Our stressful and often oppressive world gives frequent messages, both insidiously subtle and explicitly harsh, for us to be someone who we are not, to do things to which we do not feel aligned, to think and feel in ways that do not make sense to us--in ways that even...

As we already are feeling divisiveness of current politics and upcoming presidential elections...

As we feel into pain and complexity of people holding seeming irreconcilable values which actually harm each other, on topics like the economy, immigration and same-sex marriage...

As even people's intentions for doing good in the world,...

I was looking at today's newspaper and was feeling the contraction from the barrage of intense, difficult and often extremely painful experiences that we have in our world today -- economic recession for whole countries; extreme financial hardships for many; ongoing revelations of atrocities in Libya, Afghanistan and other wars;...