By Celia Coates Virginia Satir was a leading light in the early days of family therapy. In 1972 she published PEOPLEMAKING, a book that was assigned reading when I was studying the dynamics of human relationships some years later. Recently I remembered the quartet of defensive personality types Satir described – four styles of communication…
Category: Wisdom
Two Questions…
By Celia Coates This week’s post is both very short and unending. It’s about only two questions: “What do you know?’ and, “How do you know it?” These are two very old questions for humans that give rise to more and more questions. Most of us have opinions about what knowing is. I found some…
Back To High School
By Celia Coates In 1990, the National Women’s Health Network published an editorial by Bev Baker about issues that might affect the health of teen girls. “Back” in this title refers both to an earlier post about high school and to this one that’s a look far back at discipline problems in schools. * Bev…
Holding Questions
By Trudy Summers and Paul Jackson From Trudy: One year ago my nephew, Paul Jackson, invited a group of people to participate in an on-line collaborative writing project called “What have you learned so far?”. I joined in happily. We did not know each other‘s names and now, months later, we remain anonymous. We did…
High School Is Rough All Over
By Neil Krasnoff FROM CELIA: Neil and I met when we were the only two passengers on an airport shuttle. After learning that he’d taught at several high schools in Texas, I wanted to know what he’d experienced. I’m fascinated by what young people are taught today about life and meaning, about what really matters,…
What Is Service?
By Celia Coates I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I woke and saw that life was service. I acted, and behold, Service was joy. Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941) This is one of Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore’s best-known poems. It is lovely and deceptively simple, an easy read as a kind of lyrical haiku. But…
What Does ‘Love’ Mean?
Here’s a quote from a book with the title, 6 QUESTIONS THAT CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE: “Emerson said, ‘Great men are they who see that spiritual is stronger than any material force, that thoughts rule the world.’ Sure, you think, in an ideal world, maybe. The fact is it’s human nature to want things and…
What Is The Perennial Wisdom, And Why Is It Needed Now?
By Linda K. Myers Before answering the question – what is the Perennial Wisdom?– I’ll go back to when I was 11 years old. At that age the world really mystified me. I couldn’t imagine what I would do as an adult in what appeared to me a meaningless life. I watched my parents go…
How Things Work Out
Sometimes it seems as though there’s just no way to get what we need – or want. With today’s headlines, it’s certainly hard to see how things will turn out okay for us, our country, and our world. But then there are stories like the one my daughter told me this week. She lives in…
Courage, States of Consciousness, and Edgar Mitchell
The Apollo 14 astronaut and extraordinary researcher of states of consciousness, Edgar Mitchell, was the subject of two posts published on June 9, 2016 that still reflect core ideas for WINN. In these times we need more than ever to understand human potential and what makes a life meaningful. To quote Rainer Maria Rilke again…
The Eight Social Sins
Three months before he was assassinated in 1947, Gandhi gave his grandson a list of seven social sins: Wealth without Work Pleasure without Conscience Knowledge without Character Commerce without Morality Science without Humanity Religion without Sacrifice Politics without Principle The list was originally published in 1925 in Gandhi’s newspaper, YOUNG INDIA, and although it is…
A Caring Mindset
“Don’t let yourself be a fake person by treating those around you as if they don’t matter.” That was an unexpected sentence to find in the business book I’d just picked up in an airport gift shop. I don’t usually browse in the business section, but the only other choice was a display of publications…