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Archive for June, 2023

On the Edge of Life and Death

This week’s inspiring video: On the Edge of Life and Death
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Video of the Week

Jun 22, 2023
On the Edge of Life and Death

On the Edge of Life and Death

The hospice community of Joseph’s House in Washington, D.C. believes that no one should live or die alone. Perched on the very edge of life and death, it is a place of belonging where people are lovingly companioned all the way to the threshold of death. Grace and mystery abound in encounters between people across racial and socioeconomic differences where they meet and love each other. People are welcomed as who they are, receiving comfort from physical pain along with respect, affection, and someone who truly sees them.
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Leave No Child Inside

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DailyGood News That Inspires

June 22, 2023

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Leave No Child Inside

If we are going to save environmentalism and the environment, we must also save an endangered indicator species: the child in nature.

– –

Leave No Child Inside

“As a boy I pulled out dozens — perhaps hundreds — of survey stakes in a vain effort to slow the bulldozers that were taking out my woods to make way for a new subdivision. Had I known then what I’ve since learned from a developer, that I should have simply moved the stakes around to be more effective, I would surely have done that too. So you might imagine my dubiousness when, a few weeks after the publication of my 2005 book, Last Child in the Woods, I received an e-mail from Derek Thomas, who introduced himself as vice chairman and chief investment officer of Newland Communities, one of the nation’s largest privately owned residential development companies. “I have been reading your new book,” he wrote, “and am profoundly disturbed by some of the information you present.” Richard Louv shares more in this piece about the growing movement to reconnect children and nature, and to battle “nature deficit disorder.” { read more }

Be The Change

Learn more about Louv’s work here. { more }

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In Praise of Fallibility, Everybodyism & Confusers of Certainty

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DailyGood News That Inspires

June 21, 2023

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In Praise of Fallibility, Everybodyism & Confusers of Certainty

Our thoughts could be starboard; why do we think like personnel? At what point do persons become personnel? They sure as pandemonium don’t start out that way.

– Amy Leach –

In Praise of Fallibility, Everybodyism & Confusers of Certainty

Where universalism maintains only that “all humans will be saved, whatever their sect or non-sect,” essayist Amy Leach’s everybodyism espouses a more playful and radical redemption for “not just all the human rascals but also all the buffalo rascals and reptile rascals and paddlefish and turkeys and centipedes and wombats and warty pigs.” While Leach’s admiration for Earth and its inhabitants is seemingly inexhaustible, it is not unaware. Her essays surface, often in lyrically satirical ways, the inconsiderate and often unconsidered impact we humans — with our conquests, our categories, our need for control and our appetite for consumption — have on this finite and fallible world. The trajectory of this essayist’s writing is not predictable like an orbit, but incalculable like a dream. It seems to follow an inner impetus, bent only on discovering what happens when the writer’s thought breaks free of habit, and encounters itself and this shape-shifting world. “There are not just cliches of phrases and words,” Amy maintains, “but cliches of thought too, and that is something worth fighting.” Part of this fight on the page involves “an exorcism of personal and cultural programming.” To root out, so as not to simply reproduce conventional thinking…Says Amy, “A lot of the things that I’m celebrating,like babies. music and donkeys, are really beautiful confusers of certainty….” { read more }

Be The Change

Come miss the boat with us! Join a conversation with this astonishing and enlivening writer, one who celebrates all things “speckled and plain, perfect and imperfect, indigo-feathered, green-skinned, orange-toed, squashed of face, cracked of shell, miniature of heart, young as ducklings, old as hills…indigenous to Earth.” More details and RSVP info for her Awakin Call here. { more }

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Aluna: A Journey to Save the World

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DailyGood News That Inspires

June 20, 2023

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Aluna: A Journey to Save the World

The earth is a living body. It has veins and blood. Damaging certain places is like cutting off a limb. It damages the whole body.

– The Kogi People –

Aluna: A Journey to Save the World

“In 1991, in the last edition of the original Beshara Magazine, we published an article by journalist Alan Ereira about an extraordinary people living in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta in the north of Colombia. The descendants of a great civilisation which fled to the hills as the Spanish took over their lands, the Kogi had lived for 400 years in isolation, led by a class of priests called the mamas. They asked Alan to help them make a film in order to communicate with us the younger brother and warn us about the ecological destruction we are wreaking upon the earth. The result was a BBC documentary and a book entitled The Heart of the World. Thirty years later, the Kogi are making another attempt to communicate their wisdom, this time through a regeneration project, Munekan Masha, under the auspices of the UNESCO Bridges initiative. Alan talked to Jane Clark and Richard Gault about what it involves and the unified vision which underlies it. At the end of the article we include a video of a recent talk he gave on the project which you might want to watch before reading the interview.” { read more }

Be The Change

You can watch “Aluna,” the powerful film Alan Ereira made here. { more }

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Radical Optimism

Weekly excerpt to help us remember the sacred.

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Weekly Reading Jun 19, 2023

Radical Optimism

–Rev. Joan Halifax

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2645.jpgRadical optimism is a big view of the moment that does not include outcome. Another way of saying this is that the radical optimist is not undertaking an investment plan. Rather he or she is involved in a plan free of design.

Bearing witness in Auschwitz or on the streets of the Bowery is just bearing witness. Only a radical optimist can bear witness; if there is a thought to outcome, then one cannot be with the truth of what is actually happening.

Why are so many of us looking for the big spiritual payoff? We will all be dead soon enough. So what’s the big deal? Are we hoping to have a good death? Is that what drives us? Or do we want to make it in the spiritual big-time here and now?

