your presence in co-creating and deepening the collective energy of this conversation. And a friendly reminder: if there's a tech glitch or any other issue for our speakers, please hang in there while our team works quickly to bring the speakers back on. Let's start with a moment of silence to anchor ourselves into this space. [pause] Thank you, and welcome again. Our moderator for the conversation today with Barbara McAfee is Mia Tagano. Mia is a ServiceSpace volunteer who enjoys connections she has made online and offline. She's also an actor, teacher, and coach, as well as a spirit runner and community member. Mia has been a professional actor for over 20 years, inc... posted on Apr 28 2023 (2,454 reads)

how you came to your call to be Jesuit. Fr. Boyle: First of all, it's so great to be here and I'm so honored to be in a conversation with you. I'm a big fan, though I do have a recurring nightmare that I'm interviewed by Krista Tippett and I'm found shallow and lacking faith [laughter]. This is way better than the actual nightmare I have [laughter]. Well, I was educated by Jesuits, so I — for me, they were always sort of this combo burger of absolute hilarity and joy and the most fun people to be around, and they were prophetic. So this was during the time of the Vietnam War, so we'd laugh a lot and I'd go with them to protesting the war. So the com... posted on May 4 2014 (20,176 reads)

try and direct them and watch what it is they like to do in play, you often will see a key to their innate talents. And if those talents are given fairly free reign, then you see that there is a union between self and talent. And that this is nature's way of sort of saying this is who you are and what you are. And I'm sure if you go back and think about both of your children or yourself and go back to your earliest emotion-laden, visual, and visceral memories of what really gave you joy, you'll have some sense of what was natural for you and where your talents lie. Krista Tippett, host: Who knew that we learn empathy, trust, irony, and problem solving through play — so... posted on Jul 18 2014 (31,674 reads)

didn’t want to wish. She wanted to know how to live life with no regrets. Out of Patti’s vision and sense of urgency, the No Regrets Project was born. Between radiation treatments, spinal surgery and a bucket list trip to Alaska, Patti wrote essays, talked with anyone who would listen, dreamed and created. In the end, she developed five simple, personal practices to help herself live life more fully: be grateful every day, trust – take the risk, courage to be me, choose joy, and love myself & share it. While the phrases may be simple, accomplishing them is not. The development of the No Regrets Project is Patti Pansa’s legacy to all of us.  Be Grate... posted on Mar 4 2015 (48,678 reads)

When my mother was dying, I didn’t ask that question. I didn’t ask any question. I didn’t want to know the answer because the answer would change everything. We didn’t talk about the cancer – how it was devouring my mother’s bones and internal organs, how it was planning to steal my favorite person. We didn’t talk about love and loss, or her longing to see me find a life that would blossom. We didn’t mention how death would assassinate that joy for her or how death would rob me of the pleasure of coming home from college for Thanksgiving break and seeing her face at the kitchen window, eager to hear every detail of my life. Death would k... posted on Nov 23 2015 (15,189 reads)

Dance (Word Press 2008), which won the 2009 Paterson Award for Literary Excellence; More (C&R Press 2010); Gold (Cascade Books, a division of Wipf and Stock, in their Poeima Poetry Series, 2013); Small Rain (Purple Flag, an imprint of the Virtual Artists Collective, 2014); and Barbara Crooker: Selected Poems (FutureCycle Press, 2015). Margaret Rozga: When I reviewed your book Gold for Verse Wisconsin, I loved the joy, the optimism, in many of your poems, even those that pay their respects to sorrow. Those poems focus on your grief at your mother’s death, but in the third section of the book, you tur... posted on Jul 26 2016 (11,095 reads)

speak these kind words about me. But the question is there, will I live up to that or not? [laughs] I do question myself at times. I don’t know if you’ve met another Buddhist nun who sings and who has been called a “rock star.” [she laughs and audience laughs] I’m a very controversial figure, but I have no regrets. I’m happy because most of the time I’ve seen my effort has been able to make some impact of bringing smiles to people’s faces. I enjoy that so much. It brings joy to my heart. I always took my singing ability as a blessing. Since a very young age, I always enjoyed singing and humming. But when I took refuge in the nunnery, my ... posted on Nov 20 2017 (10,204 reads)

