Sangha of Auspicious Companions

My Shift From Sales to a Farm Sanctuary with 150 Animals

Andreas Nussbaumer, with credit to his wife, recounts being lured away from a successful business career and the empty feeling that came with it “into just being, surrounded by the vegetables and the animals.” They steward a sanctuary for rescued farm animals in Weppersdorf, Austria. Animals “show you, every single moment, whether you are actually present. The horses will tell you the truth about yourself that you were too busy to hear.” At one point, snails arrived by multitudes. They let them be instead of poisoning them. They found that snails left healthy plants alone, and only feasted on the ones left to die from attacks by other animals. They learned to focus on plant health – not the snails. While their hearts break amid the multitude of issues facing the world, the animals and plants taught Andreas to be present, and focus on staying physically and emotionally healthy. “I can be fully present here at the sanctuary, pet the animals, laugh, feel grateful, and put my energy into the things I can actually influence.”

Be The Change

Devote a few moments to pay attention and be present to one little organism in your ecosystem. Be open to learn what your body already knows.

This Month’s DailyGood Digest

In the gentle unfolding of this month’s stories, we found reflections on the power of community, memory, and the human spirit.

In a poignant reflection on loss, a father’s grief becomes a rainbow, offering a glimpse of hope amid sorrow. We remember Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen, who passed away this month, through her insights on generous listening, showing how true healing can occur through a depth of genuine presence. In a digital age of distraction, Randima Fernando challenges us to rethink the attention economy in his discussion on mindfulness and metrics. Ruth Brigandi’s story of rediscovering memory after illness offers a testament to resilience and the power of consciousness. Sr. Elizabeth Greim’s journey through divorce and four earrings in each ear to dedicating her life in service to those at society’s margins reveals how doors that look closed can open in the presence of a sincere heart. Courtney Martin’s exploration of the intention to solve other people’s problems invites us to look deeper into the nuances of altruism. In Saskatoon, Canada, young and old learn together, bridging generations and enriching lives. Rama Mani and Alexander Schieffer remind us that the earth creates family without borders, as their journey with a small earth sphere touches countless lives. Leena Wilde Ryan’s tale of finding her voice resonates deeply through its shining authenticity. Finally, in a quiet moment at a gas station, Erez Levin’s encounter with ancestral wisdom illuminates the night.

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Solar Ambulance Built by 23 Students

In a test center in the Netherlands, a sleek white-and-yellow vehicle glides quietly over concrete — but it was built for something far rougher: the red-dirt roads of rural Kenya, where the nearest clinic can be a day’s journey away. Twenty-three university students, many of whom paused their degrees to see it through, spent a year constructing what may be the world’s first solar-powered ambulance. Named Stella Juva — “stella” for the team’s lineage of solar cars, “juva” from the Latin for “to help” — the vehicle carries tuberculosis testing kits, cooled vaccine storage, ultrasound equipment for pregnant women, and a defibrillator, all powered by roof-mounted solar panels and a battery for cloudy days or night runs. Its range stretches 715 kilometers on a sunny day, and crucially, as one partner noted, “it doesn’t have to go back to a central point — it can go on and on and on.” The design inverts the usual logic of emergency medicine: rather than rushing patients to hospitals, it brings the hospital to patients. The team heads to Kenya next month, spare tires and shovels packed for when the terrain fights back. Twenty-one-year-old project leader Mathijs van Gerven put it plainly: “We are 23 students and we built this within just one year. The technical industry should be able to do this way better and way faster.”

Be The Change

Carve out 15 minutes each day this week to research one issue in the world that tugs at your heartstrings. Often, the first step to addressing a challenge is simply to learn more about it.

Living with Questions

At seventeen, Charles Gibbs was asked to stay after Sunday school class by a well-meaning elder — and left with a message that would redirect the entire arc of his life: we don’t ask questions like that here. Rather than killing his spiritual hunger, that closed door sent him into theater, into poetry, into decades building the United Religions Initiative across six continents — all of it, he now sees, is the same search wearing different clothes. What emerged from an unplanned conversation is a man who has made peace with living inside the questions themselves. He draws on Wordsworth’s poem, “Lines Written a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey” — and the image of “an eye made quiet” — to gesture at the contemplative states where questions finally dissolve, not because they’re answered, but because the one asking them temporarily disappears.

Be The Change

Recall one question you were told — explicitly or implicitly — not to ask, in childhood or later. Write it down exactly as you would have asked it then. Sit with it for five minutes without trying to answer it, and notice what it feels like simply to let the question exist.

