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!
June Practice: Bring Love to What We Do
It’s easy to forget how impactful the daily, ordinary moments of our lives can be. Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison, Zen teacher, psychotherapist, and president of the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care shares what a door person in his building said that moved and reminded him of the impact our most ordinary activities have on others.
StoryCorps Conversations Celebrate Longtime Fetzer Staff
From those who tend Fetzer's physical workplace, library, and mission, we learn of the importance of love, humor, and humility in the work we do together. We found these short clips from some of our longest-serving staff to be delightful and hope you do too! Many thanks to our friends at StoryCorps for this special opportunity.
May Practice: Through Dying We Learn to Live
Dying is a universal experience, yet we have such trouble talking about it, allowing for our own and others’ grief, and learning from this profound and mysterious passage. In the video below, Carla Fernandez, co-founder of The Dinner Party considers what we miss when we avoid the topic and the precious lessons it offers us.
The QUESTion Project Empowers High School Students to Pursue a Life of Purpose
The QUESTion Project is significant because it gives people the opportunity to talk about life questions that are typically internalized, and the chance to interconnect with others. It is also significant because it widens perspectives … it inspired me to expand my wisdom, learn about the ideas and thoughts of people [who] live in my world, and serve … my community in … an extraordinary way. —Karla, QUESTion Project alumnus
April Practice: Community as a Verb
This month, we look to Scherto Gill, a research fellow at the Guerrand-Hermès Foundation for Peace to help us reframe our cultural assumption of community, moving it from something outside ourselves to an active process we live into. Watch Scherto in the video below!
Join us as we experiment with the practice of “we-ness” that Scherto speaks of. How might you live as if community is an action, a verb? Share your observations and experiences below.
March Practice: Myth of the Separate Self
“We are in trouble to the degree that we adhere to the myth of the separate self,” warns Rev. Ed Bacon, rector emeritus of All Saints Church in Pasadena. In the video below, Rev. Bacon shares a poignant example from nature that illustrates how we are not only inextricably linked, we are part of a larger whole. Watch.
This month, we invite you to consciously live as part of a larger whole. How does this affect how you move through the world? Your daily activities? Your interactions with others and nature? Your purchases? Or even your time alone?
Love in Action: Standing with the LGBTQ Community
What does a loving world look like, and what is our part in creating the conditions for that world as it comes into being? This is a living question in our organization. Most recently, it has been tested in our discernment about the Fetzer Institute’s relationship with Southwest Michigan First.