From What Is to What If, by Rob Hopkins
the state of the world, the message of despair is pretty convincing. Things look grim. But something about that doesn’t sit quite right with me. In fact, there’s evidence that things can change, and that cultures can change, rapidly and unexpectedly. And that’s not just naïve, pie-in-the-sky thinking. In How Did We Do That? The Possibility of Rapid Transition, Andrew Simms and Peter Newell tell the story of Iceland’s 2010 Eyjafjallajökull eruption, which sent fine dust into the sky that spread for thousands of miles and grounded most of the world’s planes. Then what happened? People adapted. Quickly. Supermarkets replaced air-freight... posted on Mar 19 2020 (10,589 reads)

Every Act a Ceremony, by Charles Eisenstein
2019 I met a woman a few weeks ago who works with a Kogi mama, or shaman, from the Sierra Nevada of Colombia. He came to California a few years ago and performed extensive ceremonies on a particular spot of land. He said, “You’d better do a ceremony here regularly, or there will be serious fires.” No one did the ceremonies, and the next year there were forest fires. He came back afterward and repeated his warning. “If you don’t do the ceremonies, the fires will be even worse.” The next year, the fires were worse. He came again and issued his warning a third time: “Do the ceremonies or the fires in this part of the world will be worse still.&r... posted on Apr 25 2020 (8,540 reads)

Erich Fromm: The Antidote to Helplessness and Disorientation, by Maria Popova
be human is to be a miracle of evolution conscious of its own miraculousness — a consciousness beautiful and bittersweet, for we have paid for it with a parallel awareness not only of our fundamental improbability but of our staggering fragility, of how physiologically precarious our survival is and how psychologically vulnerable our sanity. To make that awareness bearable, we have evolved a singular faculty that might just be the crowning miracle of our consciousness: hope. Hope — and the wise, effective action that can spring from it — is the counterweight to the heavy sense of our own fragility. It is a continual negotiation between optimism and desp... posted on Mar 30 2020 (14,895 reads)

Courage & Vulnerability: Corona & the Wisdom of Elders, by Parker Palmer
every crisis of my life, learning has helped me find my way thru. That means paying attention, allowing myself to feel as well as think, looking at things from different angles, gathering the best info available, trying to connect the dots, and “living the questions” when the answers elude me. That’s why I love this excerpt from T.H. White’s novel “The Once and Future King,” based on the legend of King Arthur. The wizard Merlyn, who’s been entrusted with educating the young Arthur, is speaking to the future king at what we'd call a "teachable moment." As Americans and world citizens, we’re at a teachable moment called &qu... posted on Apr 6 2020 (17,113 reads)

Charles Eisenstein: The Coronation, by Charles Eisenstein
years, normality has been stretched nearly to its breaking point, a rope pulled tighter and tighter, waiting for a nip of the black swan’s beak to snap it in two. Now that the rope has snapped, do we tie its ends back together, or shall we undo its dangling braids still further, to see what we might weave from them? Covid-19 is showing us that when humanity is united in common cause, phenomenally rapid change is possible. None of the world’s problems are technically difficult to solve; they originate in human disagreement. In coherency, humanity’s creative powers are boundless. A few months ago, a proposal to halt commercial air travel would have seemed preposterous.... posted on Apr 16 2020 (14,194 reads)

This Is Not a Rehearsal, by Hala Alyan
by Michelle Urra Two years ago, I had an ectopic pregnancy. It was sudden and unexpected, and left me reeling. It happened during this time of year. The weather was slowly turning. The days suddenly getting longer. I sat in our new backyard and read and deep-breathed and cried. I scooted my chair to chase the sun across the lawn. I watched spring outside my living room window, the women in their sundresses and sandals. Their joy felt a lifetime away from my bitterness. I waited. I waited to see if my body would erupt. This is what these days remind me of. These days of waiting and foreboding. I sit and wait. But there’s one difference—this time, the wh... posted on Apr 11 2020 (12,600 reads)

Powered by Love --- an Emerging Worldview, by James O'Dea
was invited to write a reflection that I've titled: Powered by Love---an Emerging Worldview It is on my website, being circulated in other forums by Club of Budapest, Science and Medical Network in the UK, and others. There is a worldview that has come to dominate every aspect of global reality affecting human civilization, the natural world and planetary climate conditions. It can be summarized as the quantitative worldview. The quantitative worldview is in a crisis so deep it is leading, in an interconnected and interdependent world, to deep systemic disruptions, chaotic conditions and signs of complete failure. If this worldview were a patient receiving care it wou... posted on Apr 17 2020 (11,130 reads)

