Resources

We broaden and deepen our perspectives with exposure to a great number of sources. Here are some websites that we would like to share, and a sample of what they have said or written that caused us to be inspired:

In a democracy, it is a lot more important to be in right relationship than it is to be right.” “I’d say the main rule is to turn toward honest, open inquiry rooted in simple respect. Say, in effect, “Tell me something that will help me understand you, your life, your worldview, and where your convictions come from.” The more we learn about other people’s stories, the less possible it is for us to dislike them, distrust them, or dismiss them. Animosities are unraveling the fabric of our civic society, degrading democracy’s infrastructure. Anything we can do to help people form relational “habits of the heart” — to borrow an idea from nineteenth-century political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville — will help.

Parker Palmer
Center for Courage and Renewal
Articles, podcasts, and courses about healing our hearts, healing our social system and communities, and transformative ways of being in the world

Kindness is a kind of everyday by-product of all the great virtues and it a most edifying form of instant gratification. Compassion is also curious…”curiosity without assumptions” which is a breeding ground for compassion…. Compassion can be synonymous with empathy, it can be joined with the harder work of forgiveness and reconciliation, but it can also express itself in the simple act of presence…just being there, just showing up. Compassion can also be linked with beauty, and by that I mean a willingness to see beauty in the other, not just what it is that might need helping…beauty as a core moral value.

Krista Tippett
On Being
Radio broadcasts and podcast interviews exploring various perspectives on the complexities of being human and the meaning we find in life.

Life has taught me to look for patterns to help me understand what’s needed to shift our culture, to reorient toward what’s sacred and whole. The first way I learned taught me to balance my body, heart, mind and spirit. Using those filters helped me to witness myself. It required listening to what my body knew, and heeding my emotions and intuition, as well as the reasoning of my mind. I noticed how often linear thought, strategic plans and well-planned arguments tended to win the day. As the poet Rumi wrote: “When I run after what I think I want, my days are a furnace of stress and anxiety; if I sit in my own place of patience, what I need flows to me, and without pain. From this I understand that what I want also wants me, is looking for me and attracting me.

Nina Simone
Bioneers
Conferences, podcast and leadership training promoting social and scientific innovation and visionary solutions to the challenges of the modern world

The ocean sustains all life on Earth. From the air we breathe to the seafood we eat, our very survival depends on healthy seas.

Monterey Bay Aquarium
Climate action for the ocean, conservation and research, “Seafood Watch” list

The way we see our world shapes the way we treat that world. Is the way we see the forest as a sacred grove, or just as timber and pulp? Is a river the veins of the land, or only an opportunity for irrigation and power? Is another species biological kin, or merely a resource or commodity? ……I cannot emphasize enough, that the way we see our world shapes the way we treat the world.

David Suzuki Foundation
Pursuing science based solutions that protect the environment, the diversity of nature and our quality of life

Do nothing out of guilt, or for prestige or status, or money or approval alone. Those extrinsic motivators are fine and can feel life-affirming in the moment, but they ultimately don’t make it thrilling to get up in the morning and gratifying to go to sleep at night – and in fact, they can often distract and detract from the things that do offer those deeper rewards.

Maria Popova
Brain Pickings
A thoughtful, provocative and inspiring digest on the words and works of great thinkers, past and present.

The term noetic sciences was first coined in 1973 when the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) was founded by Apollo 14 astronaut Edgar Mitchell, who two years earlier became the sixth man to walk on the moon. Ironically, it was the trip back home that Mitchell recalls most, during which he felt a profound sense of universal connectedness—what he later described as a samadhi experience. In Mitchell’s own words, “The presence of divinity became almost palpable, and I knew that life in the universe was not just an accident based on random processes. . . .The knowledge came to me directly.” It led him to conclude that reality is more complex, subtle, and mysterious than conventional science had led him to believe.

Institute of Noetic Sciences
Dedicated to supporting individual and collective transformation through consciousness research and exploring the realization of human potential

A Warrior is a person who has the courage to face the dark forces threatening our world and to grieve for what is being lost especially for future generations. Her insight into the present world situation energizes her, deepens her compassion for those suffering from oppression, and motivates her to live in a way which brings peace into each situation she encounters. She is strengthened by comradery with her fellow warriors.

Margaret J. Wheatley
Warriors For the Human Spirit
Short film documentaries of Restorative and Regenerative Projects Around the world

With Non-Violent Communication (NVC) we learn to hear our own deeper needs and those of others, and to identify and clearly articulate what “is alive in us”. When we focus on clarifying what is being observed, felt, needed, and wanted, rather than on diagnosing and judging, we discover the depth of our own compassion. Through its emphasis on deep listening—to ourselves as well as others—NVC fosters respect, attentiveness and empathy, and engenders a mutual desire to give from the heart. The form is simple, yet powerfully transformative.

Marshall Rosenberg
Center for Non-Violent Communication
Articles, educational materials, and classes in compassionate communication skills for both individuals and for corporate settings

Human beings, throughout most of their habitation of Earth, have been so completely interwoven into their environment that, until recently, there was no separation between them. This understanding is reflected in information shared by the majority of indigenous and ancient cultures: They did not experience themselves and nature as separate entities. The intimate interweaving of humanity with the rest of life throughout evolution means that the entire development of the human species as a distinct species cannot be separated from the landscapes in which it developed. Such deep interconnectedness to environment is so fundamental to us as a species that, ultimately, it is not possible to understand ourselves as human beings without understanding something of wild nature itself.

Stephen Harrod Buhner
Foundation for Gaian Studies
The Lost Language of Plants