Jul 25, 2024

Positive Experiences Are Up, Global Emotions Report Finds

Each year the polling organization Gallup distributes a global survey to glean the emotional state of the world. The recently released 2023 Global Emotion Report indicates the negative experience index is down while the positive experience index is up, marking a return to pre-pandemic levels.

"The situation can be crumbling around you, but we still see positivity. Safety was an issue, but you have this strong presence of social networks" said Julie Ray, editor of Gallup Global News.

[Read the full story here...]

Jul 22, 2024

Re-Member

"Our Earth walk is to look within, to see that we are connected to all things. There is no separation, only in the mind." L. Frank

Watch the stirring video exploring our shared humanity below.

Jul 20, 2024

A Look at the Rise of Nature Prescriptions

"It was a naturopathic doctor (ND) who handed me my first PaRx—a park prescription, sometimes called a ParkRx or NatureRx. I had exhausted all the treatment options with my family doctor and had turned to alternative medicine for answers. ... I was to stand in the grass for 10 minutes, feeling the cool blades tickling my toes. This was written down on an actual prescription pad, and I carried the slip home with me in my bag. The prescription felt silly at first, but I dutifully followed it every day throughout that summer ... And I was surprised to find that it helped—my lunchtime communion with this small greenspace seemed to set the tone for a better mood in the afternoon and post-work evening."

Nature prescriptions or "nature pills" are rising among medical practitioners. A movement in Canada launched the Park Prescriptions (PaRX) initiative with the BC Parks Foundation, which provides health care professionals nature prescription files, codes, and instructions for logging prescriptions for patients to allocate regular time in nature. In Canada, over 5,000 physicians are registered in the program. [Read more ...]

Jul 18, 2024

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...]

Jul 15, 2024

The Solutionary Way

Zoe Weil had forty-five youngsters identify the world’s biggest problems, and was surprised when only five of them thought we could solve them. If children can’t imagine solving problems, “what will motivate them to try to make a difference?”

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 ...]

Jul 14, 2024

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...]

Jul 13, 2024

Infinity of an Open Heart

Cynthia Li invites us along on an illuminating experience while kayaking in a wilderness. In the silence and blanket of darkness, she stops paddling and begins to drift. She feels suspended in the “dance of the oneness” -- of past, present, and future. She feels both tremendous terror and tremendous freedom hoping to “trust enough in my aloneness to dissolve fully into this great emptiness.”

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..."

Jul 11, 2024

Let Your Garden Grow Wild

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.

Jul 7, 2024

Sister Marilyn: To Come and See

At age 18 and new to the convent, Sister Marilyn Lacey turned down an invitation -- an opportunity to connect -- explaining she didn’t think human relations was her field.

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...]

Jul 4, 2024

Peace Pole, London Retreat, and More Ripples...

"...our actions may seem like just a drop in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of many such drops."

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 friends of ServiceSpace planted a Peace Pole at the University of Roehampton as part of a Spreading Kindness campaign and served as a plenary speakers at the Susanna Wesley Foundation's annual conference to discuss the Peace Pole project. 

"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.