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The Great DIY Revival: Meet The People Who'll Try To Fix Anything A movement of repair cafes, launched in Amsterdam in 2009, is sweeping across the UK. In them, the "happy tinkerers" fix everything from radios and toasters to lawnmowers and laptops. There are nearly 580 cafes now serving as skillshare initiatives and social enterprises while helping to reduce carbon emissions. "If we reuse the 13m items a year we currently throw away or recycle, we could save 930 tonnes of carbon emissions, according to waste management company Suez". [Read the full story here...]
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Then, with their eyes closed, she helped them imagine a day in the future where all the problems had been solved, and questioned, “What role did you play in helping to bring about this better world?” Afterwards, when she asked again if they thought we could solve the problems, forty hands went up. Zoe expanded this thinking to help people learn to be solutionaries. Solutionaries start by imagining that a better world is possible. Through a four-step process, they “learn how to identify unjust, unsustainable, and inhumane systems and transform them so that they do the most good and least harm to people, animals, and the ecosystems that sustain life.” [Read more ...] |
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Lotus Grown From 200-year-old Seed In Full Bloom At Kyoto's Byodoin Temple Lotus flowers from a 200-year-old seed fully bloomed at an ancient Buddhist temple in Western Japan last month. Kamii Monsho, head priest at Kyoto's Byodoin Temple, hopes the flowers are therapeutic to visitors. [Read more here...]
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Cynthia shares further how a path to that great emptiness is through the heart. The heart is “the strongest electromagnetic field in the body… sending and receiving, transforming energy with everything that it touches.” The heart empties and fills. She explains that if the heart holds onto attachments such as "I want this story" or "I like being full," it cannot send. When we empty ourselves, when we connect to our hearts and the emptiness, it opens the space where “life can play and create itself, through me, through all of us,” and create a new story. Watch (or read) her recent talk during a New Story Pod call here - and scroll to the bottom for a bonus video of a special song from Madhu Anziani. Madhu sings, "Pulse, dissolve, pulse, dissolve -- that's the life of the universe..." |
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Ecological horticulturist Rebecca McMackin has found success increasing biodiversity in the most unlikely of places - the parched concrete of derelict shipping piers in New York City. "Most gardeners try to maintain these clean, sterile environments that are the exact opposite of what wildlife wants. The more we can stop being tidy the more wildness we can bring into our gardens and landscapes, the better habitat we provide" says Rebecca. "All it takes is a pot on your stoop to make a difference". Watch her powerful TED Talk below.
For more, check out this story about one man in Canada, Wolf Ruck, who is rewilding his garden amidst efforts by the Ecological Design Lab to help local governments update their gardening bylaws to support biodiversity. Read the full story here. |
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Later on, she got an invitation she couldn’t refuse to “come and see” the suffering in South Sudan. She accepted, and that experience and invitation led to many more invitations to invite people into her life, “into that connectedness that I now know is so incredibly central.” In a short video, she gives examples of interactions that were not transactional but relational, especially an unforgettably moving one about the generosity of someone begging for alms. Sister Marilyn focuses on invitations as opposed to information such that when someone asks her where she lives, she says, “Come and see.” She realizes now that human relations might just be her field after all. [Watch (or read) more here...] |
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Peace Pole, London Retreat, and More Ripples...
Nearly 70 years ago, Masami Saionji found her calling: use the power of prayer to heal yourself, and the world. From that calling, ripples of peace and compassion have flowed outward. One of the first projects Masami started was planting of peace poles – a physical pole, with “May Peace Prevail on Earth” inscribed on all four sides. Last month, some "It takes all our diverse expressions of oneness to create a thriving world ... It takes everyone’s divine spark". (Read more about Masami's amazing work and its continuation today here.) For more inspiration, watch this brief video of highlights, including the planting of a peace pole, during a special Awakin Retreat in Surrey (England) last year.
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Avidya is the defining of a self which is not the self; with happiness in what is actually suffering; with purity in what is really impurity; and permanence in what is really impermanent. Avidya perfectly describes the nature of a survival language. A survival language is steeped in avidya. As long as who I am, is defined by such a language, I remain the victim of an endless vicious circle. The question is — why would we choose a language which keeps us in perpetual self-judgment. The fact is that we never chose the language. It has always been around, and as children, we were given no other options. As long as we do not consciously redesign the way we use language, we remain at the effect of the past, conditioned by the very language of the past to repeat the patterns of the past, again and again. The single most outstanding difference ... [Read more] Seed questions for reflection: How do you relate to the notion of the difference between survival and sacred language? Can you share a personal experience of a time you consciously redesigned how you used language? What helps you become aware of the kind of language you are using? |
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In a special talk, storyteller and author Wakanyi Hoffman illustrates personal expressions of ubuntu through her daughter's graduation, a friend's traditional wedding dress that travelled from Kenya to the Netherlands to Japan. Through a tapestry of stories, Hoffman discerns the difference between detachment and disconnection, and the possibilities that unfold when we choose to prefer love. Echoing Maya Angelou, who stated, "I come as one but I stand as ten thousand," Hoffman notes, "I come here as one, but I am one ... of ten thousand ancestors who have made so many decisions in order for me to be sitting here today." After the call, Wakanyi shared a photo (pictured above) that has since inspired a range of captions such as "She's not heavy, she's my sister" . . . . "Walk alone if you want to go fast. Walk together if you want to go far" . . . . "We all need a lift sometimes!" . . . . "Can't you just imagine their song?" [Read more here ...] |
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"The edges of things are always deceptive / because we are taught to believe / in endings and beginnings," she begins, observing how "people like to put thingsin their places." Yet, the visceral experience of life doesn't always have such clear delineations, such as when "the red of your heart spills / into the red of the rose spills / into the red of the sunset spills / into mehendi on the hands of a bride. / and who can explain these things?" Threads of interconnection stretch far beyond our comprehension. As the infinite domino effect of each act, word, intention, or situation begins to seep into our cores, she invites, "now tell me the story of your life / (whoever you are) go on / i Double Dare you! / tell me the story of your life / without once touching / mine." [Read the full poem here ...] |
