Morgan Freeman Reading John Lewis's Last Article Posted by Anand Gopal, Aug 09 2020 The great Civil Rights leader John Lewis wrote an essay that he asked to be published on the day of his funeral. That act itself is amazing, knowing he was going to pass soon and being at ease with it... I was super inspired by this video, where Morgan Freeman reads his last essay ...

Where Does A Ripple Begin And Where Does It End? Posted by Rohit Rajgarhia, Aug 09 2020 A beautiful ripple, which continues to change form and expand, and touch hearts - One of the hands practice of our first Laddership Pod read -- “take a walk without a destination.” During our call, Shyam shared his experience of that act - "I've recently been thinking of embarking on a sacred, 2700 kilometer walking pilgrimage in India, that is done without any money. Seeing this prompt, I thought that perhaps I experimented today by walking for 22 kilometers. As I was departing, I thought to leave behind my phone and wallet, just like the pilgrimage. But then, with my health, I wasn't sure if I would just be able to survive 22 kilometers -- so I took two bananas along with me. Little more than half way through the walk, I ran into a young man on the streets of Delhi, who was literally crying. Saddened by it, I approached him to ... Read Full Story

Laddership Pods – The Alchemy Of Uncertainty Posted by Bonnie Rose, Jul 31 2020 The first Laddership Pod was conceived and implemented during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. A 28-day process, it included 260 participants from 25 countries, dedicated to transformation. The time was ripe. So we gathered via technology to envision a new future. I’m sure many of us thought we’d find answers – solutions for personal and world problems. Instead, we wrestled daily with unanswerable questions. We stayed “in the grey” and pondered the nuances of transformation. “When do I surrender, vs. when do I apply tenacious grit?” “How do we navigate giving and burn-out?” “Where is the balance between inclusion and boundaries?” The result was magical. Our willingness to embark upon this journey of unknowing delivered us to a realm of shared emergence. Emergence looked like deepening friendships, radical acts of kindness, personal revelations, learning from each other, a brilliant on-the-fly tech platform that supported our global embrace, support for personal aspirations. The ... Read Full Story

A Summer Intern's Creative Art Project On Kindness Posted by Sophie Wu, Jul 19 2020 Many of us might remember our summer intern Frances from her beautiful story on friendship. One of Frances's internship projects this summer is to summarize the interns' weekly acts of kindness through creative art. This week, she integrated drawing and poem, in which she formed the poem using one phrase from everyone's reflection on the 21-day kindness challenge feed this week. We can't resist sharing this gorgeous work with you all. :) Enjoy! #rocking-star interns Here are the snippets of everyone's acts: Mika- I wrote a long letter Sonya- to one of my oldest friends Anha- I dropped the letter off Tanvi- and read it out loud Leela- I mailed it out Lena- It made me so happy Frances- To find a new way of spreading kindness

Othering And Belonging: Highlights From Awakin Call Posted by Bonnie Rose, Jul 16 2020 Last summer, the Awakin Calls team held an illuminating call with john a. powell on Othering and Belonging. Recently, in our Laddership Pod, we spent some time exploring this topic, and I was reminded of particular highlights from that conversation that stood out to me. Sharing an edited and condensed transcript of those highlights below, in case it is of value for others, too. Preeta: Let’s start with your vision of race in this country. From the lens of some, there's been a grand story of halting but real racial progress -- from ending slavery, to eliminating legal segregation, to seeking integration, to working towards tolerance and diversity, and maybe inclusion and equity. From your perspective, what are the realities or limits of our current narrative? John: If we go back to the founding years of the slave trade in the New World, 400 years ago, we see that race as we ... Read Full Story

