Former Orphan Creates Safe Haven For Street Kids
Crouching in the back of a van is a young boy with a fresh injury. He'd been hit with a bottle when he got into a fight. Stanislas Lukumba, a tall, good-looking, fortyish nurse, checks for shards of glass as the driver shines his cell phone on the wound. For the past eight years, Stanislas has made nightly trips in the van, a mobile clinic that runs in Kinshasa in the Democratic Republic of Congo.... posted on Jan 06 2015, 15,311 reads

10 Ways To Live Simply In 2015
We are now entering radically changing times -- and it's only natural for our worldly expressions of simplicity to evolve in response. For more than thirty years Duange Elgin has explored the "simple life" and articulated it for tens of thousands of people all over the world. To Elgin, the most accurate way of describing this approach to living is with the metaphor of a garden. Here he describes 1... posted on Jan 05 2015, 71,741 reads

Giving People A Hand Up, Not A Hand Out
I saw Joe sweeping up New York City's detritus, dressed in the familiar blue pants and shirt of Ready, Willing & Able. Four months out of prison, he said, "I've learned my lesson, but 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. Today the Doe Fund's 400 fulltime employees (some 70% of them graduates ... posted on Jan 04 2015, 30,676 reads

Top 10 Kindness Stories of 2014
Sometimes, all it takes is a small reminder to open our eyes to the beauty and wonder that surrounds us. KindSpring -- a portal for stories of kind acts, brims with such reminders every day! In 2014 a steady stream of acts of kindness by KindSpringers touched the lives of thousands of people all over the world. The following stories are some of the favorites from the past year. Enjoy!... posted on Jan 03 2015, 67,907 reads

The Spirit Of Sauntering
In Thoreau's 1861 treatise "Walking" penned seven years after Walden, he sets out to remind us of how that primal act of mobility connects us with our essential wildness, that spring of spiritual vitality methodically dried up by our sedentary civilization.Thoreau argues that the genius of walking lies not in mechanically putting one foot in front of the other en route to a destination but in mast... posted on Jan 02 2015, 30,206 reads

A Letter From Your 14-Year-Old Self
When was the last time you received a hand-written letter? For students of Mr. Farrer, it was a letter that they had written to their future selves 20 years ago, full of their young hopes and dreams as well as memories of people who have since passed away. Bruce Farrer started the assignment when he first started teaching at Bert Fox Community High School in the small Canadian town of Fort Qu'Appe... posted on Jan 01 2015, 6,712 reads

The Seinfeld Strategy To Stop Procrastination
Jerry Seinfeld, co-creator of one of the longest running comedy series in television has a brilliant strategy for getting things done. And, it's not what you might think. It involves taking your mind off the results, and focusing on the joy of the process instead. Read more to learn the importance of 'not breaking the chain.'
... posted on Dec 31 2014, 74,393 reads

Anne Lamott On Grief, Grace & Gratitude
In this sharp yet poignant piece, writer Anne Lamott reflects on mortality and what it means to be truly alive. She writes of her experience taking a walk with a friend who is dying, "First of all, friends like this may not even think of themselves as dying, although they clearly are, according to recent scans and gentle doctors' reports. But no, they see themselves as fully alive. They are living... posted on Dec 30 2014, 36,967 reads

The Hero At The Checkout Counter
When a musician encounters an extraordinary unsung hero at the checkout counter of his neighborhood grocery store, he is so moved that he cannot get the experience out of his mind for weeks. His thoughts and feelings eventually manifest into words on his blog: "When real heroism steps out of a movie, or off the pages of a book...it has the capacity to touch a part of you that has been sleeping. It... posted on Dec 29 2014, 24,320 reads

How Does Grace Happen?
Grace has the capacity to transcend even our darkest of spaces. It is a sudden miracle, basked in the light of loving-kindness. And, grace has the capacity to heal. "These moments of grace," author Mary Traina writes, "teach us that there is always more to life than we can imagine." But, how do we open our hearts to grace? By way of answer, this article offers up a series of simple, yet moving rea... posted on Dec 28 2014, 29,376 reads