Reading Archive (Community Building)
Unattainable Goal of Peace
[Nobel Lecture, June 16, 2012] The peace of our world is indivisible. As long as negative forces are getting the better of positive...
We are the Ones We've Been Waiting For
You have been telling people that this is the Eleventh Hour, now you must go back and tell the people that this is the Hour. And there...
The Energy of Being Real
"Mana" is a term originally used in a Polynesian and Melanesian cultures to describe an extraordinary power or force residing in a person...
Do You Remember Your Song?
When a woman in a certain African tribe knows she is pregnant, she goes out into the wilderness with a few friends and together they pray...
A Circle of Trust
Like a wild animal, the soul is tough, resilient, resourceful, savvy, and self-sufficient: it knows how to survive in hard places. I...
Pilgrimage to Nonviolence
First, it must be emphasized that nonviolent resistance is not a method for cowards; it does resist. If one uses this method because he...
Habits Of The Heart
“Habits of the heart” (a phrase coined by Alexis de Tocqueville) are deeply ingrained ways of seeing, being, and responding...
Hard Times Require Furious Dancing
I am the youngest of eight siblings. Five of us have died. I share losses, health concerns, and other challenges common to the human...
Lessons From An Accident
For the last forty years, I have been a somewhat compulsive caregiver. However, I found an appropriate niche in medical school, and have...
Communication As Mutual Entrainment
Every act of communication is an act of tremendous courage in which we give ourselves over to two parallel possibilities: the possibility...
Where We Are Is Our Temple
Expanding our spiritual practice is actually a process of expanding our heart, of widening our circle of insight and compassion to...
Organic Gift
Years ago, I heard Dorothy Day speak. Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, her long-term commitment to living among the poor on New...
Love Is Not An Emotion
Love, defined as micro moments of positivity resonance, may thus be the most generative and consequential of all positive emotions. By...
In Eyes Of God, We're All Minorities
Krister Stendahl, former dean of Harvard Divinity school, told a reporter shortly before his death in 2008, "In the eyes of God, we...
Song Of The Birds
For millennia, the language of birds has called us to cross divides. In the Qur’an, Solomon received a bounty and blessing when he...