Let’s talk about forgiveness.  I’ve been a practitioner and teacher of mindfulness for over 30 years. In my experience, much of what is taught about forgiveness creates a false division. We tend to emphasize the tender-inner-reflective processes of “forgive and forget” forgiveness, almost to the exclusion of outer “remember and engage” forgiveness—what, with a bow to Kristin Neff, I call “fierce” forgiveness. Neff is a mindful self-compassion pioneer and associate professor of educational psychology at the University of Texas at Austin. She enh...

On a casual spring walk “I am waylaid by Beauty” in the spirit of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay. The bursting redbud trees, fluting birdsong, and waving daffodils toss my rambling thoughts to the wind and invite me into their world for a moment of feeling. This feeling has the flavor of something larger and more enduring and hopeful than me, myself, and I. In an instant, I lose my sense of individual self-enclosure and I go wide, feeling the world as part of myself and more than myself. Such simple spring beauty connects me with the very ten...

Share In 1961, President John F. Kennedy set a challenge before the American people: to put a man on the moon before the end of the decade: "Now is the time to take longer strides — time for a great new American enterprise — time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on earth." While many American citizens were caught up in the adventure of the space program, others saw it as yet another example of competition with Russia who had a satellite orbit the Earth before ...

Share The “wild yoga” of this book’s title refers to where its practices are best accomplished: outdoors, preferably in wild places. Rebecca Wildbear, who has an M.S. degree in counseling from Johns Hopkins University, has been leading programs in Wild Yoga since 2007. She lives in southwest Colorado. There is a distinctly ecological framework for this. “Wild Yoga is an embodied practice to help us love ourselves, deepen our relationship with the natural world, and stretch our consciousness,” the author explains. Her book will appeal to people ...

Share To get in the pose: *From a standing position, place your feet shoulder width apart, knees slightly bent. *Inhale and fill up one-third of your lungs while swinging your arms in front of you up to shoulder height, palms up. *Continue the inhale, filling two-thirds of your lungs as you swing your arms, still at shoulder height, out to the side like a bird taking flight. *Finish the same inhale, filling the final third of your lungs while swinging your arms forward and up. End with your arms overhead, palms facing each other. *Now exhale th...

Share Born on April 10, 1930, Dolores Huerta stands out as one of the most influential labor leaders of our time. She was the co-founder with Cesar Chavez, of the National Farmworkers Association, which later became the United Farm Workers (UFW). As a civil rights activist, she has modeled what it means to "use our lives to make the world a better place to live." We consider her to be a Democracy Mentor. Here are a variety of resources and some practices to help you gain access to her life of service. To Name This Day: Quotes "Every single day ...

A recent emphasis on trauma-informed approaches in the mindfulness community has been an overdue addition to teaching more effectively, reaching more students, and helping more people heal. In the past few years of both reading the research and speaking directly with folks, I’ve begun to assemble a list of tips. Like all of us, this too is a work in progress, but can hopefully be a guide for many of us as we deepen our teaching skills. C- Consent: Don’t push people (including yourself) beyond your safety limits. Contemplative practice is not th...

Share Teilhard de Chardin (b.1881) died on this day in 1955. He was a Jesuit theologian and scientist who pioneered a holistic, earth-cherishing, and mystical spirituality. The French-born priest used his extensive training in geology and paleontology to pursue scientific projects in China and South Africa. However, his attempts to work out a theological synthesis of evolution and Christianity were rejected by Catholic authorities in Rome who forbid him to publish or lecture on religious matters during his lifetime. The visionary work of Teilha...

Share African-American Paul Robeson (1896 - 1976) won international acclaim as a concert performer, stage actor, recording artist, and film actor. Raised by his widowed father, a minister, he was a scholar and athlete at Rutgers. After attending Columbia Law School, he plunged into a career in the arts that continued 40 years. Throughout his life, Robeson identified with the rights of his people and especially the working-class poor. He reached the pinnacle of success in the 1930s. Then during the next decade, he spoke out against American raci...

Share On Easter Sunday, Christians celebrate the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, an event many consider to be the centerpiece of their faith. But Easter is more than just a day. What happens when we think of it as a verb? Then the resurrection becomes a spiritual practice in daily life. Megan McKenna, the prolific and profound Catholic writer, saw it this way when she was leading a Bible study. She shares the following vignette in her book Not Counting Women and Children: Neglected Stories from the Bible. "Once in a parish mission w...

