letting go of past hurts, we can heal not only ourselves, but our families, our communities, and our world. There were so many nights when I, as a young boy, had to watch helplessly as my father verbally and physically abused my mother. I can still recall the smell of alcohol, see the fear in my mother’s eyes, and feel the hopeless despair that comes when we see people we love hurting each other in incomprehensible ways. If I dwell in those memories, I can feel myself wanting to hurt my father back, in the same ways he hurt my mother, and in ways of which I was incapable as a small boy. I see my mother’s face and I see this gentle human being whom I loved so very much a... posted on May 6 2014 (50,331 reads)

Simon: You’re listening to Insights at the Edge This week is a rebroadcast of one of my favorite episodes of Insights at the Edge, and one of the episodes that has received the most positive feedback from listeners: “Being at the Frontier of Your Identity” with David Whyte. David Whyte is a passionate speaker, poet, and the author of the Sounds True audio learning program, Clear Mind, Wild Heart, and a new program from Sounds True, What to Remember When Waking: The Disciplines of an Everyday Life. David is also a featured presenter at our 2013 Wake Up Festival: A Five-Day Experience of Transformation, August 14th-18th in Estes Park, CO. In this conversation, David and ... posted on Jul 7 2014 (40,231 reads)

modern conception of human excellence is too often impoverished, cold, and bloodless. Success does not always come from thinking more rigorously or striving harder.” “The best way to get approval is not to need it,”Hugh MacLeod memorably counseled. We now know that perfectionism kills creativity and excessive goal-setting limits our success rather than begetting it — all different manifestations of the same deeper paradox of the human condition, at once disconcerting and comforting, which Edward Slingerland, professor of Asian Studies and Embodied Cognition at the University of British Columbia and a renowned scholar of Chinese thought, explore... posted on Jun 3 2014 (13,919 reads)

would it look like—an intimate, intuitive, deeply skilled medicine, focused on continuing care and observation of the patient, minus computers? It’s not a question that most of us can think about in any great detail these days. In her book God’s Hotel, Dr. Victoria Sweet writes about an unusual hospital where she found amazing insights to the question. Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco was, as far as anyone knows, the last almshouse, or Hotel-Dieu, in this country—a hospital for the sick and poor. Dr. Sweet took a position there, expecting it to be temporary, then stayed for more than twenty years in a place where she and other physicians cou... posted on Oct 8 2014 (22,160 reads)

remain in prison for the rest of my life is the greatest honor you could give me: the story of Sister Megan Rice Where does moral courage come from - the energy and strength to challenge and transform much larger powers? A prison correspondence provides some answers. Credit:http://climateviewer.com. All rights reserved. The Y-12 nuclear weapons plant in Oakridge, Tennessee, is supposed to be impregnable. But on July 28th2012, an 84 year-old nun called Sister Megan Rice broke through a series of high-security fences surrounding the plant and reached a uranium storage bunker at the center of the complex. She was accompanied by Greg Boertje-Obed (57) and Michael Walli (63).... posted on Oct 1 2014 (33,857 reads)

secret to empowered action is learning not to beat yourself up.  Strive for more, work even harder, aim to be the best! We live in a society that regularly sends us such messages. Meanwhile, most of us don’t stop to consider whether our goals are possible, or whether they would even bring us lasting happiness. Even if we were to win a gold medal at the Olympics, our status as reigning champion would only last a few years and would most likely be accompanied by anxiety about losing in the future. On my first day at Yale, one of the deans proclaimed, “You are not only the elite; you are the elite of the elite,” and I still remember the wave of naus... posted on Oct 28 2014 (110,820 reads)

beautiful meditation on how we learn to stand at the gates of hope in troubled times. “How are we so optimistic, so careful not to trip and yet do trip, and then get up and say OK?”Maira Kalman asked in pondering happiness and existence. What is it that propels us to get up after loss, after heartbreak, after failure? What is that immutable rope that pulls us out of our own depths — depths we hardly knowuntil that moment when the light of the surface vanishes completely and unreachably? That’s precisely what the Reverend Victoria Safford explores in a gorgeous essay titled“The Small Work in the Great Work” fromThe Impossible Will Take a Little Whil... posted on Dec 15 2014 (23,025 reads)