Rachel Remen: The Grace of Being Seen, by Rachel Naomi Remen
9th, 2014 I wanted to share with you a letter that meant a great deal to me that was posted to my website in response to my last blog. Carol addresses it to physicians but it is true of us all; everyone who goes to work every day in this broken healthcare system in the hopes of helping others, despite everything. It has never been harder to be a health professional and I have never been prouder to be counted among the people who choose this work. We are what is right with the system. Perhaps some day we can build a system truly worthy of our patients and of us all. Love, RACHEL Dear Rachel and all other Physicians, It makes my heart ache to read about how you ca... posted on Apr 21 2020 (8,233 reads)

From Emergency to Emergence, by David Korten
COVID-19 emergency has exposed our societies’ failure to address the needs of billions of people. Simultaneously, we are witnessing a fundamental truth about human nature: There are those among us eager to exploit the suffering of others for personal gain. We can be reassured, however, by how few of them there are. Their actions contrast starkly with the far greater numbers at all levels of society demonstrating their willingness, even eagerness, to cooperate, share, and sacrifice for the well-being of all. The pandemic has also exposed extreme vulnerabilities in the global market economy, including its long and highly specialized linear supply chains, corporate monopolies shield... posted on May 2 2020 (7,876 reads)

Dr. Phuoc Le: HEAL-ing Others and Paying Forward the Blessings, by Awakin Call Editors
Phuoc Le is an advocate for equitable healthcare worldwide. He is a physician and co-founder of the HEAL (Health, Equity, Action, and Leadership) Initiative, which trains front-line health professionals to build a community dedicated to serving the underserved. With a name meaning blessing or good fortune in both Vietnamese and Chinese, Phuoc was born in Vietnam at the end of the war and fled at age 5 with his family by boat -- narrowly escaping death at sea. Now a highly educated and trained physician, Phuoc has worked with Dr. Paul Farmer and Partners in Health to provide healthcare to the world's poor in their homes and communities, including in Africa and post-earthquake Haiti. &... posted on Dec 31 1969 (274 reads)

Gathering Gratefully in the Time of Coronavirus, by The Gratefulness Team
our daily realities continue to shift in the face of Covid-19, A Network for Grateful Living remains committed to exploring how gratefulness can support us in these times. The hardships we face may feel amplified by our increasing need to stay home, isolating ourselves from others in service of the common good. Discovering ways to foster ease, belonging, kindness, and well-being under these circumstances may feel challenging, yet opportunities for nourishment can find their way into our worlds. The gifts of technology can offer us meaningful connection and support as many of us find increasing comfort in even the simple sound of another person’s voice over phone or video. Perhaps we... posted on May 12 2020 (7,101 reads)

The Value of Being Uncomfortable, by Maria Popova
with any degree of mental toughness ought to be able to exist without the things they like most for a few months at least,” Georgia O’Keeffe, impoverished and solitary in the desert, wrote in considering limitation, creativity, and setting priorities as she was about to revolutionize art while the world was crumbling into its first global war. There are echoes of Stoicism, of Buddhism, of every monastic tradition in O’Keeffe’s core insight — that only in the absence of our habitual comforts, without all the ways in which we ordinarily cushion against the hard facts of our own nature and our mortality, do we befriend ourselves and disco... posted on May 15 2020 (8,626 reads)

Appalachia's Front Porch Network Is A Lifeline, by Alison Stine
County school bus driver Paul Cochran loads his bus with food boxes that he will deliver to students in Charleston, West Virginia. PHOTO BY BRIAN FERGUSON / 100 DAYS IN APPALACHIA On any day in Appalachia, you can find gifts in front of houses, left on porches for the people inside: mushrooms just foraged, cookies freshly baked. The porch is an extension of the home in Appalachia—not only a gathering spot for conversation, but a traditional sharing place. If you want to exchange tools, plants, or hand-me-downs with your neighbor: you put them on the porch. In times of struggle, porches are the vessel to deliver food: frozen meals to new parents, casseroles for griev... posted on May 16 2020 (5,181 reads)

