we look back through prior articles on the issue and offer this Daily Good Spotlight on Gratitude. Science shows us that cultivating a sense of gratitude is beneficial to our health in many interesting ways. People who practice gratitude have stronger immune systems and lower blood pressure. They tend to exercise more and take better care of their health. Their sleep is longer and more refreshing. Psychologically, those who practice gratitude take more joy and pleasure in life and experience higher levels of positive emotions. They feel more alert, alive and awake in their lives. Socially, a gratitude practice leaves people more outgoing, forgiving, helpful, ge... posted on Nov 24 2016 (14,368 reads)

to be a sense of finality with every new scientific model? With every major new theory, we like to think that we have reached our destination, and that we can all get on with our lives secure in the knowledge that the answers are here. We thought for a while that everything was about protons, neutrons and electrons – that is, until quantum physics came along. For a while, we also thought that human health necessitated the killing of germs. But even Pasteur was not sure by the end of his life, when, on his deathbed he famously confessed: “Bernard was right; the pathogen is nothing; the terrain is everything.” And though Darwin enlightened the world about the reality o... posted on May 15 2021 (42,790 reads)

Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi Random House Written with eloquence, insight, and a healthy measure of humor, When Breath Becomes Air captures the thoughts and memories of neurosurgeon Kalanithi just before his death from lung cancer in March 2015. Having devoted his previous 10 years to the preservation of life, Kalanithi was in a unique position to reflect on mortality as he faced it himself at age 37.  —Damon Orion     Grace without God The Search for Meaning, Purpose, and Belonging in a Secular Age by Katherine Ozment Harper Wave Ozment went on a quest to find grace without God, and during her exploration, met... posted on Apr 4 2017 (37,471 reads)

do you do with a toaster when you no longer want it? Until recently, no one thought about that question until the toaster was ready for the scrap heap. Today, advocates of the circular economy suggest that the best time to address end-of-life issues is when a product is first being designed. It’s at that point that it has the greatest potential for circularity. If the designers of your toaster had thought about it not as a disposable appliance but as a product with value worth preserving, your options would be considerably enhanced. That, in fact, is what the designers at the London-based Agency of Design (AoD) did. As part of a project that “looked at the end of life of ... posted on Apr 24 2017 (15,762 reads)

corporations.  A diabetes diagnosis after nearly bleeding to death.  A recommitment to health, and a Kickstarter campaign to learn to cook and share it with the world.  A return to Vietnam as a foodie and blogger, and a newfound sense of purpose as a traveling food writer and published author.  Then back on the technology career track as an engineer in leading companies and at a booming startup.  Pre-cancer diagnosis.  A fight for life and a return to health (for the second time), but this time via naturopathy, meditation, and numerous alternative healing modalities -- modalities that allowed her to uncover buried issues i... posted on Apr 20 2017 (13,203 reads)

you so much. I'm so very grateful to share this deeply sacred space with all of you. -- Padmaja Murtinty **** A Pediatrician's Search for Meaning I work as a pediatric doctor in a large HMO and I've been working there for over 10 years now. I'm sure some of you will probably identify with this. When you come out of medical school and then residency, you have this vision of saving people.  You're intubating patients and you're giving lifesaving medications and you're doing tracheotomies and whatnot -- to actually save people's lives. After I did my pediatric residency, I wanted to do a fellowship but I was so burned out... posted on Aug 3 2017 (10,695 reads)

now and then, someone asks me for advice on how to become a writer. I aspire to live by the insightful words of theologian Nelle Morton, “Our job is to hear people into speech.”[i] So instead of offering a dozen do’s and don’ts, I ask questions meant to evoke my conversation partner’s inner teacher, the best source of guidance any of us has. If he or she presses me, the best I can do is draw a few lessons from the story of my own writing life. Call it “advice lite.”The urge to write first dropped in on me in my early twenties and soon made it clear it was here for the duration. Nearly two decades passed before my first book was published, ... posted on May 9 2017 (13,268 reads)

it can be said that we are always practicing something. Most often, we are practicing what is habitual, familiar, and mostly unconscious… All the great wisdom traditions teach us that life is precious; that what is happening right now IS life, not some future destination, time, or state of mind. “Carpe Diem,” they say, implying that we must take none of this moment, and its opportunities, for granted. But as we all know, this is easier said than done, especially when our lives deliver us genuine challenges to living out this simple and profound philosophy. Fortunately, wisdom traditions, including gratefulness, offer a wide range ... posted on May 18 2017 (21,202 reads)

can forget Maria at the opening of The Sound of Music, when she goes to the mountains, twirling in a grand circle of life and joy? "I go to the hills, when my heart is lonely--I know I will hear, what I've heard before, my heart will be blessed with the sound of music, and I'll sing once more." A lonely heart, fear, stress over the political state of the world, ill health, job worries, all these can create anxiety that can drag down our spirits. When the unexpected happens, we always have our inner core strength; we can cultivate that from our connection to the earth, to God, and our relationships with people as well as animals and plants. John Muir says, “... posted on Aug 12 2017 (15,563 reads)

Kolbert and Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard each had big books in 2015. Kolbert’s The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History—winner of the Pulitzer Prize for nonfiction—takes an unflinching look at the history of extinction and the different ways that human beings are negatively impacting life on the planet. Ricard’s Altruism: The Power of Compassion to Change Yourself and the World explores global challenges, such as climate change, and argues that compassion and altruism are the keys to creating a better future. Together these books—filled with grief and hope—feel like two sides of a coin, each necess... posted on Jun 19 2017 (15,699 reads)

