“We Want This Organization to Make a Difference
in the Lives of …”
Our generation has seen a blossoming of groups of people coming together to make the world a better place – so many of us want our lives to matter! (more…)
This weekend I went to see the new movie based on Elizabeth Gilbert’s New York Times best-selling memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. It follows a young woman’s classic New Age search for personal fulfillment, as she leaves her angst-ridden marriage, takes-then-leaves a lover and travels alone to Italy, India and Bali. Along the way, she re-examines her ideas about the pleasure of food, the way to enlightenment and the difficulties of relationships.
While enjoying the story, I left the movie theater struck the character’s self absorption and by our general American sense of dissatisfaction, including about religion. (more…)
We all profit if our healthcare system is transformed…
and that profit will not be just financial!
This week in Washington, the hot topic is healthcare. Those with an eye on the cost and scope of expanding healthcare are calling for reform. Those with a heart for medical care as a humanitarian mission are calling for healthcare to be transformed. Most of us, confused and concerned with how to provide healthcare for our own family and others, are somewhere in between. (more…)
“Poverty, Violence, War, Earthquakes, Floods…all reasons families are forced to live in Third World conditions.”
Last night, a line of dangerous summer thunderstorms raced across North Texas, full of sky-splitting lightning strikes, damaging winds, tornados, heavy rain and hail. As our huge, old trees heaved in the gusts and thunder rattled our windows, we heard a high pitched POP! and then total silence. (more…)
Have you heard these words? We say them when we care deeply about a person or are moved by the plight of a group of people in a difficult situation. The wonderful idea created is that we send our heart – that keeper of our spirituality, our emotions, our souls — to be shared with someone else! (more…)
Today, January 21, 2008, is Martin Luther King Day, the only American national holiday to commenorate an African American. As you celebrate it, consider the idea that this could be the day you have been waiting for — the day you decide take up Dr. King’s challenge to follow your heart and make a difference in the world. Indeed, today is the day: (more…)
Don’t ask what the world needs.
Ask what makes you come alive, and do that…
because what the world needs
is people who have come alive!
Howard Thurman (1900-1981)
Howard Thurman was an author, philosopher, theologian and educator, who after meeting Mahatma Gandhi became passionate about the ideas he heard from the great spiritual leader. Back in America, he went on to work for civil rights and to write about non-violence in words that informed Martin Luther King’s thinking and inspired other civil rights leaders of the mid-century.
As we make our resolutions for the New Year, plan our futures and even consider the politics of American presidential race, Thurman’s suggestion about doing what makes “you come alive” may be just what we need to hear! Many of us lead lives that, while addressing the needs of the world, can feel…well, uninspired. How can we change that in 2008? (more…)
A 79-year-old-mother of five and grandmother of twelve with a lifetime of experience in early childhood education volunteers as a grandmother for troubled children at her local elementary school.
An 84-year-old Marine who began writing award-winning poetry in her 50s now mentors young poets via email submissions
A 70-year-old retired professor serves as a supervisor for probationers on Saturdays building wheelchair ramps for needy local residents
These amazing anecdotes are not inspirational fiction–they are about friends of mine, one of whom is my mother! In fact, they and so many others are more than friends, they are my elders. (more…)
