Scilla Elworthy: A Business Plan for Peace, by Awakin Call Editors
distinguished activist for peace for over 30 years, Dr. Scilla Elworthy has met with scientists and nuclear weapons policy makers from all five nuclear powers. She founded the Oxford Research Group, Peace Direct, and co-founded 'Rising Women, Rising World' and FemmeQ, and was nominated three times for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is interviewed here about her latest book, "The Business Plan for Peace: Building a World without War." In it, she points out that while 1,686 billion dollars is spent on militarization every year, it would only cost two billion dollars to put into action methodologies that are known to work to prevent war and armed conflict worldwide. What fol... posted on Feb 15 2019 (7,775 reads)

Native Women Reclaim Land Plot by Plot, by Julian Brave NoiseCat
TE LAND TRUST AND PLANTING JUSTICE Corrina Gould co-founded the Sogorea Te Land Trust to reclaim Ohlone land in the San Francisco Bay Area. In the San Francisco Bay Area, demand for land seems endless. Property values are sky-high, rents are backbreaking, and people just keep coming. Over 2 million more are expected to settle here by 2040. Bulldozers and backhoes reshape neighborhoods. Cranes dominate the horizon. Land, with a home or high-rise plopped atop, can build a fortune for its owner. Today’s land rush is nothing new. For more than 200 years, there has been a run on Bay Area real estate — a relentless wave of colonization, the... posted on Dec 18 2018 (5,474 reads)

Finding Hope in Hopelessness, by Margaret Wheatley
the world grows ever darker, I’ve been forcing myself to think about hope. I watch as the world and the people near me experience increased grief and suffering, as aggression and violence move into all relationships, personal and global, and as decisions are made from insecurity and fear. How is it possible to feel hopeful, to look forward to a more positive future? The biblical psalmist wrote, “Without vision, the people perish.” Am I perishing? I don’t ask this question calmly. I am struggling to understand how I might contribute to reversing this descent into fear and sorrow, what I might do to help restore hope to the future. In the past it was easier to bel... posted on Dec 26 2018 (19,587 reads)

Weaving Big Connections from Small Acts, by Awakin Call Editors
Tehven thought he needed to leave his home state of North Dakota to have a meaningful life.  But when he went to college, he discovered the art of applying small town values to a university setting.  This began a trajectory of service - Pay it Forward Tours with college students; Students Today, Leaders Forever; world travel; and ultimately a return to North Dakota where he co-founded Emerging Prairie, a startup news and events organization.  Greg is the curator of TEDx Fargo and hosts  1 Million Cups , an organization that supports entrepreneurs. He is an adjunct professor at North Dakota State University's College of Business.  He is a husband and ... posted on Jan 2 2019 (3,297 reads)

Eight Inspiring Moments from 2018, by Jeremy Adam Smith
need hopeful news. Research suggests that people who consume negative news regularly “tend to have less trust in political leaders, lower evaluations of other people and communities, and more psychological problems,” as Jill Suttie reported this year in Greater Good.  Hearing good news has the opposite effect: People become more generous, politically active, and mentally and physically healthy. “Journalists will always have to report on inherently negative issues,” says media researcher Karen McIntyre of Virginia Commonwealth University. “But reporting in a constructive way would hopefully help people have a more realistic picture of th... posted on Jan 27 2019 (9,000 reads)

The Universe as an Infinite Storm of Beauty, by Maria Popova
a universe of atoms… an atom in the universe,” the Nobel-winning physicist Richard Feynman wrote in his lovely prose poem about evolution. “The fact that we are connected through space and time,” evolutionary biologist Lynn Margulis observed of the interconnectedness of the universe, “shows that life is a unitary phenomenon, no matter how we express that fact.” A century before Feynman and Margulis, the great Scottish-American naturalist and pioneering environmental philosopher John Muir (April 21, 1838–December 24, 1914) channeled this elemental fact of existence with uncommon poetic might... posted on Jan 31 2019 (6,780 reads)

When Crafts Become Activism, by Tracy L. Barnett
Collective Mini Protest Banners are posted in public areas to provoke positive thought and action. This one is on Brick Lane in the Whitechapel District of East London. Photo from Craftivist Collective Sarah Corbett never dreamed a cross-stitched teddy bear could change her life and how she approached her career. But looking back, she realizes that that’s when it all started. Corbett, a professional campaigner for causes and charities, was preparing to board a train from London to Glasgow to give yet another workshop on training people as activists. But she was exhausted, stressed, and burning out. With a five-hour journey ahead of her, she couldn’t work b... posted on Jan 10 2019 (11,355 reads)

