Hopwood approaching Lindisfarne, 500 miles into his journey. Credit: Glynis Long. Four years ago I set off on a walking journey through England. I was looking for the love stories of the land, meeting with people on the path, in the fields, in the pub, in the villages and towns. Along the way I shared my stories with the people I encountered and they shared theirs with me, creating time and space to explore the notion of love together. As the work progressed I began to record some of these powerful and compelling stories, creating an online audio collection so that more people could share in the experience. But as I stepped out of my front door on a cold and clear Ap... posted on Jan 14 2017 (13,190 reads)

by Bharat Chauhan The love you bear for yourself is never unrequited. You are the generous giver and the sole receiver. You do not have to wonder if your sentiments will be echoed or your kind gestures returned. You need only love yourself fully. The love we bear for ourselves is guaranteed, each return exceeding its investment. Perhaps you're longing to experience this kind of love from someone you care about, or maybe your heart aches from loving someone who cannot fully love you back. The more we seek love like this, the harder we struggle, and the less we come to love ourselves. But who is more worthy of the careful attention and thoughtful affection we so readily dole... posted on Apr 5 2018 (39,220 reads)

is a speaker, workshop facilitator, and retreat leader. She is a former organization development consultant, and the founder and director of the Morning Star Singers Comfort Choir, a volunteer choir that brings song to people experiencing health challenges. A native Minnesotan, she is currently living on the wild and scenic St. Croix River in west Wisconsin. Welcome, Barbara. Thank you for being with us today. Barbara: It's such an honor, Mia. I thank you for having me. Mia: I love getting to see you again. I enjoyed our conversation a few days ago, and I'm so excited to see you today. I just want to start with: Can you tell us more about where you live, your home? B... posted on Apr 28 2023 (2,453 reads)

the grades students get in schools in the US. The idea is that this may help them eventually compete better in a global workplace. But what if we have gotten it upside down? Are more resources really the missing ingredient in helping people improve themselves? Growing up in India, I had a hard time with most of my subjects, especially math. One day, after looking at my grades, my father had a heart-to-heart chat with me. He said, “The way to crack your subjects is to fall in love with them. When you start loving what you are learning, it will no longer look like work. Everything will fall in place after that. Just fall in love.” I was in sixth grade around then, and... posted on Mar 3 2012 (19,343 reads)

of work-related questions from impatient colleagues who have been awaiting their arrival. For others, it might start off with a series of cheerful greetings from co-workers, questions about how their family members are doing or perhaps an offer to grab a quick cup of coffee before the daily work deluge begins. According to Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade, there is reason to believe that the latter scenario — which illustrates what she refers to as “companionate love” in the workplace — is not only more appealing, but also is vital to employee morale, teamwork and customer satisfaction. Companionate love is shown “when colleagues who are ... posted on Dec 2 2014 (21,939 reads)

mother behind her. A long line of women who had pushed through the fire before me. I took a breath; I pushed; my son was born. As I held him in my arms, shaking and sobbing from the rush of oxytocin that flooded my body, my mother was already preparing to feed me. Nursing her baby as I nursed mine. My mother had never stopped laboring for me, from my birth to my son's birth. She already knew what I was just beginning to name. That love is more than a rush of feeling that happens to us if we're lucky. Love is sweet labor. Fierce. Bloody. Imperfect. Life-giving. A choice we make over and over aga... posted on Mar 31 2018 (2,006 reads)

wisdom on how to live from James Baldwin, Ursula K. Le Guin, Leo Tolstoy, Seneca, Toni Morrison, Walt Whitman, Viktor Frankl, Rachel Carson, and Hannah Arendt. If we abide by the common definition of philosophy as the love of wisdom, and if Montaigne was right — he was — that philosophy is the art of learning to die, then living wisely is the art of learning how you will wish to have lived. A kind of resolution in reverse. This is where the wisdom of lives that have already been lived can be of immense aid — a source of forward-facing resolutions, borrowed from people who have long died, having lived, by any reasonable standard, honorable and generous live... posted on Jan 2 2022 (7,316 reads)