Resilient Threads: Weaving Joy and Meaning into Well-Being, by Mukta Panda
from Resilient Threads: Weaving Joy and Meaning into Well-Being, from Chapter 3, “Connecting the Dots.” A Mother/Physician with the Multiple Hats Syndrome Despite the neighborly support, I was stretched thin with all the hats I wore, striving to perfection in every role: mother, sister, daughter, wife, physician, teacher, friend, colleague, acquaintance, and so on. For seventeen years I left home at six in the morning with both children plus three or four other neighborhood children in the carpool. I’d drop the girls off at the girls’ school, the boys at the boys’ school, then come to work. After a long day at work, I would pick them up and d... posted on May 18 2020 (5,530 reads)

7 Ways Protestors Showed Up For Black Lives, by Lornet Turnbull
of people gathered on the Malieveld in The Hague, Netherlands, on June 2, 2020, in protest of violence against Black people in the U.S. Photo by Robin Utrech / SOPA Images / Light Rocket / Getty Images. In the past week, demonstrations have erupted in big and small cities across the United States and in countries around the world over the killing of George Floyd by Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. Amid the outpouring of outrage over Floyd’s death, the killing of Breonna Taylor by a police officer in Louisville, Kentucky, and of Ahmaud Arbery by vigilantes in Georgia, along with pent-up anger, exhaustion, and fear experienced by Black, Brown, and Indigenous ... posted on Jun 4 2020 (8,212 reads)

Resources for Unlearning and Transforming Racism, by The Gratefulness Team
situates one well to know what can be and must be done to challenge inequity. It situates one to see opportunity where others see despair.  ~ Lucas Johnson Message from The Gratefulness Team: As our organization commits to engaging with and supporting anti-racist work, we share these resources with you as an invitation to join us in learning, taking action, and working toward individual and collective change. We offer this compilation as a starting point with the recognition that the work extends far beyond what’s included here and happens over the course of a lifetime. How Race Was Made For much of human history, people viewed them... posted on Jun 13 2020 (9,504 reads)

Jolanda van den Berg: We Are Each Other. No Victims, No Heroes:, by Awakin Call Editors
just know it, we are each other .. no victims no heroes .. just this" Jolanda van den Berg defies the conventional labels our world has to offer. Over the last quarter of a century her work has touched and transformed the lives of thousands of put-at-risk children in Peru. She has created a series of boutique hotels,  and offers private 1:1 sessions with people struggling with various kinds of life challenges. By some definitions, this mother of two might be dubbed a philanthropist, a social entrepreneur, a life coach, or even a mystic. But Jolanda's expansive life resists reductive titles. No neat label could possibly capture the rippling qualit... posted on Jun 24 2020 (6,093 reads)

Everything You Think You Know About Addiction Is Wrong, by ted.com
of my earliest memories is of trying to wake up one of my relatives and not being able to. And I was just a little kid, so I didn't really understand why, but as I got older, I realized we had drug addiction in my family, including later cocaine addiction.  I'd been thinking about it a lot lately, partly because it's now exactly 100 years since drugs were first banned in the United States and Britain, and we then imposed that on the rest of the world. It's a century since we made this really fateful decision to take addicts and punish them and make them suffer, because we believed that would deter them; it ... posted on Jul 7 2020 (21,950 reads)

Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life, by Preeta Bansal
following is based on the July 8th, 2017 Awakin Call with Thom Bond. Thom Bond brings 27 years of study and training experience in human potential to his work as a writer, speaker and workshop leader. His passion and knowledge of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) combine to create a practical, understandable, humorous, and potentially profound approach for learning and integrating skills that help us experience more compassion and understanding. Thom is a founder and the Director of Education for The New York Center for Nonviolent Communication. He is best known as the creator and leader of The Compassion Course, a comprehensive online NVC-based training, Since 2011, more than 14,00... posted on Jul 11 2020 (8,050 reads)

Iris Murdoch on Storytelling & Why Art is Essential to Democracy, by Maria Popova
of the functions of art,” Ursula K. Le Guin observed in contemplating art, storytelling, and the power of language to transform and redeem, “is to give people the words to know their own experience… Storytelling is a tool for knowing who we are and what we want.” Because self-knowledge is the most difficult of the arts of living, because understanding ourselves is a prerequisite for understanding anybody else, and because we can hardly fathom the reality of another without first plumbing our own depths, art is what makes us not only human but humane. That is what the philosopher and novelist Iris Murdoch (July 15, 1919&ndas... posted on Jul 16 2020 (5,862 reads)