Summer Interns. Wow. :) Posted by Nipun Mehta, Jul 14 2020 This summer, we have 7 remarkable summer interns, with 8 mentors(!), doing some exceptional things -- whose whispers might've already reached you. :) Just reading their applications is a heart-opening experience: Lena, Anha, Leela It underscored the kind of intentions that we attract and nurture. In week 1, as the field is barely emerging, internal ripples were already in motion. All of them attend our weekly Awakin Circle, genuinely meditate (most of them for the full hour!), and share the most beautiful things. Frances, shared this stunning story of her kindergarten friend. They also rolled up their sleeves and jumped into service. Lena, Leela and Anha orchestrated a first-ever "Teen Awakin Call" with Melissa. Sonya and Tanvi created themed storylists for KarunaVirus, on topics like Youth Taking Action and Behind the Protests. Mika drafted themed reading lists for Awakin Readings, on top of writing 20 story descriptions for KarunaVirus! Over the next weeks, they ... Read Full Story

Making Friends During A Pandemic Posted by Bonnie Rose, Jul 10 2020 Dear SSp Friends, This was from my friend Jen and I had to share it. Picture of her dog too, just for fun. :) I have to tell you a little story... With Spencer recently moving down here after being away for several years, and most of his friends having moved away, he has been looking to make new friends. Covid has made it a little tricky, but he managed to make a few friends while out rock climbing and they go out together to climb outdoors a few days a week. He asked me if I knew any other ways to meet people, while also staying safe. The only thing I could think to say was, "Be kind. Kind people attract other kind people." A few days later I saw him writing in the 21-Day Kindness book (from Service Space) that I stuck in his stocking ... Read Full Story

Sarah Schecter's Unwavering Positive Mindset Posted by Leela Kiyawat, Jul 07 2020 Hi everyone! My name is Leela Kiyawat, and I am one of the ServiceSpace 2020 Summer interns. It's such an honor to do service work in the company of all of you amazing people - I'm so grateful I've found this wonderful group. One of my projects this summer includes interviewing teenagers in my community about the various acts of kindness that they have either done or experienced this summer. I also wanted to hear, in a more general sense, their experience with grappling with the future in a world that has come to a pandemic-induced standstill. Generation Z is going to inherit a tumultuous world, and I want to show you all some of my incredible friends who are ready to attack any challenge that's been thrown at them. From online AP tests to lobbying for gun safety laws to the negative affects of performative activism, these interviews will cover ... Read Full Story

Freedom In Prison: A Story Of My Great-Grandfather Posted by Aryae Coopersmith, Jul 07 2020 [I originally shared this true story of my great-grandfather at an Awakin Circle. By request I'm archiving it in writing with some additional context.] -- Freedom in Prison: a Story of my Great-Grandfather -- As I knock on the door of Grandpa Max’s apartment on Valentine Avenue in the Bronx in the fall of 1956, I’m feeling a little nervous. This is an important visit, and the first time I’ve come on my own from New Jersey, without my parents, by bus and subway, to see him. I’m flooded with memories of my early childhood in the 1940s. He lived in this same apartment back then, on the second floor, with Grandma Minnie before she passed away. My mom and dad and I and my little brother lived up on the fifth floor. When we went to visit them, we’d go to the elevator and press “2.” Then we’d get out, walk ... Read Full Story

First Teen Awakin Call Reflections Posted by Lena Kimura, Jul 02 2020 This past Tuesday (June 30th), Anha, Leela, and I held our first Teen Awakin Call as a project for the ServiceSpace Internship. It was the most enlightening experiences of my life. And after just a week of preparation, the three of us managed to pull together this amazing Teen Awakin Call with our amazing special guest, Melissa Stephens. I'm especially proud of our teamwork and how diligently everyone communicated with one another. I think the main reason why the call ran smoothly was because our chemistry as a team worked so well. I was definitely very nervous before the call and Anha and Leela kept reminding us that it will all work out perfectly and that we just needed to be present. They were so right. The idea behind a Teen Awakin Call was to create a space similar to the Awakin Calls where we can ask questions to a guest and ... Read Full Story