follows is the transcript of an Awakin Call with Matthew Fox. You can watch the video recording of the call, or listen to the audio here. These transcripts, as with all aspects of Awakin Calls, are created as a labor of love by an all-volunteer team located around the world. ]   Host: Aryae Coopersmith Moderator: Rahul Brown Guest: Matthew Fox Rahul Brown:  Matthew Fox really needs no introduction. He's regarded as one of the foremost influential spiritual figures of modern day. So, Matthew, if it's OK with you, I would just love to just jump right into our conversation. Thank you so much for joining us. It's a real honor to have you here to... posted on Sep 8 2022 (3,026 reads)

League Boots” by Zoë Keating] I cannot imagine a more brilliant, wise, and kind conversation partner about all of this than the Surgeon General of the United States, Dr. Vivek Murthy. He’s a renowned physician and research scientist, and for years he’s been naming and investigating loneliness as a public health matter, including his own experience of that very human condition. And it is beyond rare to sit with a person holding high government office who speaks about love with ease and dignity, and about the agency to be healers that is available to us all. There is so much here to walk away with, and into. This conversation quieted and touched a room full of rauc... posted on Apr 14 2023 (3,857 reads)

that was not real. It was not grounded in what is real because it was not grounded in that ancient relationship between the human and the living Earth and the recognition of the sacred. It was not grounded in the recognition of the sacred. So we first have to recognize that we are walking in something that is not real and then turn to something that is real. To recognize that we have ignored the sacred creation of nature, and then turn towards it, with respect and, ultimately, with love. Because this is a story of love as much as it is a story of forgetfulness and remembrance. It is also a story of love. Because at the heart of that ancient primordial relationship that existed, ... posted on Jun 1 2023 (3,068 reads)

of work-related questions from impatient colleagues who have been awaiting their arrival. For others, it might start off with a series of cheerful greetings from co-workers, questions about how their family members are doing or perhaps an offer to grab a quick cup of coffee before the daily work deluge begins. According to Wharton management professor Sigal Barsade, there is reason to believe that the latter scenario — which illustrates what she refers to as “companionate love” in the workplace — is not only more appealing, but also is vital to employee morale, teamwork and customer satisfaction. Companionate love is shown “when colleagues who are ... posted on Jun 12 2014 (22,724 reads)

She has had an ongoing, long-term collaboration with Parker J. Palmer, who is a dear friend of this ecosystem, with whom she has co-written several songs and performed a spoken word/music in live performance, including Healing the Heart of Democracy, and What We Need is Here: Hope, Hard Times, and Human Possibility. Newcomer and Palmer also are actively collaborating on The Growing Edge, a website, podcast, and retreat. I had the privilege of spending time with Parker and Carrie and loved them for their deep presence, the power with which they hold profound questions, and above all their Midwestern humor and sensibilities.  Carrie lives in the woods of southern Indiana wi... posted on Jul 15 2023 (2,648 reads)

principal and it was a pomegranate; it was a very weathered pomegranate that she had saved. It was special because it was given to her by a dear friend, Mark DuBois, a past Awakin Call guest and quite an environmental legend. So Anne said to herself "Oh this is such a special pomegranate, I'm going to give it to Theresa.” And she found a poem about pomegranates, a very sweet poem that she typed up, printed out and put a little ribbon on it. She made it so beautiful and full of love and at the end of this day at this school she gives it to the principal along with the story behind it. The principal is blown away and says " I interviewed Mark twenty years ago when I was ... posted on Aug 18 2016 (13,830 reads)

