is the most supremely interesting moment in life, the only one in fact when living seems life,” wrote Alice James — William and Henry James’s brilliant sister — as she modeled how to live fully while dying. “Death is our friend precisely because it brings us into absolute and passionate presence with all that is here, that is natural, that is love,” Rilke wrote a generation later in contemplating the supreme existential art of befriending our finitude — that ultimate assent to what Emily Dickinson had termed “the drift called ‘the infinite.'” More than a century after James, Rilke,... posted on Jun 10 2018 (10,204 reads)

has been suggested that the linear theory of time is related to the experience of time in the Northern (and Southern) hemispheres, where it is marked by seasonal changes: life begins in the spring, matures in the summer, and dies in the fall, to begin a new cycle the following spring. Bali, however, lies in the region of tropical rain forests near the Equator where there are no reasons to synchronize the growth schedules of all livings things. Instead, the processes of growth and decay proceed at different rates all over the forest, all the time. A flower is on a short, rapid growth cycle; a tree, a much longer one; a rock, longer still. The cycles mesh in this world, the Middle World, to... posted on Jul 3 2018 (6,843 reads)

most regretful people on earth,” the poet Mary Oliver wrote in contemplating the artist’s task and the central commitment of the creative life, “are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave to it neither power nor time.” That is what Rainer Maria Rilke (December 4, 1875–December 29, 1926), another great poet with a philosophical bent and uncommon existential insight, explored a century earlier in the third letter collected in his indispensable Letters to a Young Poet (public library) — the wellspring of wisdom on art and life, which Rilke bequ... posted on Jul 8 2018 (11,413 reads)

occur in life. Challenges arise for all of us. The beauty of it all is that these struggles are something which, if attended to, can deeply connect us. Think for a moment about whatever may currently be bringing some difficulty in your life. Perhaps these challenges are manifesting in any or all of the physical, relational, survival or emotional realms. Your experience is perhaps not very easy, but I do have good news for you! You aren’t alone. Some of us have moments in time when everything may seem to be on track, but that is a pretty rare occurrence for most everyone. The universality of this “affliction” hit me while driving recently on Highway 1 ... posted on Sep 6 2018 (9,835 reads)

about in your columns. She happens to be my mother. I highly recommend coming to tea at her home and meeting her.  Will you come? Thursdays are Salon- "cultural exchange through conversation"  and tea is at 4 daily. Sincerely, Anna Rainville The email was forwarded to a few ServiceSpace volunteers, among them Anne Veh, who responded with, "Betty Peck was my kindergarten teacher! She is one of those mentors that I think of so often in my life. I would love to join a group for tea, and an interview. My heart is bursting. I would love to be of service." And so it happened that within the span of a couple of weeks a dozen Se... posted on Sep 29 2018 (9,625 reads)

This Indian Nun Witnessed a Woman’s Murder, She Saved Thousands More from Domestic Violence As India honors the first anniversary of the Delhi gang rape that rocked the nation, YES! talks with Sister Lucy Kurien—whose life was changed forever when she saw a young woman set on fire. If you sit in the slums on the outskirts of Pune in the evening, you will hear shouting and yelling from all sorts of places, Sister Lucy Kurien says of her home in South India. Much of the fighting is fueled by alcohol, and sometimes it explodes into bruises, scars, and broken bones. "The women don’t even retaliate." It's a sound the Catholic nun from Kerala has ... posted on Oct 22 2018 (6,781 reads)

alchemical journey into the heart of things was just an old story our fathers, groping in the thicket of their own obliviousness, told their children to get them to sit still. Now, we had fire—we had the tale of an uneasy tryst between a man, a woman, and an apple to help us understand our unflattering origins. Thanks to science, to true knowledge, we had the account of an inexplicable explosion at the beginning of time, the explosion that began this feverish rush of madness we call life. In the grand scheme of things, there was no room for Obatala and his golden rope. There was no room for my people. There was no room for me. I must have understood my teachers supremely well ... posted on Dec 27 2018 (6,213 reads)

revere the creation of wealth. Anand Giridharadas wants us to examine this and how it shapes our life together. He knows, from the inside, the web of Wall Street and Silicon Valley; think tanks, foundations, and convenings from TED to the Aspen Institute; and book and speaking circuits and media that confer power. I had interviewed Anand before and wanted to draw out the generative aspect of a confrontational and thought-provoking message he’s now bringing about the implicit moral equations behind a notion like “win-win” and the moral compromises in cultural consensus we’ve reached, without reflecting on it, about what and who can save us. What follows ... posted on Feb 22 2019 (4,830 reads)

is not just negative peace (absence of conflict) but it is really about the presence it is positive peace (relationships; infrastructure of human rights, social justice, truly rehabilitative programs, environmental justice; understanding non-violent communication, personal peace) – all of those things are really the ultimate goal and gift of education, but also have to be part of the output in moving from childhood to adulthood.” “I feel drenched with gratitude for the life I've been able to craft and co-create with the communities here [in Hawaii]. I got a PhD at the University of Hawaii in comparative international education – and was a lecturer in the c... posted on Feb 24 2019 (5,681 reads)

it is necessary to reteach a thing its loveliness.” ~ Galway Kinnell Although you may not realize it, your everyday life is already sacred. Everything arises from the one source. Everything is an exquisite expression of life, of pure being. One of my clients reported that she is starting to become more aware of things in her life she never noticed before. She loves it when someone unexpected shows up at her door. She flows through the day responding with ease to everyone and everything. And she is attuned with all her senses when she takes a walk outside. These are new experiences for her, but this deepening awareness has always been available. Things are... posted on Apr 12 2019 (8,486 reads)

