift, I think, if she leaves some connections unfinished. Implied. The artist is giving a gift, I think, when the composition is multifaceted, offering a multitude of elements that combine in an abundance... posted on Mar 6 2023 (2,633 reads)

Amishi Jha: Pay Attention to Your Attention, by Awakin Calls Editors
attention to your attention." Amishi P. Jha came to her pathbreaking work studying the neuroscience of mindfulness and attention when, as a young professor of cognitive neuroscience at the University of Pennsylvania, she lost feeling in her teeth. She had been grinding them as a profound stress response to burnout from her responsibilities as a wife, mother, and tenure-track professor. Knowing from her academic work that the brain can change, she told herself at the start of summer, “before I quit my own career, let’s see if I can get my own brain to change.” She had just heard a talk about the power of meditation to change brain images from anothe... posted on Mar 9 2023 (5,096 reads)