Waiting to Unfold, by Mirka Knaster
many times have artists thought, while working on a project, "Will I ever get this completed?" How often do we face seemingly unsurmountable obstacles on the path to turning our vision into reality? And when will we reach the level of proficiency and excellence we aspire to? Anyone engaged in creative activity of whatever form is familiar with this terrain. Yet to overcome doubt and frustration, to master any craft or art, we have to cultivate a particular quality. It is one that appears opposite to what we want, which is usually immediate gratification: Patience, a virtue extolled by spiritual traditions around the world. Given the nano-second nature of our technological... posted on Jan 11 2019 (7,849 reads)

Simplify Technology with Limits, by Leo Babauta
am no technophobe, but I do believe in living consciously … and technology has a tendency to overrun our attention and our lives. It’s designed to do that: tech companies are motivated to keep our attention in their apps, their websites, their devices. They’ve found incentives for us to keep using the technology, shiny new things every second, powerful recommendation engines, tapping into our desire not to miss out, to be entertained, to run to comfort. But you know all that. The problem comes when we try to figure out how to get a grip on it all, to tame technology to do what we need and then let it go so we can be more present, go outside more, move more, be conn... posted on Jan 12 2019 (7,530 reads)

What's In the Way is the Way, by Tami Simon
Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge. Today, my guest is Mary O’Malley. Mary is an author, counselor, and acknowledged leader in the field of spiritual awakening. Through her writing and teachings, she empowers people to replace fear, hopelessness, and struggle with ease, well-being, and joy. With Sounds True, Mary has published a new book entitled What’s in the Way Is the Way: A Practical Guide for Waking Up to Life. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Mary and I spoke about the eight “spells” that keep us feeling separate from life. We talked about life as an intelligent process that we can trust and the im... posted on Mar 13 2019 (10,923 reads)

Growing a Cross-Cultural Garden, by Padma Hejmadi
21, 2018 Some time ago—after a peripatetic existence across the U.S., my native soil of India, and a few points in between—I get to put down roots for a while in a university town in northern California. Among other things, this means at last being in one place long enough to really grow a garden. Our house is surrounded by a pitilessly arid patch of ground razed so bare by construction crews that I keep standing aghast, trying to envisage what to do with it, until a visiting cousin is driven to ask: “Hey, are you surveying your acres again?” The prospect, I tell her, is daunting even for my unpretentious patch. For more than a year we continue diggin... posted on Feb 16 2019 (4,913 reads)

Family Is Helping Others to Heal, by Bailey Williams
left to right, Cephus X (Uncle Bobby) Johnson, Stevante Clark, brother of Stephon Clark, 22, who was killed by Sacramento Police, and Beatrice X Johnson gather at the Families United 4 Justice event in Oakland, California. Photo by Nissa Tzun/Forced Trajectory Project. Oscar Grant III was an unarmed Black man killed by a police officer in Oakland, Calif., years before Black Lives Matter drew national attention to the growing number of unarmed Black men, women and children who die at the hands of law enforcement officers—what some scholars are calling an epidemic. Jan. 1 marked 10 years since the 22-year-old father was fatally shot by the Bay Area Regional Transit of... posted on Mar 16 2019 (3,528 reads)

Top 10 Kindness Stories of 2018, by KindSpring Editors
things for people not because of who they are or what they do in return, but because of who you are.” --Harold Kushner Top 10 Kindness Stories of 2018 By KindSpring.org Every year KindSpring shares the top 10 most inspiring kindness stories that were featured on our website or weekly newsletter throughout the year. These stories range from chance encounters of anonymous acts of kindness to deliberate, thoughtful ways that ordinary people choose to make the world a better place for those around them. Here are some of our favorites from 2018! When Her Bike Got Stolen and Humanity Found It “My bike was stolen a week ago Saturday. It was half my fault, half ... posted on Jan 23 2019 (22,499 reads)

