Our Work
Our work today is in collaboration with inspiring partners as we all work to reveal, inspire, and serve a more loving world. Learn more about our priority initiatives below and engage with the work through stories, events, resources, and other opportunities to add your voice.
Science and Spirituality: The Need for a Change in Culture
Late in his career, acclaimed physicist David Bohm (1917–1992), was a scholar in residence at the Fetzer Institute. A student of Robert Oppenheimer and a colleague of Albert Einstein, Bohm proposed that all parts of the universe are fundamentally interconnected, forming what he called “an unbroken flowing whole.” This paper, delivered as a public lecture on October 23, 1990, addresses what Bohm considers the essential relationship between science and spirituality, wholeness, culture, and the role of dialogue.
Practice: Savor Sacred Poetry
In celebration of poetry as spiritual practice, we invite you to join us in this practice from our friends at Spirituality & Practice.
In the clatter and clamor of our lives, we need ways to connect deeply with our souls. Whenever we feel depleted, our favorite poets invariably refresh and refuel us.
Practice: Destroy the Lens of Pessimism
Hurry: A poem from the Afghan Women's Writing Project
Practice: A Mind Without Fear
Where the Mind Is Without Fear
Practice: Stillness
In stillness there is richness—a richness of attention, timelessness, connection, possibility, peace. Carving out moments to quiet the noise of modern llfe or the tensions of this political moment can feel illusive. Yet, it is in just a moment we can disappear into the miracle of the sun peeking through a bank of clouds, or the breath that animates us. Pablo Neruda invites us to “count to twelve and…all keep still.” Regardless of language or difference, he calls us to inhabit “a delicious moment” allowing for the possibility of compassion and connection.
A Homily in the Church of Baseball
I love this game. I really do.
For instance,
I love the shape, the geometry of the game—so clean, so precise,
60 feet 6 inches exactly from the pitcher’s mound to home plate.
I love the beauty of a baseball diamond.
No warlike football territories that need to be defended and conquered
But a round white pitcher’s mound, and miles and miles of green, green grass.
And the trinity of bases, or
the stages of my life may be—from youth to adulthood to old age
Our Common Work
From a talk given at the twelfth family foundations conference, February 1998, published in the 1998 25th anniversary issue of Noetic Sciences Review.
Is it possible for money to be a conduit for love? The word philanthropy carries the meaning "love of humanity." Modern philanthropy brings together two seemingly irreconcilable concepts: love and money. But if we read through all the annual reports of all the foundations for the last ten years, I'd wager we would be hard-pressed to find the word "love" mentioned more than ten times.