The Spiritual Dimension of Childhood Development
The new report, What Makes Me? Core Capacities for Living and Learning, names nine core capacities deemed essential for learning and the healthy development of children and their societies.
January Practice: Taming Our Egos
“The spiritual life, the spiritual work is fundamentally about, for us normal human beings, overcoming the many facets of our own egoism, the tyranny of the false self,” says Kabir Helminski, co-founder and co-director of The Threshold Society. In the brief video below, Helminski shares both practical and humorous advice from his teachers on taming our egos. Watch!
This month let’s take these teachings out for a spin. Let us know in the comments below how this practice is playing out for you (and your ego).
Updates for GilChrist COVID practices in 2022
We’re all looking forward to the return of our retreat groups at GilChrist in the new year, alongside our continuing solo retreat guests!
December Practice: Visualizing Spirituality
Last year we released “What Does Spirituality Mean to Us? A Study of Spirituality in the US,” a groundbreaking study designed to help us explore what spirituality means to us and how it influences our civic lives. The study revealed that:
Depolarization Is Everyone’s Responsibility
As we approach the end of another tumultuous year, many of us are anticipating reunions and restoration. Looking forward to time with family and friends, we recognize the challenge of our separations and the need for human connection. But as we reunite, there are differences we may be burying. In fact, 45% of our nation’s adults now say that they have stopped talking about politics with others, either in person or online[1]. For good reason, some may argue.
November Practice: Appreciate Where We Come From
It is important for all of us to appreciate where we come from and how that history has really shaped us in ways that we might not understand. —Sonia Sotomayor
September Practice: Noticing the Silent Lives Around Us
This month we share two practices that our social media community members found helpful in the early months of the pandemic. We return to these practices with the hope that they continue to be helpful to you as you help others in your life and work to savor the only moment we really have: now.
August Practice: Front Porch Drawing
Last June, in the early months of the pandemic, we asked you to share what practices you were finding particularly helpful during that time. We savored and shared your submissions and find them worth revisiting.
American democracy is in a partisan death spiral. Here's how we can save it.
Originally published in USA Today July 25, 2021
Love means having the humility to see how much we need to learn from those whose experience of America has been different from our own.
I am persuaded that love is the only practical strategy for saving our democracy.
July Practice: Play at Work
Play touches and stimulates vitality, awakening the whole person—mind and body, intelligence and creativity, spontaneity and intuition. —Viola Spolin
Do you shy away from “play” as something frivolous--not to be part of your work life? In the video below, Bill Vendley, our senior advisor for world religions, reminds us of the importance of play, and this from someone who dedicated his life's work to conflict resolution!