a little pencil in the hands of God who is scripting his love letter to the world.” ~Mother Theresa   Finding a letter of encouragement in the mail or tucked unexpectedly in the unlikeliest of places is sometimes all we need when in doubt or feeling down on our luck.  And imagine receiving this note anonymously, as if some magical force out there knew just what you needed to hear and wanted you to know that you haven’t been forgotten.  The First Letter.... In the fall of 2010, in the midst of her own depression and loneliness, Hannah Brencher was inspired to become this magical force.  Not inspired by something wonder... posted on Jan 11 2013 (26,067 reads)

public library. And the minute I learned how to read, it was as though I’d been given this huge treasure. Every book was a box I suddenly knew how to open, and in it, I could meet people, go to other worlds, go deep in all kinds of ways. And I spent my childhood in the hills and in the books. And those — so that was not maybe what people think of conventionally as spirituality, but that was my company, my encouragement, my teaching, my community. MS. TIPPETT: That’s lovely. The sweep of your work is wonderful and it’s daunting as an interviewer, but I actually thought I would start with — I’d just love to have a conversation with you about this ... posted on Jun 25 2016 (10,628 reads)

-- a renaissance of compassionate societies. What follows is an edited transcript of an Awakin Call interview with Joserra, moderated by Rina Patel. You can read the full transcript or listen to the audio here. Rina Patel: I want to jump right into things and ask you what a Re-Love-ution is? Joserra Gonzalez: I had an experience in India, two years of volunteer work, and I was touched by many of the things I could see there. I can say I have never received so much love. It really touched me deeply how people treated me, how everyone gave me everything without expectations, with so much love and patience. And since that experience for me it is about this: how ca... posted on Jul 21 2017 (8,365 reads)

of a road with a car fire.  A random stranger put out the fire, said ‘pay it forward,’ and left. She still has no idea who that person was.  It just kind of resonated on a give-first mentality, the generosity of doing things for others without asking anything in return, just hoping the small acts of kindness make ripples. And that's why I resonate with the ServiceSpace movement -- because they say, ‘hey, let's do small things, or big things; let's just love and serve others.’ Preeta: So in the prairie where you grew up, there is so much about individualism and finding your own way in the world.  There’s pride about rugged ind... posted on Jan 2 2019 (3,199 reads)

Letters from la Pineta" by DailyGood volunteer Jane Jackson is more than a book -- it is a living gesture of love that wings its way between the visible and invisible world. A book that embodies hospitality in its deepest sense. For to truly welcome love and all its bright gifts we are required to keep our hearts open when grief's shadow descends. And that is exactly what Jane does in this book letter by heartfelt letter.  Written in the years following her beloved husband Blyden's passing, the letters are addressed to him, and to Jasmine their granddaughter who arrived on this Earth after he had "changed address." She writes them from Mornese -- the It... posted on Feb 14 2020 (4,680 reads)

it took you a little while to come to this. One thing that you have started to say that is really helpful is that you've started to see the danger of this refrain that's everywhere out there in our culture to follow your passion, follow your passion. And that that also becomes a way that people feel themselves excluded because they're not sure what their artistic passion would be. Or again, if it's their passion, can they really measure the value they're creating? And I love the language of “curiosity” you use, and I'd love for you to talk some more about that. I mean, one thing you've said is the difference between passion and curiosity as someth... posted on Sep 5 2016 (16,712 reads)

are.Okay. With that I'll turn it over to you, Charles, to introduce our guests.Charles: Thank you, Janessa. My goodness. That was unexpected, and I'm grateful to hear that poem. I'd like to also welcome everyone to this gathering. It feels to me we have a precious opportunity to gather from an ocean of extraordinary living, working, reflecting, offering that Mary Ann, in partnership with her husband Fred, have been carrying on for decades. From this ocean, in this time, my prayer is we get a lovely glass of water because we can't begin to include the whole ocean.Mary Ann is a trailblazer, a pathfinder, a spiritual and social prophet, who has given a life to building bridges and making mea... posted on Dec 31 1969 (8 reads)