Hello Dear Community, We all know how much our wellbeing hinges on feeling safe, nourished, seen. These are fundamental human needs. But what if there were other needs that are equally important, and a lot less apparent? In his work on human potential, psychologist Scott Barry Kaufman builds upon Abraham Maslow’s classic hierarchy to remind us of a vital distinction between two kinds of human motivations. On one hand, we have our “Deficiency Needs”—the fundamental longings for safety,...
16 days ago • 6 min read
Hello Dear Community, Some These days, it’s easy to confuse the barrage of stimulation posed by social media with a constant state of craving, or dissatisfaction. But this superficial yearning is no match for our deeply embedded need to belong. It may feel like we need to forcefully turn away from our chasing, when perhaps there’s a more organic way: sending our roots deeper into the soil of the common good, where our true vitality lies. In this edition, we invite you to join us in pulling...
about 1 month ago • 6 min read
Hello Dear Community, Some of the most profound transformations in human life begin with a simple and courageous act: staying present. We live in a culture that prizes resolution. We want the arc to bend quickly toward healing, the wound to close, the story to end well. But the people who know something real about transformation, who have walked through the hardest rooms and come out changed, tend to describe a different kind of process. They recount a series of small, unglamorous decisions...
about 1 month ago • 5 min read
Hello Dear Community, We are woven into one another’s lives in ways both visible and unseen. Every interaction leaves a trace. Every act of kindness, dismissal, generosity or attention becomes another thread in the living fabric we share. There is no truly separate life. We belong to an intricate weave of relationships, communities, ecosystems, and stories that continuously influence one another. And yet so much of what holds us together goes unnamed: the spaces between us that carry emotion,...
about 2 months ago • 5 min read
Hello Dear Community, Empathy begins long before we have a word for it. It lives in the infant who cries when another baby cries, as if some invisible thread were tugging at both hearts at once. It flickers in the toddler who offers a toy to someone who is sad, as if silently saying, “What you feel matters to me”. Kindness is embedded in us from the start. But like all living things, it can be either nurtured or neglected. Left untended, it may recede under the pressures of fear, competition,...
2 months ago • 5 min read
Hello Dear Community, We are, at our core, creatures of story. Long before we had laws or institutions, we had fires to gather around and voices to shape the darkness. We told stories of loss and courage, of betrayal and repair, of what it means to belong to one another. These were our moral curriculum, the way communities taught themselves what to value, whom to protect, how to respond to suffering. We become, collectively, the stories we tell. This is why philosopher Martha Nussbaum argues...
3 months ago • 5 min read
Hello Dear Community, In difficult times, it can sometimes feel as if fear, anger, and division spread more easily than care. Yet our experience tells us that compassion also travels. A single act of kindness can shift the tone of a conversation, a group, even a whole community. The way we respond to suffering is not only a personal matter. It is shaped by the environments we live in, the systems we work within, and the people around us. For many years, compassion has been studied mainly as...
3 months ago • 4 min read
Hello Dear Community, As I write these words, and you read them, a line of orange-robed Vietnamese monks makes its way through snowy highways, rural roads, large and small towns, on a 2,300-mile pilgrimage to Washington, D.C., to spread peace, loving kindness and compassion throughout the US and the world. The pilgrimage began in October 2025 and is expected to last 120 days. It has not been easy or uneventful: one monk lost a leg after a truck ran into their accompanying vehicle (and the...
4 months ago • 6 min read
Food Bank volunteers on Mothers' Day Hello Dear Community, The news these days is dismal, and can naturally make us feel disheartened. The challenges are no doubt real, and the stakes are high. At the same time, news and social media tend to amplify negativity: stories of violence and division spread quickly, while everyday acts of cooperation often go unreported. This may explain why a 2025 poll found that nearly half of Americans believe rudeness is increasing compared with before the...
4 months ago • 6 min read