Six Ways to Help Kids Grow Their Creativity
Brene Brown, bestselling author, researcher, and University of Houston professor, was surrounded by creativity as a child. "I grew up in a pink stucco house in New Orleans where my mom was always a maker. All the curtains in our house were homemade, all the art in our house was from us kids. I had dresses that matched my mom's that matched my dolls. I never thought about creativity as an act separ... posted on May 29 2023, 3,086 reads

Finding Treasure in the Ruins of Trauma
"An early pioneer in mind-body medicine, Dr. James Gordon says we are all affected by trauma. But all of us also "have a great and largely untapped capacity to help and heal ourselves and one another." Dr. Gordon founded the Center for Mind-Body Medicine in Washington, DC, initially to transform health care by training health professionals with the tools of stress- and trauma relief. But he soon h... posted on May 28 2023, 2,459 reads

Beauty & the Dumpster
One day, Meredith Sabini found a large dumpster in front of her neighbor's house, packed with all her treasures and belongings. The widow had passed on and her family members quickly loaded her possessions and left the dumpster behind. Ms. Sabini, founder of The Dream Institute of Northern California in Berkeley whose mission is to restore the dream as a cultural resource, muses: "It is common the... posted on May 27 2023, 24,641 reads

Soil & Spirit: Cultivation and Kinship in the Web of Life
"In Soil and Spirit, poet, farmer, and educator Scott Chaskey generously reflects on the natural world, his travels visiting growers around the country, and his insight into how we can build healthier communities while tending to the earth." Read an excerpt here. ... posted on May 26 2023, 1,648 reads

Question Everything: Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo
"So what does it mean to think outside the box? All of us live and swim within a world of concepts. And our first very powerful concept is who we are, who we think we are. You have ideas about who you are that you want everyone else to know about. We identify with our gender, our nationality, race, social class, education and then we're somebodys brother or sister, husband or wife, mother or fathe... posted on May 25 2023, 1,861 reads

Staying Loyal to Who You Are and Your Dreams
"Dr. Tererai Trent is an activist, adjunct professor at Drexel University's School of Public Health, and the author of The Awakened Woman: Remembering & Reigniting Our Sacred Dreams. Oprah Winfrey has referred to Dr. Trent as one of her favorite guests. In this episode of Insights at the Edge, Tami Simon speaks with Dr. Trent about the path that took her from a childhood in rural Zimbabwe to becom... posted on May 24 2023, 2,834 reads

Attention as an Instrument of Love
"How the brain metes out attention and what that means for our intimacy with reality is what the philosophy-lensed British psychiatrist Iain McGilchrist takes up in his immense, in both senses of the word, book The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World (public library) -- an investigation of how "the very brain mechanisms which succeed in simplifying the world... posted on May 23 2023, 3,255 reads

The Most Tender Gaze I Have Ever Beheld
"As I was facing into the slope and digging, I became aware of a presence behind me. I quickly looked over my left shoulder and saw a deer quietly standing about 4 feet behind me. Knowing it was hunting season, I ignored the deer not wanting to familiarize it to people and make it easier to hunt and kill. I continued working for another ten minutes but kept feeling the presence of the deer. I fi... posted on May 22 2023, 6,676 reads

Make Good Art
"I escaped from school as soon as I could, when the prospect of four more years of enforced learning before I'd become the writer I wanted to be was stifling. I got out into the world, I wrote, and I became a better writer the more I wrote, and I wrote some more, and nobody ever seemed to mind that I was making it up as I went along, they just read what I wrote and they paid for it, or they didn't... posted on May 21 2023, 4,388 reads

The Secret of Blooming
"The sun's setting fast. You hurry, wanting to get home before dark. But as you stroll past a humble house fringed by lush flowerbeds, you glimpse a line of people in the backyard, facing a privacy fence. With their backs to you, they're ranked like a row of tin soldiers, socially distanced; seven or eight of them, standing at attention. What are they up to? you wonder, slowing your steps. A maske... posted on May 20 2023, 4,386 reads