Everyone should be able to unapologetically live their truth and feel safe doing so. As we all strive to make the world a more inclusive, loving place, we can take steps to ensure that future comes sooner rather than later.⁠ This list is a non-exhaustive collection of resources, teachers, and organizations that offer mindfulness training and support by and for LGBTQ+ folks. This is a list we hope to continuously develop so if you know of an organization or person who should be on this list, please reach out to us on social media or at [email pr...

Share According to the U.N. Refugee Agency, "Over half of the world's refugees are children. Many will spend their entire childhoods away from home, sometimes separated from their families." At the end of 2021, an estimated 36.5 million children were displaced from their homes. The scale of this crisis is hard for any of us, even adults, to comprehend. But what a young reader can understand is the experience of a couple of brothers newly displaced and trying to find their way — the focus of Night on the Sand. Wisely leaving the precipitating ev...

Share “When we are dying, uncertainty, vulnerability, and insecurity can intensify, and we have the choice to desperately hold on or to let go into the freshness that comes with the dissolution. A completely open space becomes available to us if we don’t panic but let go — or if we panic, relax with that. This can be a time of full awakening, and it mainly depends on our ease or unease with groundlessness. Even just a moment of relaxation as we die will serve as well. “In the bardo of dharmata, we might experience fear of being drawn into a big...

Share You may have heard that certain religious traditions teach the value of contemplating your death. This can sound odd if you haven’t experienced such practices before. Well, this book is dedicated to that topic in Tibetan Buddhism. The author is Pema Chodron, one of our Living Spiritual Teachers and one of the most important wisdom teachers alive today. She recently turned 86 years old and is still resident at Gampo Abbey in Nova Scotia. Her book is prefaced with this statement from Bhutanese lore: “Contemplating death five times a day bri...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

What makes life feel meaningful? It’s a question that scholars and philosophers have been contemplating for millennia, and one that science has attempted to study through research. If you take a moment to reflect on how you would answer that question, you might think about the most important people in your life, the work you do, your hobbies and faith, or the place you come from. If you’ve lived through a traumatic experience, you may recall the things that inspired hope and resiliency and helped you to heal. In all aspects of meaning in life (...

Share “The kind of spirituality Jesus calls us to is less about withdrawal, protection, safety, and preserving our lives as we know them, and more about risk, vulnerability, and even mutual dependence. On this path, we make progress not by practicing ‘shelter in place’ but by being able to touch what frightens us in the world. We make progress by removing the protective walls, the clear boundaries dividing the world into good and bad, and engaging with it, struggling with it, and in the process, discovering new levels of God’s expansiveness. “O...

Share The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre concluded his famous book, After Virtue, saying that even though the pursuit of wisdom has been all but lost, “we are not entirely without grounds for hope.” If the virtues — spiritual practices that can lead to wisdom — managed to survive dark times in past centuries, perhaps they can survive the times we live in now. Adam Bucko’s personal story and new book, Let Your Heartbreak Be Your Guide, reminded me of this. He has been pointing out for at least a decade now that a new monastic spirit, different f...

Share For 18 days in August 2021, Afghanistan was a chaotic nightmare of fear, death, and destruction. The United States had announced that they would be withdrawing all their troops from the country on August 30 after more than 20 years of fighting the Taliban. Then on August 15, the Taliban entered Kabul, completing a rapid takeover of the country. Afghans who had worked with the U.S. or feared for the loss of their freedoms under Taliban rule, began to take desperate measures to get out of the country. Tens of thousands of civilians converge...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share Start by gently following the pathway of your in-breath, and then your out-breath. Notice how much your breath can teach you about how to balance inner and outer. Continue gently following your breath until your mind becomes calm and receptive. Then read the meditation several times, letting the words enter your consciousness. If you follow this time of focusing on the meditation with a period of stillness, the words will settle in you at a deeper level. Sometimes you may want to return to [the] meditation several times during the day, or...

Share “In Hebrew, two different words, each with its own shade of meaning and weight, are used in the context of forgiveness. The first is mechila, which might be better translated as 'pardon.' It has the connotation of relinquishing a claim against an offender; it’s transactional. It’s not a warm, fuzzy embrace but rather the victim’s acknowledgment that the perpetrator no longer owes them, that they have done the repair work necessary to settle the situation. You stole from me? OK, you acknowledged that you did so in a self-aware way, you’re ...

Share Danya Ruttenberg is a rabbi and spiritual teacher with the ability to speak to a broad audience on matters of the utmost importance. In the language of our alphabet of spiritual literacy here at S&P, what’s essential to Ruttenberg is how spiritual practices combine. She wants to make clear, there is no real forgiveness without listening and justice — and justice involves repair. Ruttenberg writes, “There should never be pressure on victims to forgive. Ever.” For forgiveness to be real, it must represent meaningful repair and change. V...