Lessons in the Old Language
"90% of the world's languages are dying and will be gone within decades, displaced by the cold, placeless tongues of global commerce and colonization. Millions of voices...are going silent and with them the local wisdom borne of millennia of intimate and sustainable communion with place extinguished. The very fabric of life on the planet is also under siege by the same forces. The problem of endan... posted on Oct 28 2012, 15,414 reads

One Hat, One Heart
Seeds of Light is the humanitarian service arm of CoreLight, an international non-profit organization practicing "love-in-action." One Hat One Heart is a project that provides handmade, warm winter hats to orphans and vulnerable children in Mpumalanga, South Africa. These hats are the medium through which joy and open-heartedness are being expressed. This short video on their work demonstrates wha... posted on Oct 27 2012, 2,668 reads

The Beauty of Questions
"I don't think we always give questions the time and attention they deserve, often mistaking them as being mere stepping stones to an answer (...) When used properly, questions have the potential to connect us to the world of another. A heartfelt "How are you?" or "How was your day?" can become the bridge that keeps us in relationship to the lives of those we love. Sometimes, too, questions create... posted on Oct 26 2012, 13,340 reads

Detroit's Good Food Cure
"What happens when the Motor City transforms itself into the capital of grow-your-own food? There are more than 1,200 community gardens in Detroit--more per square mile and more per capita than in any other American city. The number of community gardens is just a fraction of the number of kitchen gardens that families grow in yards and side lots. Locals are learning more about nutrition and feelin... posted on Oct 25 2012, 10,569 reads

Barbara Kingsolver On How to Be Hopeful
"The arc of history is longer than human vision. It bends. We abolished slavery, we granted universal suffrage. We have done hard things before. And every time it took a terrible fight between people who could not imagine changing the rules, and those who said, "We already did. We have made the world new." The hardest part will be to convince yourself of the possibilities, and hang on. If you run ... posted on Oct 24 2012, 31,360 reads

The Science of Compassion
"As human beings, we will inevitably encounter suffering at some point in our lives. However, we also have evolved very specific social mechanisms to relieve that pain: altruism and compassion. It is not just receiving compassion that relieves our pain...The act of experiencing compassion and helping others actually leads to tremendous mental and physical well-being for us as well. It is our abili... posted on Oct 23 2012, 35,171 reads

How to Work With Someone You Don't Like
How do you work with someone you don't like? The old adage, "grin and bear it", is almost impossible to do. In this article Peter Bregman describes an alternative strategy that is centred on self-reflection, self-awareness, and compassion... ultimately transforming dislike to like.... posted on Oct 22 2012, 42,159 reads

An 8-Year-Old's Lemonade Stand for Freedom
"Sometimes the best life lessons can be learned from kids. Kids like Miss Vivienne Harr of Fairfax, California. Vivie, as she likes to be called, is a personality-full-cup-runneth-over, 8-year-old philanthropy phenom who set up a lemonade stand -- or what I like to call Lemonade Stand 2.0. Vivie was inspired to take a stand against slavery after seeing an installation on slavery by Lisa Kristine,... posted on Oct 21 2012, 18,402 reads

The Man Who Left Hollywood For His True Calling
In a former life Scott Neeson was a high-powered Hollywood exec responsible for the global success of box-office hits like Titanic and Braveheart. But eight years ago, after a poignant experience at a Cambodian garbage dump, he quit his job, sold his mansion and traded in all the trappings of success to dedicate his life to underserved children in one of the poorest countries of the world. Today ... posted on Oct 20 2012, 66,981 reads

The Power of Strangers
"People around the world are finding rejuvenation in groups, from book clubs that meet in living rooms to the mass street protests that have swept the Arab world. This coming together may well be a response to the breakdown of social networks caused by everything from the changing nature of the family to the ongoing economic squeeze. And in some cases, these face-to-face meetings are facilitated b... posted on Oct 19 2012, 4,731 reads