Share For centuries, people have tried to understand the power and the significance of Jesus' suffering on the cross on Good Friday. Here are two responses today, from the Practicing Spirituality with Jesus e-course that was first offered during Lent. In the meditation for Palm Sunday, we encouraged people to identify with Jesus during the events of Holy Week and to allow themselves to be deeply moved by the Passion story, especially on Good Friday. We wrote: "There's an old saying: You can't have Easter without Good Friday. Many people today e...

Share From the very first pages, this book immerses young readers in the experience of suddenly having to go to the hospital. A girl suffering from appendicitis shares with honest immediacy that "when I first went to the hospital, I cried nine times." She's pictured with a cartoon bubble of "OW OW OW!" above her. All around her are the fabulous details that make the work of NYTimes bestselling author, illustrator, and cartoonist Lisa Brown beloved: a toy ambulance, a game of Operation that the girl had been playing with a friend, her brother ch...

Share Ram Dass was born on this day in 1933. One of the pioneers of the New Age movement, he has taught us all to "be here now." To celebrate with him, you might do one of the following: Teachers Explore his life and work through our Living Spiritual Teachers. Video Clips Watch a clip about his morning ritual of greeting Caspar Weinberger to open his heart to those he disagrees with (from the Spiritual Literacy DVD series). Films Rent and watch Ram Dass Fierce Grace, an extraordinary documentary about him. E-Courses Take our e-course Practicing...

Share Photo credit: The Golden Rule by Norman Rockwell Today is Golden Rule Day, a time to reflect upon the universal sweep of this reciprocal spiritual practice of doing unto others as you would have them do unto you. It reminds us of the value of empathy and trying to walk a mile in their shoes. It nurtures our experience and practice of compassion. It challenges us to dethrone ourselves, put others first, and live in unity with all beings on the planet. Here are some ways to name this day: Video Clips Films "Animating the Golden Rule" by Tin...

Share Passover (Pesach) is the Jewish spring festival which commemorates the exodus from Egypt. It begins at sundown and continues for 7 days. During this time no leavened bread is kept in the home and mazzah is eaten instead. The primary ritual of this home-based festival is a ceremonial meal called a seder, held on the first two nights. In addition to eating symbolic foods, families and their guests share memories, tell stories from Jewish history, and honor Jewish heroes and heroines. Here are some resources to support you in observing Passo...

Share (Image of President Barack Obama presenting Maya Angelou with the Presidential Medal of Freedom: Courtesy of the Office of the White House) Maya Angelou was born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1928. Over the course of her life, she was an actor, dancer, singer, playwright, producer, civil rights activist, autobiographer, and poet. Angelou reached a large audience in 1969 with I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, the first bestselling nonfiction book by an African-American woman; it remained on the New York Times Bestselle...

Share “Jesus wasn’t a fixer. “Presumably, Jesus could have waved a hand over each crowd he encountered and mended all the hearts, spines, bruises, minds, and father-wounds all at once. As a kid, it bothered me that he didn’t. How could he witness any amount of suffering and not use his power to change it? “Instead, his work was maddeningly slow. He talked with people and asked them questions. He forgave sins, spit in the mud, posed riddles, and told stories all along the way of his healing journeys. This was the kingdom of God, he said, touchin...

Share We talk about being “embodied,” but rarely do we talk about what that means. This book by Lyndsey Medford — who holds a master of theological studies degree from Boston University, lives in Charleston, South Carolina, and has a rare, chronic autoimmune disease — explores embodiment in careful detail. The sickness the author writes about is personal, but it is also writ large. She writes about the interconnectedness of our private and public health, and how living with sicknesses that are chronic (seemingly without solutions) teach us abou...

This foundational attention practice is designed to strengthen the force of concentration. If you consider how scattered, how distracted, how out of the moment we may ordinarily be, you can see the benefit of gathering our attention and our energy. All of that energy could be available to us but usually isn’t because we throw it away into distraction. We gather all of that attention and energy to become integrated, to have a center, to not be so fragmented and torn apart, to be empowered. In this system, the breath we focus on is the normal flo...

Share Jane Goodall was born in London, England in 1934. Her father gave her a stuffed chimpanzee toy named Jubilee when she was a child, and this started her lifelong love for animals. She went to Cambridge University in 1962 and was awarded a Ph.D. in ethology in 1965. In 1960 famed anthropologist/paleontologist Dr. Louis Leakey sent her to study chimpanzees in Gombe Tanganyika (now Tanzania), in order to understand the complex society of these animals in their natural habitat. Now as Goodall completes more than 50 years of research, her work ...