A Circle Of Friendship Posted by Frances Freais, Jun 27 2020 At age three, I was inseparable from my parents. Where they went I went, always reaching out for their hands to ensure their presence, always calling out for them in desperation to verify that they were there. Never having left their side until the age of three, I believe I had what you might call separation anxiety. This made preschool an exciting but difficult time for all of us. As we approached my preschool for the first time, one of my hands tightly squeezed my father's hand, the other nervously grasped my mother’s. We walked past the cheerful sign out front which read “Welcome to the Lakeshool!,” up the stairs and through the front door. I was happy and curious—what could this new place be? There were other children for me to play with, toys, snacks, and of course my parents were right there. Soon enough, however, I was introduced to ... Read Full Story

Love In Auschwitz Posted by Bonnie Rose, Jun 15 2020 [A stunning true story that recently came my way.] I was a fierce, unhappy, intellectual twenty-eight-year-old, still uneasy with all things “mystical,” stalking in old jeans and cheap army boots around Jerusalem. My guide to the mysteries of the Old City was “Isaiah,” plump, bald, late-middle-aged Israeli poet and mystic who looks, as he himself says often, “like a semi-enlightened sunburnt frog” and who has, over two days, become a friend. I love his sardonic wit, his baroque flights of phrase, his kabbalistic learning, the way his eyebrows twitch asymmetrically when he gets excited, which he does often. Today, he is wearing bright red sneakers and a short-sleeved Hawaiian shirt with great orange suns on it. Our talk is light, fact-stocked, and airy until we find ourselves in the early afternoon on the Mount of Olives, and stand, suddenly silent, in the sunny ochre olive grove where Christ wandered on the night before ... Read Full Story

Youth Who Matter Posted by Sonya Surapaneni , Jun 13 2020 As an extroverted teenager in quarantine, striving to meet my own goals and expand my skills, I'm constantly looking for opportunities to give back to the community. I'm Sonya Surapaneni, a rising sophomore at The Athenian School. Through the Corona Virus, I have remained positive, trying to shine light on small acts of kindness through the world-wide pandemic. Although I've been researching and writing about things happening at a large scale, I missed my best friends trying to give back to society - right under my nose! Greatly inspired by this, I wanted to share it with the commmunity, in hope of providing light through the events of the world. I FaceTimed each of them, asked them a couple of questions, and took notes on their ideas - quickly putting them in a Q&A format in a Google Doc. I have linked the interviews down below. Enjoy! INTERVIEW 1 Cailean Fernandes and ... Read Full Story

A Prayer For Self Posted by Bradley Stoll, Jun 11 2020 A beautiful prayer I had shared last night from Larry Yang's article in this week's Awakin reading. May I be loving, open, and aware in this moment; If I cannot be loving, open, and aware in this moment, may I be kind; If I cannot be kind, may I be nonjudgmental; If I cannot be nonjudgmental, may I not cause harm; If I cannot not cause harm, may I cause the least harm possible. I love how Larry has scaffolded these values in which he strives to live, yet understands that at times he may come up short in one, so he moves onto something more doable. And if that doesn't work, he works his way to something that he can do. As I read it over and over, it reinforced in me how imperfect I am. And yet, at each moment, I am exactly the being I am supposed to be.

All You Need To Know About Love And Posted by Tami Shaikh, Jun 11 2020 It all starts as soon as we are born and continues until our last breath- the quest for love and how it makes everything perfect. The ultimate reward is to give and receive perfect love, and we spend all our life looking for that endorsement. The validation of worthiness and the feeling of being unconditionally loved by another perfect human makes our journey painful and colorful. Being a single woman in my 40’s, I am always told that I “need” to fall in love and find someone because there must be an emptiness in my life. When I tell them that I’m content and happy, the reaction is disbelief and a sarcastic look. One person even said, “Oh, you must be a feminist.” I ask you- Does love really exist? Or is it companionship that is the ultimate goal? We watch shows and movies where girl meets boy and in the ... Read Full Story