A Moment with Mr. Rogers, by Jeff Zaleski
interviewed Fred Rogers, creator and host of television’s Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, by telephone a few years before he died. The occasion was the publication of his new book. Mister Rogers arrived on television after I grew up but I’d watched his show with our young daughter. She and I both preferred the often frantic Sesame Street, finding the Neighborhood a bit slow, sometimes a bit boring. Yet we kept watching it because we sensed something real and true behind the words and deeds of Fred Rogers and his friends and puppets on the show. Still, when I picked up the handset to call the man, I didn’t know what to expect. What would he b... posted on Mar 17 2019 (9,412 reads)

Embracing the Great Fullness of Life, by Kristi Nelson
all have our ideas about how life should go. Ideas painted within us as hopes, longings, opinions. Those painted around us as cultural norms, trajectories, “worthwhile” goals. We have ideas in mind about most everything — how our bodies should work, how love should work, how the world should work. Politics. Sleep. Weather. What we want and do not want. Ideas that make things bad or good, yes or no. And while these concepts can offer us valuable guidance about how we might approach life, they can also obscure and conflict with the vast majority of what is actually unfolding – and is bound to unfold – in our moment-to-moment, unpredictable lives and world. W... posted on Feb 10 2019 (10,555 reads)

Maria Popova: Books are the Original Internet, by Unknown Yet
NOVEMBER 2013  Oscar Schwartz on Maria Popova “Books are the original internet,” Maria Popova tells me with a grin. She is switched on, ballsy, irresistibly articulate, fully engaged. This is Maria’s gift. She talks about complex ideas in a way that transforms them into something I want to talk about with my friends. She makes big concepts relevant. “My bookshelves are completely full, and I’m still buying new ones compulsively,” she adds. “They’re piling up around me!” Undoubtedly, it is this gift that makes Maria’s blog, Brain Pickings, such a success. Her thirst for knowledge means that she looks pa... posted on Feb 17 2019 (8,910 reads)

Hands Across the Hills, by The Gratefulness Team
Changemakers,” is a series that celebrates programs and projects that serve as beacons of gratefulness. These efforts elevate the values of grateful living and illuminate their potential to transform both individuals and communities. Join us in appreciating the inspiring and catalyzing contribution these Changemakers offer to shaping a more grateful world. Hands Across the Hills Hands Across the Hills formed in response to the 2016 United States (US) presidential election with the goal of bringing together people who voted differently, face to face. Two small groups, progressives in rural Western Massachusetts (MA) and conservatives in Eastern Kentucky (KY) c... posted on Feb 25 2019 (7,343 reads)

Angels in the Details, by Greg Watson
following is a review of  Healing Earth: An Ecologist’s Journey of Innovation and Environmental Stewardship by John Todd, published by North Atlantic Books (January 2019) Water is the ultimate systems challenge.  It is a unique resource that underpins all drivers of growth – be it agricultural production, energy generation, industry or manufacturing. It also connects these sectors into a broader economic system that must balance social development and environmental interests. World Economic Forum Global Water Initiative Not quite three-quarters of the way through Healing Earth: An Ecologist’s Journey of Innovation and Environmental... posted on Mar 12 2019 (6,244 reads)

Welcome to Fearless Dialogues. Are You Ready for Change?, by Faith and Leadership
the parking lot and the front door, those who attend Fearless Dialogues events will typically hear the following greetings several times, says Gregory C. Ellison II: “It’s good to see you." "Welcome to Fearless Dialogues." "Are you ready for change?” Launched by Ellison in 2013, Fearless Dialogues is a nonprofit organization that creates spaces for unlikely partners to engage in hard conversations about difficult subjects such as racism, classism and community violence. The nonprofit partners with organizations ranging from sports teams to schools and businesses to lead community conversations. Three elements -- see, hear and c... posted on May 20 2019 (6,261 reads)

Recording the Healing Sounds of Nature, by Lang Elliott
author, speaker, cinematographer, sound recordist, and photographer Lang Elliott of musicofnature.com, shares the arc of his experience recording the sublime sounds of nature. Here is one of his immersive binaural recordings from a remote canyon in Arizona that you might enjoy listening to while reading his essay. Dawn at Willow Narrows. Aravaipa Canyon in southeastern Arizona. May 1, 2017. © Lang Elliott. Please listen using headphones! I’ve been recording nature for nearly 30 years. Early in my career, my primary goal was to capture close and clean recordings of particular species with the help of highly directional microphones. The object was to extract a spec... posted on Mar 27 2019 (5,607 reads)