The media in general is so negative. It's just something to catch our attention, but Daily Good offers the opposite. It bring us something good, something that's a higher possibility of humankind. Some of the good initiatives, the best practices out there, and every day you receive a gift from Daily Good. I just love it. I have these programs with young people where I shared DailyGood with them -- many of whom don't speak English, so I translate to Vietnamese. It just multiplies my joy. The first joy is reading it myself, knowing some people are doing really wonderful, awesome work out there. And the second is being able to tell that news to others, and sharing with others. So I... posted on Sep 5 2018 (3,661 reads)

inner champion, we tell it our berating story and see what happens. When my inner critic gets over-zealous, I invoke the imagery of Jesus and/or my dog Stella.  If Jesus rolls his eyes or Stella yawns and goes to sleep, I know my criticism holds no merit. I release the story of my inadequacy and choose a more compassionate story that embraces and transcends fear. The Candle of Joy: My friend Birju recently shared this quote: Joy is the mother of all emotions. But joy will not go where her children are not welcome.   It sounds odd, but I believe the feelings we hold around failure are displaced joy. It can be hard to find joy in failure. But w... posted on Oct 27 2018 (8,111 reads)

start with a quote I have from you:  "Contemplative practices are not merely to induce altered states but to induce altered traits." Or as Houston Smith so eloquently put it, "...to transform flashes of illumination into abiding light.” Can you say a little bit more about what this means? Roger:  One of the delights of any contemplative practice is if we do it long enough, we have peak experiences.   We feel emotions such as love, compassion, joy, and ecstasy. We also tap into deep aspirations, such as the motive to actualize our capacities to become more of what we truly are.  These inner experiences are wonderful; but they are not t... posted on Jan 17 2019 (6,167 reads)

knew to commune with the Earth. Different music, different songs for the seasons, for times of planting and harvesting, for the hunt. The scent of ceremonial tobacco hanging in the night air. And so we need to relearn how to speak to the trees and the rivers and the stars, to whisper our deepest secrets to the still night air, and remember how we are all one family, bonded from the very beginning. And with these words I am trying to tell the story of the early days, of laughter and joy and belonging. I am pointing down pathways of the garden of the soul, flowers and fruit trees, springs of clear water. And look, there children are playing, the moment is present with magic and sa... posted on Sep 20 2020 (6,892 reads)

some horrible thing that happened. And then, “I don’t understand why I’m not calmer because that was horrible.” You have been through a genuine tragedy. And why are you blaming yourself for feeling something about it? I’ve seen a lot of that, too.   TS: Yes. OK. So, I have two more themes I want to touch on and then a very important topic I want to cover too. So, I’m going to keep this train, this train, choo-chooing here, which is allowing joy. This really spoke to me on the path of being a real change maker. You write about how if we titrate, if we don’t just stay with what’s hard, that it enables us to persevere. So, I won... posted on Apr 8 2022 (2,611 reads)

McFerrin: This is what I want everyone to experience at the end of my concert is everyone has this sense of rejoicing. I don't want them to be blown away by what I do, I want them to have this sense of real, real joy from the depths of their being. Because I think when you take them to that place then you open up a place where grace can come in. Krista Tippett, host: Who better to contemplate the human voice — its delights, its revelations, and its mystery — than Bobby McFerrin? He's won 10 Grammys and is as comfortable with Chick Corea as with Mozart. He's also known for drawing thousands of strangers into singing the Ave Maria, beautifully, to... posted on Aug 15 2014 (14,214 reads)