Trungpa Rinpoche, when he used the phrase “spiritual materialism,” was not just referring to the material adornments of the spiritual path, the material bells and whistles of practice. He was directly addressing our desire to “get enlightenment,” the big bell and whistle. In our lives, there are endless truth events; each moment is one. If practice is self serving and a means to a so-called greater end, then practice becomes an investment where you expect a profit. How can we be at one with a particular moment if we are expecting something?

Practice not entered for the goal of enlightenment is simply being in life. When thoughts of outcome guide our actions, then we are caught in the great dilemma of dualism. Being with no gaining idea is the practice of radical optimism, an optimism free of time and space, object and subject, yet embedded in the very stuff of our daily lives. It is an optimism that arises from what Bernie Glassman calls not knowing, or what Vimalakirti called the inconceivable.

Dogen reminds us that to raise the mind of compassionate awakening is none other than the whole of daily activity with no concern for one’s self, no thought of outcome, no sense of self-gratification. This is radical optimism. It means that whatever is, is the best that there is at this moment. Just this, wholey this, only this.

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How do you relate to the notion that only a radical optimist can bear witness? Can you share a personal story of a time you were able to act without thoughts of outcomes? What helps you avoid the trap of spiritual materialism?

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Pilgrimage Up Longs Peak

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DailyGood News That Inspires

June 19, 2023

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Pilgrimage Up Longs Peak

The main thing was, I didn’t want to allow my fears to govern my life. I wanted to be led more by admiring, even hopefully by understanding, the world rather than by the anguishes of internal imaginings.

– Jane Wodening –

Pilgrimage Up Longs Peak

“For as long as I can remember, I begged my father to take me back to Colorado to climb a mountain. Growing up in Tennessee, this dream was delayed many times, until only last year when my father (Jane’s youngest son, Rarc) and I made the journey. Just before the trip, I came across this particular story printed on its own by type-writer. The story was both an inspiration and grounding force for me as I read it aloud with my father the night before our own Pilgrimage Up Long’s Peak. It sang of life, of humanity, of fear and bravery (or fearlessness?), and of the deep and unfathomable power of the Rocky Mountains. I hope you enjoy it as much as I did.” Desirae Brackhage is the granddaughter of the author/artist/hermit Jane Wodening. Read the gripping story she alludes to, here.
{ read more }

Be The Change

This week, if inspired, explore what it means for you, to be led less by internal fears and, “more by admiring, even hopefully by understanding, the world…”

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David Whyte: On Seeking Language Large Enough

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June 18, 2023

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David Whyte: On Seeking Language Large Enough

What you can plan is too small for you to live.
What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

– David Whyte –

David Whyte: On Seeking Language Large Enough

“It has ever and always been true, David Whyte reminds us, that so much of human experience is a conversation between loss and celebration. This conversational nature of reality — indeed, this drama of vitality — is something we have all been shown, willing or unwilling, in these years. Many have turned to David Whyte for his gorgeous, life-giving poetry and his wisdom at the interplay of theology, psychology, and leadership — his insistence on the power of a beautiful question and of everyday words amidst the drama of work as well as the drama of life. The notion of “frontier”– inner frontiers, outer frontiers — weaves through this hour. We surface this as a companion for the frontiers we are all on just by virtue of being alive in this time.” { read more }

Be The Change

For more from David Whyte, check out this piece on, “Welcoming Humiliation.” { more }

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The Practice of Tsundoku & Why You May Want to Adopt It

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DailyGood News That Inspires

June 17, 2023

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The Practice of Tsundoku & Why You May Want to Adopt It

Books are not made to be believed, but to be subjected to inquiry. When we consider a book, we mustn’t ask ourselves what it says but what it means.

– Umberto Eco –

The Practice of Tsundoku & Why You May Want to Adopt It

“Many readers buy books with every intention of reading them only to let them linger on the shelf. Statistician Nassim Nicholas Taleb believes surrounding ourselves with unread books enriches our lives as they remind us of all we don’t know. The Japanese call this practice tsundoku, and it may provide lasting benefits…” Read on for more on the intriguing concept of the ‘antilibrary, the benefits of reading and more. { read more }

Be The Change

For more inspiration check out this post from Maria Popova on, “How Books Solace, Empower and Transform Us.” { more }

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Lion Heart

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DailyGood News That Inspires

June 16, 2023

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Lion Heart

The truth is like a lion; you don’t have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself.

– St Augustine –

Lion Heart

Luzuko Madonci wanted to be a lion when he was a child. His friends laughed at him. And yet as an adult he has indeed developed the heart of a lion, exhibited by his joyous wholehearted laughter, his confidence, and his courage in the face of trials. Having overcome childhood trauma, he has learned to embrace his emotions and to see pain as a helper, a teacher, a residue of something good that is happening. { read more }

Be The Change

Reflect on Luzuko’s comment,”The best gift I can give to the world is myself.” How do you embody the best gift that you can give to the world?

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Lion Heart

This week’s inspiring video: Lion Heart
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Video of the Week

Jun 15, 2023
Lion Heart

Lion Heart

Luzuko Madonci wanted to be a lion when he was a child. His friends laughed at him. And yet as an adult he has indeed developed the heart of a lion, exhibited by his joyous wholehearted laughter, his confidence, and his courage in the face of trials. Having overcome childhood trauma, he has learned to embrace his emotions and to see pain as a helper, a teacher, a residue of something good that is happening.
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