the Fetzer Institute's newly built retreat center, Seasons, which included a reflection on each of the four seasons. Here we excerpt his musings on spring in the Upper Midwest where he lives and where the Fetzer Institute is located. While the seasons may differ in your part of the world and the movement of Parker’s "inner seasons" may be quite unlike your own, we offer his reflections in the hope that you might be encouraged to explore the seasons of your own life and work. I will wax romantic about spring and its splendors in a moment, but first there is a hard truth to be told: before spring becomes beautiful, it is plug ugly, nothing but mud and muck... posted on Mar 21 2021 (14,012 reads)

more heroic workarounds. Ultimately, it becomes clear that the problem isn’t just the software: an entirely new operating system is required to get where we need to go. This realization dawned on me gradually over the years I spent researching my book, The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity’s Search for Meaning. My research began as a personal search for meaning. I’d been through a personal crisis when the certainties on which I’d built my early life came crashing down around me. I wanted my life going forward to be truly meaningful—but based on what foundation? I was determined to sort through the received narratives of meaning until I... posted on May 16 2019 (6,239 reads)

cherry blossoms have arrived, and it feels like nature has handed us a beautiful gift. At the Japanese Tea Garden, here in San Francisco, I lean into a low hanging blossom and inhale the delicate sweet scent. The wet pink petals touch my nose, and once again, I am reminded of the generosity of nature, year after year. From the air we breathe, to the body we each inhabit, we are living a profound gift, and yet, we can struggle to see and relate to life as a gift.   In his seminal book, Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, Brother David Steindl-Rast poses a question worth pondering: “Why is it so difficult to acknowledge a gift as a gift?” He believes that admitti... posted on Jun 23 2019 (6,465 reads)

you’re trying to become happier, you’ve probably heard the advice to practice gratitude. “Gratitude is literally one of the few things that can measurably change people’s lives,” writes pioneering researcher Robert Emmons in his book Thanks! His studies suggest that gratitude can improve our health and relationships—making it one of the most well-studied and effective ways to increase our well-being in life. But prescribing gratitude to everyone is a problem: Most of what we know about it comes from studying Americans—and, specifically, the mainly white American college students from the campuses where researchers work. That crea... posted on Aug 11 2019 (9,824 reads)

embodying/being related to grateful living? Over the last two years, we have had the privilege of having many people share their stories with us. Sometimes it’s just a light-hearted conversation with an elderly couple about their secret to a marriage that has lasted 60 years. Sometimes the subject is more difficult – about how someone has had to deal with depression and thoughts of suicide, for example. Each and every story has helped to remind us of what is really important in life and that there is so much to be grateful for in the simple pleasures of everyday living. This filmmaking journey fills us with a sense of gratitude for life and the beautiful people that surround... posted on Sep 17 2019 (11,404 reads)

from the book Wild Mind: A Field Guide to the Human Psyche by Bill Plotkin. Published by New World Library, 2013 www.newworldlibrary.com. It’s time to take another look at ourselves — to re-enliven our sense of what it is to be human, to breathe new life into ancient intuitions of who we are, and to learn again to celebrate, as we once did, our instinctive affinity with the Earth community in which we’re rooted. We’re called now to rediscover what it means to be human beings in a wildly diverse world of feathered, furred, and scaled fellow creatures; flowers and forests; mountains, rivers, and oceans; wind, rain, and snow; Sun and Moon. Our I... posted on Sep 25 2019 (8,109 reads)

will always be a need to tell powerful stories from some of humanities darkest times. This rings especially true for stories about the Nazi’s and the Holocaust because we have a resurgence of the same sentiment that led to one of the worst regimes in history. Diane Ackerman wrote a story based on real life historic heroes that remind us that we can fight against oppression in a non-violent way with her book “The Zookeeper’s Wife”. With the film out this weekend, we talk with Ackerman about her novel and how it still holds up as a reminder of human kindness in a sometimes cruel world. I never heard about the story before I read your novel.  Was it hard to... posted on Sep 29 2019 (4,341 reads)

article from the YES! Media archives was originally published in the Spring 2011 issue of YES! Magazine. So many of us have good ideas for helping the world. But we tuck away our ideas. I did. I’d tell myself that if the idea were any good someone else would have already done it. That I’m not capable of making a difference. I’d sit on my ideas, get on with my life, and then feel angry at the world because the problems I cared about didn’t get solved. I had that fear of going first. Then I took my first hapless step into what I call accidental activism. In 2006, I started a project where I lived as environmentally as possible for a year—with my litt... posted on Nov 18 2019 (6,308 reads)

the waning days of 2015, I decided to mark a milestone birthday by simply saying “thank you.” My plan was to write one letter each week of that year to someone who had helped, shaped, or inspired me on the road to the person I am today. Nothing fancy: just one gratitude letter at time. I later called this letter-writing spree my Thank-You Project—and it would change my life in a profound, positive, and lasting way. I have discovered that writing a “gratitude letter” is one of the most common prescriptions from researchers looking for a way to elevate gratitude levels in their everyday lives. In fact, that’s often how scientists test their theories: T... posted on Dec 9 2019 (8,532 reads)

and sorrowful landscape of loss, and writes: Is beauty itself an intricately fashioned lure, the cruelest hoax of all? […] A wind rose, quickening; it invaded my nostrils, vibrated my gut. I stirred and lifted my head. No, I’ve gone through this a million times, beauty is not a hoax… Beauty is real. I would never deny it; the appalling thing is that I forget it. Art by Carson Ellis from Du Iz Tak?, a lyrical illustrated story about the cycle of life and the eternal cycle of growth and decay Watching a maple leaf twirl to the ground in its final flight, Dillard considers something else we easily forget, as essential as beauty — the i... posted on Dec 21 2019 (12,038 reads)