Brian Allain

From “Dropout to Doctorate: Breaking the Chains of Educational Injustice” By Terrence Lester, PhD The interplay of poverty and racial injustice introduces an additional layer of complexity to the struggle of someone navigating all this, often placing them at a significant disadvantage when it comes to educational achievement. It creates the type of barriers that […]

From “The Soulwork of Justice: Four Movements for Contemplative Action” by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson. Destroying false protective coverings allows the emergence of what is true. Layers of dross hide your connection to being held in God’s love, reflecting back the image of God. You are kept isolated from this, just as the plaster and clay shrouded

From “Doing Good Better: How Effective Altruism Can Help You Help Others, Do Work that Matters, and Make Smarter Choices About Giving Back” by William Macaskill Your choice of career is a choice about how to spend more than eighty thousand hours over the course of your life, which means it makes sense to invest

From “Let Your Life Speak: Listening for the Voice of Vocation” by Parker J. Palmer I was in my early thirties when I began, literally, to wake up to questions about my vocation. By all appearances, things were going well, but the soul does not put much stock in appearances. Seeking a path more purposeful

From “Trust the Whisper: How Answering Quiet Callings Inspires Extraordinary Stories of Ordinary Grace“ by Kathy Izard For me, trusting the whispers in my life signaled the beginning of answering all of those questions. I’d been certain my to-do voice would guide me to discover how I would finally leave the world a better place.

From “Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation” by Steven Johnson The snap judgments of intuition – as powerful as they can be – are rarities in the history of world-changing ideas. Most hunches that turn into important innovations unfold over much longer time frames. They start with a vague, hard-to-describe sense

From “Walk with Me: A Journey through the Landscape of Trauma” by Ellen Corcella In the mornings, I woke up to a pretense of normalcy. My mother had oatmeal, toast, and orange juice on the kitchen table: my father read the newspaper; and we were shuffled off to school. My father conspired in the cover-up.

From “Wired to Lead: Being the Leader the Church Didn’t Think You Could Be” by Suzanne Nadell I am forever grateful to my colleagues of color who called me out, who said, “Suzanne, now that you know X, what are you going to do about it?” Dear church, once you know the truth about your

From “Sacred Compass: The Way of Spiritual Discernment” by J. Brent Bill There aren’t any set rules for writing spiritual stories. Your story can be as brief or long as you want. If you’re unsure where to start, pick one of the pivotal moments in your life, a time that you found life changing. You

From “Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life” by Richard Rohr The very first sign of a potential hero’s journey is that he or she must leave home, the familiar, which is something that may not always occur to someone in the first half of life. (In fact, many people have not