Bringing Live Music to Deaf Audiences, with the Help of Air Guitar

Luke Holdsworth spent his teenage years assuming live music simply wasn’t for him — not until his mid-20s did he attend his first concert, standing in a crowd he couldn’t fully enter. Now, as one of the UK’s most respected British Sign Language (BSL) interpreters at live events, he stands at the front of sold-out stadium shows, channeling not just lyrics but tempo, vibe, and attitude. For Holdsworth, the work is inseparable from many years with no entry point: “As a deaf person, you always have to explain, or ask for access, or have a defense ready” — and the interpreting stage is his response to that. What he offers deaf audiences isn’t a workaround but a full door into what he calls one of humanity’s most basic joys: losing yourself in a shared moment. His story is a quiet argument that access isn’t charity — it’s the difference between a person standing at the fringes of a shared experience and being enveloped in it completely.

Be The Change

Today, look up a sign language interpreter performing at a live concert on YouTube – there are many remarkable clips – and watch with your full attention, noticing how they translate not just words but rhythm, emotion, and attitude into movement. Notice if watching an interpreter work quietly shifts how you understand music and the boundaries we assume around it.

Why Can’t You?: Three Decades with Those at the Margins

Sister Elizabeth Greim dreamed of becoming a nun early on, but was told she couldn’t because her parents were divorced. In spite of this and other rejections, she wanted to be of service. In 1993, at age 33, with 4 earrings in each ear, a cigarette dangling, a failed marriage, and nowhere else to go, she asked the Daughters of Charity if she could just help out. When Sister Catherine asked if she wanted to be a sister, she explained that she could not. Sister Catherine said, “tell me the story. I’d like to look into it.” Months later, after she removed the earrings, quit smoking, and got a divorce and annulment, she was accepted, and became Sister Elizabeth. “What Sister Catherine really did was see me.” Acceptance and belonging became her intentional service “of being connected to people rejected by their own communities.” “…find where people dwell, sit down beside them, and see them.” Tell them, “Don’t be afraid. It’s okay. You will find the way where there seems not to be one.”

Be The Change

Think of a rejection that informed your life’s journey. Share your story with someone who may not be feeling seen or heard, and listen to their story.

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Love That Has Nowhere Else to Go

The tailor said 150 meters would be enough. One dress each. But the grieving mother looked at him and replied, “I want to give them five dresses each.” There was silence. Then came school bags, lunch boxes, water bottles, chocolates, and name tags — so that each child at the orphanage would receive something chosen personally for them. Ravinder Komaragiri writes of how he and his wife chose to mark the date of their daughter’s first birthday after her passing by “letting love, which has nowhere else to go find its way into another child’s smile.” What moves in this story is not the scale of the giving, but how inconsolable grief can transform into outward compassion for all children. it is through finding a channel to flow love that a grieving couple finds consolation. On June 21st this past summer, sixty orphaned children opened bags packed for them by name. And somewhere, a grieving mother and father hope to see their late daughter in the clouds.

Be The Change

Think of a loss or longing you carry and find one small, specific way to let it move into the world as compassion-in-action for someone else today. It could be a handwritten card to someone who may feel unseen, a gift given with unusual care, or a phone call to let someone know you’re thinking of them.

This Week’s DailyGood Digest

This week, we journeyed through stories that illuminated the interconnectedness of our shared humanity.

In today’s AI world, we held questions around the intentions molding designs that capture our attention. We marveled at changemaker Ruth Brigandi’s unique of loss and found of her memory when she was a teenager and how it influenced her trajectory towards researching consciousness. Journalist Courtney Martin thoughtfully points out the “reductive seduction” of offering overseas aid versus being of service in one’s own locality. A man recalled a 1978 experience of receiving a meal from a kind stranger while stranded in a Cretan village, reminding us of the power of treating strangers with simple humanity. Meanwhile, research on a group of sixth graders’ schooling in a nursing home unveils the power of intergenerational bonds to transform and teach us. Finally, we were touched by the ingenuity of one veterinary assistant in crafting a homemade wheelchair for a tiny kitten, a testament to the creativity born of necessity. Together, these stories wove a fabric of compassionate connection, perhaps prompting us to peek out at the world with renewed eyes of possibility.

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If you enjoy good news stories and want to help change the media landscape, join our volunteer team to curate, edit, spread the good! Login and get started.