About Me
I'm joining Service Space because ... my heart is naturally drawn to its langugage of love
A good day to me is when ... I am guided by my heart and not just my mind.
My hero in life is ...anyone who serves selflessly.
My favorite book is ...To Kill a Mockingbird
One thing I'm grateful for is ... I am able to find words to capture the inspiration and wisdom of others.
Nuggets From Sally Mahé 's Call
Jan 13, 2019, 4 smiles
Yesterday we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Sally Mahé .
Sally Mahé is a founding staff member for United Religions Initiative (URI), a global grassroots interfaith network dedicated to promoting enduring, daily interfaith cooperation, ending religiously motivated violence, and creating cultures of peace, justice, and healing for the Earth and all living beings. Sally came to this work from the lens of social justice and democracy building. While teaching in an inner-city high school, her passion for teaching civics and democracy was sparked. She soon saw that the spark inside her students – and in all of us – had something to do with the Divine, and so obtained a master's degree in theology and spiritual counseling. She came across the term "spiritual democracy" and felt a bolt of lightning run through her. Her passions for democracy and spirituality – and for nurturing the “deeper values of democracy” ... Read Full Story
Nuggets From Denise Bonnaig's Call
Dec 01, 2018, 5 smiles
This Saturday I had the privilege of hosting the Awakin Call with Denise Bonnaig!
“Ignorance just means you don’t know that there is a way out of your suffering.” At once a lawyer, life coach, yoga teacher, and mother, Denise Bonnaig has been force of transformation in the lives of many. As a lawyer, Bonnaig works to give voice to the voiceless in the contexts of civil rights, immigration, and workplace litigation. She is also owner and teacher at Princeton Power Yoga and a life coach. What holds the threads of Bonnaig's work all together is a commitment to personal transformation. Her work is to help others “transcend limitations, transform wounds into love, power, forgiveness, and gratitude.” Her work as a trial lawyer, yogini and spiritual guide (not to mention her “life experience as someone who has experienced illness, death and has raised three successful black men ... against all ... Read Full Story
Nuggets From Simon Hampel's Call
Oct 29, 2018, 1 comments, 5 smiles
Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Simon Hampel.
How do leaders become wise and compassionate stewards? The question has guided Simon Hempel in his work as a Partner of Leaders’ Quest, a London-based organization that trains leaders in business, government and civil society worldwide to become purposeful, conscious, and transformational leaders. And the question has also guided Simon in his own changing personal journey. Hempel became a serial entrepreneur at a very young age, resisting the traditional route to college. He created companies across UK, Europe, the US and Canada in the fields of financial services, leisure, consultancy and technology. After great success, in 2002 he lost everything and ended up joining an Amazonian expedition. And while this was a difficult place to be, it brought upon him a vital shift of another order -- a shift inward. It’s from this space of inner attunement that ... Read Full Story
Nuggets From Kevin Hancock's Call
Sep 09, 2018, 1 comments, 9 smiles
On September 1, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Kevin Hancock.
Kevin Hancock is the CEO of one of America’s oldest companies, a 6th generation family-run lumber company in Maine founded in 1848. In 2010, at the height of the economic crisis, Hancock was diagnosed with spasmodic dysphonia, a rare neurological disorder that makes speech extremely difficult. So he had to reinvent his leadership style by speaking less and listening more. Hancock Lumber made it through the economic crisis. Kevin then embarked on a Vision Quest and successive trips to the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation "where I met an entire community that felt as if it had no voice" and realized "there are lots of ways to lose your voice in this world. The traditional leadership model often quiets the authentic voices of others." He now helps empower the Sioux of Pine Ridge via housing, health, and education ... Read Full Story
Awakin Call With Mandy Catron
Jun 02, 2018, 3 comments, 8 smiles
This morning I had the pleasure of hosting an insightful Awakin Call with Mandy Catron, beautifully moderated by Alyssa! Mandy is the author of the popular NY Times article, "To Fall in Love with Anyone, Do This" and How to Fall in Love with Anyone: A Memoir in Essays. In her TEDx talk, Mandy shares, “falling in love is the easy part.” Beyond that, the longer journey of staying in love is a deliberate process, one that implies a process of revisiting regularly what it means to practice love. Below are a few more reflections and wisdom nuggets that Mandy shared with us!
"My favorite word is "text" or "texture", which is derived from the Latin word textura which means to "to weave"..I like to think about a piece of writing as something that has been woven....Writing is very much a contemplative process. Writing about my own life and thinking about ... Read Full Story
Moving From Outcome To Intention
Aug 23, 2017, 5 comments, 22 smiles
How do I stay present when things become too stressful? This was a question posed to me by a college student that I've been mentoring as part of my current work. What follows is how a question about stress management turned into a conversation about intention and the changing nature of reality.
Like many millennials, while this student is over committed with coursework and extracurricular activities, she also feels a deep sense of responsibility to help others. As a Fellow in our program, she is inspired to build a community of support for refugee students and help them through the college admissions process. In addition to preparing for the LSAT, she is also nervous about a fundraiser that she has organized for refugee students, where she's committed herself to raising $100,000.
Knowing this about her, I wanted her to understand the deeper source of her stress. In our results oriented society, individuals ... Read Full Story
Conrad Pritscher: Lessons From A Student Of Life
Jul 28, 2014, 1 comments, 5 smiles
A couple of years back when the Awakin readings started its comments feature, Somik Raha noticed that they were receiving insightful and thought provoking comments every week from an individual named Conrad Pritscher.
Many Awakin readers have remarked, “After I read the Awakin passage, the first thing I do is read Conrad’s reflection because it helps me to understand the passage.”
As a quintessential example, in response to the reading “The Most Subversive Invitation” by John O’Donohue, Conrad had shared the following reflection:
“I love the idea of not knowing. I’m almost attached to it. I love to know that I don’t know. That too is a knowing. Would I be better off if I didn’t know that?”
After many years of cultivating this online connection in wisdom, inquiry, and love, we had the precious opportunity to host Conrad on a live Awakin Call on July 12. Sitting there with Conrad and his ... Read Full Story
Let Them Know They're Special
Mar 04, 2014, 2 comments, 5 smiles
We just received this lovely story from a recent Kindness Contest winner:)
Too often, I think that small things in our everyday lives get taken for granted. When a long-lost friend calls to say a random hello, it can definitely make your day. Knowing that people care and do nice things for your family when you're living far away... they probably have no idea how much that means to you. Or, what about the child you used to nanny for that checks-in once in a while to keep you posted on how they are doing, even though they are full-grown adults now?
These are all things that give me something to look forward to, and make a huge difference in my day, but all of a sudden I feared that they had no idea how much those things meant to me, so I wanted to do a "random act of kindness" to ... Read Full Story