on a website to help couples spend more quality time together. Still not happy, he abandoned that plan and returned to Beijing to sell office furniture. One year and two more moves across two continents later, he admitted to his friends, “I’m harder to find than Carmen San Diego.” Tom made four mistakes that are all too common on the road to happiness. The first blunder was in trying to figure out if he was happy. When we pursue happiness, our goal is to experience more joy and contentment. To find out if we’re making progress, we need to compare our past happiness to our current happiness. This creates a problem: the moment we make that comparison, we shift fr... posted on Dec 28 2015 (20,294 reads)

of a family member or whether she's lighting a candle and sending love to people going through difficulties or just showing up for friends whose ages range from their teenage years to their nineties. She shows up for the people in her lives. That's just the spirit that she carries. Anne we're so excited that you finally agreed to be on this call. We're so glad that the day has finally come to get to hear a bit more of your journey! Anne: Thank you Audrey it's such a joy and a gift for me to be on this call. I can feel all the noble friends all around the world. Each of these calls is such a gift because we get to be in a circle together. It's such a sacred sp... posted on Aug 18 2016 (13,833 reads)

many ways, 2016 was a banner year for books related to our themes of compassion, kindness, empathy, happiness, and mindfulness. Judging from the number of books to arrive at our office, the science of a meaningful life is hitting its full stride, with more and more people recognizing how to apply new insights to our daily lives. Yet, while the number of books was encouraging, many of them seemed to repeat old themes and research, without offering much new in the way of insight. That’s why many of our favorite books of 2016 do something a little bit extra: They take our science to a new level, looking at how schools, organizations, and society at large can appl... posted on Dec 23 2016 (29,549 reads)

week. You were just in Boston and now you are in LA. Next week you are headed to Nepal. It is such a gift for us to get to share space with you for this hour and half. Thank for taking the time to just pause and share your story. Linda, can you share a bit more about how you got started on your current journey? Linda: I married when I was very young, when I was in my early twenties. At the time I was in a career I absolutely adored. I was a nurse and was a nurse for 10 years. It was a joy every single day; I felt that spring in my step to go to work. As life happened, I got divorced at a very young age and I was a single mom with two young children. At that time I realized that ... posted on Aug 3 2018 (4,441 reads)

matter of feeling rather than being it — tends to involve framing our emotional triggers as moral motives, then thundering them upon those we cast in the role of the Wrong, who may do the same in turn. How, amid this ping-pong of righteousness grenades, do we maintain not only a clear-minded and pure-hearted relationship with reality, but also forgiveness and respect for others, which presuppose self-forgiveness and self-respect — the key to unlatching the essential capacity for joy that makes life worth living? That is what the wise and wonderful Anne Lamott considers with uncommon self-awareness and generosity of insight throughout Almost Everything: Notes on Hope (publi... posted on Jan 8 2019 (6,799 reads)

a man who specializes in grief and sorrow, psychotherapist Francis Weller certainly seems joyful. When I arrived at his cabin in Forestville, California, he emerged with a smile and embraced me. His wife, Judith, headed off to garden while Francis led me into their home among the redwoods to talk. I had wanted to interview Weller ever since the publisher I work for, North Atlantic Books, had agreed to publish his new book, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief. Over the previous few years my father, grandfather, grandmother, father-in-law, and sister-in-law had all died, and I’d also moved across the country and was missing the friends and... posted on Feb 26 2019 (61,048 reads)

breezes. The waves wash and break upon the flowery hedges and the remote horizon, and seem ready to submerge everything in their foamless flood. All solid things are made less solid by motion – so grass looks liquid, trees have an aerial magic when the wind is in them. In summer the willows stroke the smooth water with their long fingers. The supple branches droop until they dip in the stream, and, as they sway, every thin leaf is followed by a vanishing hollow. One of the daintiest joys of spring is the falling of soft rain among blossoms. The shining and apparently weightless drops come pattering into the may-tree with a sound of soft laughter; one alights on a white petal with... posted on Apr 10 2019 (5,791 reads)