Brother David, I’d like to bring up a question that has been on my mind for some time. It has to do with what we call the heart. The heart is a great symbol in spiritual life and in Christianity especially. But the fact is that I don’t know what the heart is. When people talk about the heart they seem to do so in a number of ways. In a general sense, it seems to refer to the feelings; at other times, to love and devotion. It also refers to courage and faithfulness (as when a fighter is said to have heart). And sometimes it refers to one’s basic attitude toward life (as when we say, he had a change of heart). Probably there are other meanings, and probably they ar... posted on Jul 17 2017 (10,811 reads)

by Frank McKenna We long to find more joy in our daily pursuits even though life has taught us it’s not so easy. New discoveries in neuroscience offer insight into how we can develop a brighter state of heart and mind. The First Step on the path to finding happiness is to open the mind to alternative ways of thinking about life. While much of our focus in the West has been toward comfort and the acquisition of worldly goods, in Eastern countries your status as a human being traditionally comes first. So instead of being greeted by “What are you up to these days?” or “How’s it going with your to-do list?” you may be asked in Muslim cou... posted on Aug 29 2017 (19,806 reads)

conversation with wildlife educator Steve Karlin In 1980, Steve Karlin, a former National Parks Service ranger, founded Wildlife Associates, dedicated to educating people about animals and the environment. Now situated on 120 acres on the coast of northern California, Wildlife Associates provides a home for more than fifty wild animals who are no longer equipped to survive in the wild, and brings educational programs to about 100,000 students in the San Francisco Bay Area each year. Recently, filmmakers Anne Veh and Rajesh Krishnan made a film, Teach Me to Be Wild, about Wildlife Associates and Steve Karlin. During groundwork for the film, filmmaker and photographer Phil Borges ... posted on Oct 24 2017 (10,726 reads)

one can build you the bridge on which you, and only you, must cross the river of life,” wrote the thirty-year-old Nietzsche. “The true and durable path into and through experience,” Nobel-winning poet Seamus Heaney counseled the young more than a century later in his magnificent commencement address, “involves being true … to your own solitude, true to your own secret knowledge.” Every generation believes that it must battle unprecedented pressures of conformity; that it must fight harder than any previous generation to protect that secret knowledge from which our integrity of selfhood springs. Some of this belie... posted on Jan 8 2018 (11,018 reads)

by David Hockney A choral serenade to the building blocks of language starring Susan Sontag, Iris Murdoch, Ian McEwan, Joyce Carol Oates, Martin Amis, Doris Lessing, John Updike, and more titans of literature. In the final years of his life, the English poet, novelist, essayist, and social justice advocate Sir Stephen Spender undertook a playful and poignant labor of love — he asked artist David Hockney to draw each letter of the alphabet, then invited twenty-nine of the greatest writers in the English language to each contribute a short original text for one of the letters. The result was the 1991 out-of-print treasure Hockney’s Alphabet (public library) &m... posted on Dec 16 2017 (6,920 reads)

Brown and her husband, Dr. Rob Ramey, are among these researchers. For the last twelve years, Laura and Rob have spent long periods among the desert elephants of the Northern Kunene region of Namibia, monitoring their movements, feeding patterns, and family relationships. …. “I always feel I am going to visit some of my relatives.” Laura says. “We’ve come to know these individual elephants and we’ve watched them through the different stages of their life. It’s just like getting to know a person, because you see how they change and develop. Family is the most important thing to them, especially to the females. And seeing the way they confron... posted on Mar 25 2018 (16,549 reads)

of mystery. The tale was so unlikely that later my friends joked that perhaps I’d dreamed it.      The red napkin, tablecloth, and candlesticks all belonged to Mrs. Cybulski (not her real name), a widow who had lived down the street as long as I’d been in the neighborhood, about twenty years.      Except to water her yard, she didn’t go out much. And when she did, she stayed near the house, as if the tether fastening her to life had retracted, pulling her toward an eternal home.      One day, I noticed a full-size dumpster in front of her bungalow. I assumed it was for yard debris or trash from som... posted on Apr 1 2018 (1,104 reads)

the need to move slowly through this time of year.  If we rush through the change in seasons in nature and in our lives, we will find ourselves missing that edge between winter and spring with its important lessons to teach. What is the natural purpose and symbolism in this time of thawing?  It is in that place between despair and hope that we find the beauty of the thaw. It is where Creative Life, or God if you will, is especially potent in us.  Here is the pregnant place of life where we may come alive in the emptiness of our longing for what we have lost and what we have not yet opened ourselves to receive.  The thaw is a fertile place of possibility.  In seas... posted on Mar 25 2021 (12,748 reads)

Day of Happiness. This event grew out of a United Nations resolution - affirming happiness as a fundamental human goal - and suggesting that we should approach economic growth in a way that promotes well-being for everyone. Social systems and institutions have a role to play in our happiness, and that’s evident in this year’s World Happiness Report. Researchers ranked countries by their average happiness levels and found, for example, that GDP, life expectancy, freedom, and corruption make a difference. In the ranking, Finland, Norway, and Denmark came out on top. The United States dropped four spots to number 18. That’s the big pic... posted on Aug 8 2018 (23,275 reads)

it’s almost always because they have some type of unresolved trauma that is being held in the body. And so the key, what we found really works for people, is to help identify the source of trauma, to help them find ways to release it for themselves that are safe and comfortable and helps them to expand their body experience. We’ve been very successful [in helping] those people move out of pain, or at least to a place where it’s manageable and they can live a good life. TS: Help me understand how physical pain relates to past trauma. That’s not obvious to me. PL: Well first, I want to add one other thing: pain in itself becomes traumatic. ... posted on May 26 2018 (21,551 reads)