Hanson reminds us to see existence with delight, awe, gratitude, and wow! We are pleased to bring you another installment of Rick Hanson's Just One Thing (JOT) newsletter, which each week offers a simple practice designed to bring you more joy, more fulfilling relationships, and more peace of mind and heart. Last night, stressing about undone tasks, I glanced in a mirror and saw my T-shirt, with its picture of a galaxy and a little sign sticking up out of its outer swirls, saying “You are here.” A joke gift from my wife, I’ve worn this shirt many times—yet for once it stopped me in my tracks. In William Blake’s phrase, the d... posted on Jan 13 2015 (25,539 reads)

positive self-talk to eat better, feel stronger, and rejuvenate your body.  When day-to-day life seems to revolve around providing for others, we can forget to nourish our own bodies and spirits. And yet, self-care is what empowers us to give back to the world, fully and joyfully. Start your practice by taking just a few moments each day to affirm your commitment to eat well and live a healthful life.  Each bite of food contains the life of the sun and the earth. The whole universe is in a piece of bread. —Thich Nhat Hanh I choose well so that I can feel well. —Nathalie W. Herrman Preparing fresh, healthy meals instead of ... posted on Feb 2 2015 (69,058 reads)

Gail Needleman: Music Is Something You Do  Gail Needleman teaches music at Holy Names University in Oakland, California. Her work as a writer and teacher addresses the essential role of music in the moral and spiritual development of children. She is the recipient of the Parsons Fellowship from the Library of Congress for research in American folk music, and is the co-creator of the American Folk Song Collection website, a pioneering online resource of American folk songs for teaching music to children. We met at her home to talk about music...  Richard Whittaker: How did music enter your life? What were the early experiences? Gail Needleman:... posted on Jan 18 2015 (28,313 reads)

way to lead a joyful life is not to pursue happiness for ourselves, argues Christine Carter, but to pursue it for others “Many persons have a wrong idea of what constitutes true happiness. It is not attained through self-gratification but through fidelity to a worthy purpose.” –Helen Keller Money doesn’t buy happiness. Obvious, right? On some abstract level, we know that money and other outward signs of success won’t ultimately make us happy—perhaps because we know wealthy or famous or powerful people who are deeply unhappy—but on another level, we don’t really believe it… or at least we don’t belie... posted on Feb 5 2015 (36,459 reads)

Kitty Edwards, left, and Patti Pansa, right] In May 2013, Patti Pansa, a professional engineer and life coach, contacted me to assist her in her journey towards death. She had taken care of all the literal preparations for death: she had spoken to her family members about her wishes for end-of-life care; her last will and testament, advanced health care directives, and medical durable power of attorney were all signed and delivered to the appropriate people; a list of her important accounts with passwords sat in a folder next to her computer. But Patti wanted more. She wanted to leave a legacy for her family and friends. Perhaps most of all, she wanted to discover way... posted on Mar 4 2015 (48,764 reads)

Prohm Temple, Angkor, Cambodia Storytelling The most exciting and beneficial things I believe happened to humanity in the past century were physicists’ recognition that “the universe is more like a great thought than like a great machine” and astronauts lifting far enough from Earth to see, feel and show us how very much alive our planet is. Those events led to a wonderful sea change from the older - and rather depressing - scientific story of a non-living material universe accidentally giving rise to all within it, devoid of meaning or purpose. The new view, revealing a conscious universe and a living Earth in whic... posted on Feb 26 2015 (22,319 reads)

