Absurd Heroism
Margaret Wheatley
Consider Sisyphus. As described in both Greek and Roman mythology, Sisyphus was condemned by the gods to an eternity of futile and hopeless labor. He had to roll a rock to the top of the mountain, onl...
Be Cool to the Pizza Dude
Sarah Adams
If I have one operating philosophy about life it is this: “Be cool to the pizza delivery dude; it’s good luck.” Four principles guide the pizza dude philosophy. Principle 1: Cooln...
I Have Decided to Stick With Love
Martin Luther King Jr.
I’m concerned about a better World. I’m concerned about justice; I’m concerned about brotherhood and sisterhood; I’m concerned about truth. And when one is concerned about that...
Why Are We Running Out of Time?
Jacob Needleman
Technology itself is not the cause of our problem of time. Its influence on our lives is a result, not a cause -- the result of an unseen accelerating process taking place in ourselves, in our inner b...
No Better Place to Meet Yourself
Moussa Ag Assarid
Moussa Ag Assarid (MAA): I don’t know my age. I was born in the Sahara desert, with no papers. I was born in a nomadic camp of Touaregs, between Timbuktu and Gao, in the north of Mali. ...
Can Beauty Save the World?
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn
Dostoyevsky once let drop the enigmatic phrase: “Beauty will save the world.” What does this mean? For a long time it used to seem to me that this was a mere phrase. Just how could such a ...
The Trick is to Keep Seeing
Pema Chodron
(The Tibetan word shenpa) is usually translated “attachment,” but a more descriptive translation might be “hooked.” When shenpa hooks us, we’re likely to get stuck. We co...
Every Seed Carries a Secret
Angela Fischer
Every seed carries a secret. We will never come to fully know this secret, because it belongs to the mystery of creation. Yet we can learn again what hundreds of generations did before us, namely t...
I Awaken Before Dawn
Helen Moore
I awaken before dawn, go into the kitchen and fix a cup of tea. I light the candle and sit in its glow on the meditation cushion. Taking my cup in both hands, I lift it to my Lord and give thanks. ...
Time is a Season
David Whyte
Most traditional human cultures have seen the hours of the days in the same way as they have encountered the seasons of the year: not as clear lines drawn across our experience, but as an advancing qu...
Organic Gift
Parker Palmer
Years ago, I heard Dorothy Day speak. Founder of the Catholic Worker movement, her long-term commitment to living among the poor on New York's Lower East Side - had made her one of my heroes. So i...
Be with the Magic
Steve Karlin
When animals look out of their eyes they don’t see what we see. Some of them see ultraviolet light, some of them can see very clearly for hundreds of yards, some of them can’t see further ...