On the day of her mother's funeral, with rain splitting open a dry summer sky, Helen walked into an office store in Taree, Australia, to print a eulogy. It was nearing the end of 2015 and the saleswoman who greeted her was the same one who had been gently asking about her ailing mother for...
As a very young mother, Patricia Lim took on great responsibility in the care of her children and household. She took on even more to become a psychologist, and an executive for the UN in Brazil. After learning about HeartMath in a Leadership program, Patricia “felt the energy of the field, and my...
He had a car stuffed with fifteen birthday balloons and was soulfully singing along to a sacred chant when he reversed full-speed into a stranger's brand-new SUV. What Matthias Hombauer did next -- walking slowly toward the furious, shaking man and offering a hug -- wasn't a decision so...
In 1974, Travis Holmes Sr. launched Birmingham, Alabama's first food truck. His son grew up beside him on it, racing to chop onions faster than his father. Then, at 26, that son was killed — leaving behind an infant and a grandfather who had to find a reason to go back to work. What Travis Sr....
When Rob Burnside learned that a homeless student named Landerius Hayes was sleeping in his car but could no longer legally attend his school due to a change of address, he went home that day and told his wife about the situation. The first words out of her mouth were, "Well, he can stay with us,...
At fourteen, Shmuel Klein -- a scholarly boy who knew nothing of war -- was handed a prison full of soldiers and told to run it. He couldn't, so he told them the truth: you run it. I'll sit up front with my books and look official. And they did. When Passover came, he unlocked every cell,...
Just hours before installing the first canopy bridges near Alta Floresta, biologist Fernanda Abra found two marmosets dead on the road — a species already threatened with extinction. That grief became the baseline against which everything that followed would be measured. Eight rope bridges later,...
Andreas Nussbaumer, with credit to his wife, recounts being lured away from a successful business career and the empty feeling that came with it “into just being, surrounded by the vegetables and the animals.” They steward a sanctuary for rescued farm animals in Weppersdorf, Austria. Animals “show...
In a test center in the Netherlands, a sleek white-and-yellow vehicle glides quietly over concrete -- but it was built for something far rougher: the red-dirt roads of rural Kenya, where the nearest clinic can be a day's journey away. Twenty-three university students, many of whom paused their...
At seventeen, Charles Gibbs was asked to stay after Sunday school class by a well-meaning elder -- and left with a message that would redirect the entire arc of his life: we don't ask questions like that here. Rather than killing his spiritual hunger, that closed door sent him into theater,...