are discovering how music affects the brain, helping us to make sense of its real emotional and social power. I still remember when I first heard the song by Peter Gabriel, “Solsbury Hill.” Something about that song—the lyrics, the melody, the unusual 7/4 time signature—gave me chills. Even now, years later, it still can make me cry. Who among us doesn’t have a similar story about a song that touched us? Whether attending a concert, listening to the radio, or singing in the shower, there’s something about music that can fill us with emotion, from joy to sadness. Music impacts us in ways that other sounds don’t, and for year... posted on Mar 6 2015 (30,033 reads)

edited version of this interview first appeared in Parabola magazine in their Winter 2014 edition.  Sheila Donis was born on the west side of Chicago in 1948 in an Irish Catholic neighborhood. There were nine children in the family living in a small two bedroom apartment above a tavern. When it was cold, several of the children slept on the floor near the gas stove. Whoever got to the one fur coat first had a better night. She joined the Sisters of Providence from Saint Mary-of-the- Woods as a teen-ager and remained a nun for nine years. Her final years as a nun were spent in inner-city Chicago, where her career as an educator took shape, first as a teacher and... posted on Apr 11 2015 (14,096 reads)

deal life's challenges, we need resources. Rick Hanson explains how to find the ones that lie inside yourself. We're pleased to bring you another installment of Rick Hanson's Just One Thing (JOT) newsletter, which each week offers a simple practice designed to bring you more joy and more fulfilling relationships. We all have issues—including demands upon us, stresses, illnesses, losses, vulnerabilities, and pain. (As Alan Watts put it: “Life is wiggly.”) Of course, many of our issues—in the broad sense I’m using the word here—are related to important sources of fulfillment, such as starting a business or raising a f... posted on May 20 2015 (16,289 reads)

for art, life is difficult, hard to understand, useless, and mysterious." “As a person she is tolerant and easygoing, as a user of words, merciless,” the editors of The Paris Review wrote in the introduction to their 1992 interview with poet, short story writer, educator, and activist Grace Paley (December 11, 1922–August 22, 2007). Although Paley herself never graduated from college, she went on to become one of the most beloved and influential teachers of writing — both formally, through her professorships at Sarah Lawrence, Columbia, Syracuse University, and City College of New York, and informally, through her in... posted on Jul 31 2015 (12,514 reads)

power corrupts, poetry cleanses,” John F. Kennedy proclaimed in his touching tribute to Robert Frost, celebrating poetry as “the means of saving power from itself.” And although poetry itself exerts a singular power over the human spirit, as one of the greatest poets of all time observed, it is hardly a power that comes easily to the poet: “Writing poetry is an unnatural act,” Elizabeth Bishop wrote when she was only twenty-three. So how, then, does one come to master this unnatural power — how does one become a Poet? That’s what the wise and wonderful Wendell Berry (b. August 5, 1934) — a man of great wisdom on solitude, love, a... posted on Oct 17 2015 (14,546 reads)

people don’t have any problem with seeing compassion as a thoroughly commendable quality. It seems to refer to an amalgam of unquestionably good qualities: kindness, mercy, tenderness, benevolence, understanding, empathy, sympathy, and fellow-feeling, along with an impulse to help other living creatures, human or animal, in distress. But we seem less sure about self-compassion. For many, it carries the whiff of all those other bad “self” terms: self-pity, self-serving, self-indulgent, self-centered, just plain selfish. Even many generations removed from our culture’s Puritan origins, we still seem to believe that if we aren’t blaming and punishing oursel... posted on Oct 19 2015 (29,156 reads)

recently met Robin McKenna, the director of GIFT, a film about different facets of the gift economy through the lens of Lewis Hyde's book The Gift. I was struck by how dedicated McKenna is to this project and by the interesting gift-based initiatives from all over the world that she features in her film. Gifting as a concept can seem so abstract. I get a lot of people commenting to me that gift economics sounds great in theory, but what are some examples of it working? People want to know how they can practically put gift culture into practice in their lives, because all around them they only see examples of a taking culture. Gifting feels like a utopia, rather than something we ... posted on Nov 1 2015 (12,549 reads)