The Third Force Posted by Bonnie Rose, Jun 10 2020 Sweet are the uses of adversity. – William Shakespeare Out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there. – Rumi Reality goes by many names – God, Spirit, The Absolute, Love, The Tao, Awareness, The Universe. Reality is perfect, meaning inclusive of everything. Reality is an unfettered field “out beyond ideas of wrong-doing and right-doing.” Opposites arise in the field – good, bad, darkness, light, joy, sorrow. These qualities arise in concert, each a complement to the other. But the human brain struggles with opposites. We attach to one side of an equation and call it Reality. Our point of view is never the whole picture. Fortunately, the Universe is maintained by scientific/spiritual laws. We’re familiar with laws of science. The laws of physics get us where we need to go. The laws of gravity help us stay where we need to stay. A spiritual law, the Law ... Read Full Story

A Deeper Inquiry And Reflection Posted by Nipun Mehta, Jun 08 2020 Dear Friends, We recently received an “open letter for the collective healing around Pancho Ramos-Stierle’s behavior towards women” on this website. It has been difficult to process, especially given his years of service work in the Bay Area, including in ServiceSpace and other communities. We feel deep grief and sadness for the suffering expressed by the women, who courageously came forward in the letter to share their stories. We began hearing indirect reports about efforts underlying this letter about two months ago. At that time, apart from knowledge of a couple of longer-term relationships over many years, we had limited background on Pancho's intimate life. The released letter offered an understanding of the perspectives, hurt, and pain of many affected women. The overarching patterns described in it are deeply disturbing, and in profound misalignment with our values. Recognizing and honoring the serious nature of what the women shared in their letter, we initiated ... Read Full Story

Richard's Interview On Nature Of Aesthetic Thought! Posted by ServiceSpace , Jun 07 2020 [Guess what we ran into! Richard's interview last week on the nature of Aesthetic Thought!] This week we feature a pre-recorded conversation with Richard Whittaker about the nature of Aesthetic Thought, the connection of Numinous in artistic expression, and the exquisite sensitivity of the human instrument when unmediated by conceptual association. Richard Whittaker is the co-founder, with Rue Harrison, of the non-profit "Society for theReCognition of Art" and founding editor in 1998 of the magazine works & conversations. Earlier he founded The Secret Alameda [published from 1990-96]. He is also the West Coast editor of Parabola Magazine. Although Whittaker has a background in philosophy [BA] and clinical psychology [MA] and has done graduate work at the GTU in Berkeley, his connections with art go back over forty years including photography, ceramics, painting and sculpture. In answer to the question of why he started an art magazine, Richard says: A central motivation was my ... Read Full Story

How A Little Impulse Led To A Profound Awakening Posted by Chi Phan, Jun 04 2020 Any story begins with an unexpected challenge that confronts a character with an urgent need to pay attention, to make a choice, a choice for which s/he is unprepared. The choice yields an outcome, and the outcome teaches a moral. The moral destroys the inner divided lens and brings forth an equanimous lens. This lens led me into creating pockets of service across Hanoi, Vietnam during the strange times of COVID. “Thuong nhau so gi Covid”, roughly translated as “when we care for one another we do not fear Covid”, is the phrase coined by the other girl who started this project with me. Although my partner and I did most of the frontline work with some help from my mom, I cannot forget to think about all the amazing people that I met along the way. I want to draw you all to my four part story that I captured in ... Read Full Story

A Brother Returning Back To Iran Posted by Amir Imani, Jun 03 2020 Last week, we were thrilled to Nipun connect with our community in Iran. ServiceSpace now has many hands that will be initiating local projects very soon. Having Nipun among us Iranians felt like we have reunited with our older brother who went off walking a few years, and was now returning to share his stories and insights. And how his stories felt right at home in our hearts, having been touched by Rumi and other sages from this land. He reminded us of being interconnected at deeper levels of existence, of one source. That compassion is not what we do but is what we are deeply, and for that to shine forth, in its raw nature, we need to become empty instruments of nature. To many perhaps this may have come as a relief that kindness is not another layer to wear or thing to do but is our ... Read Full Story