For Goodness Sake

If you’re tired of all the bad stuff in the newspaper, share the Good News with an inspiring story, some noteworthy act of kindness or anything good that we
should all know about!
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WE WANT YOUR GOOD NEWS!
Send us an email at info@goodnesssake.org, or click on our Guestbook and enter your news in the comments box. Then we can share the good with the entire community on our Good News bulletin board inside our building and also post it right here! Appreciating the good that is all around us encourages and inspires us all!

This is a neew book written by Dr Marcia McFee and Rev. Karen Foster, debunking the myth that your body has nothing to do with your spiritual life. They demonstate how spirituality is fed by play and challenge and how your snow-filled adventures can serve as a metaphor for seeing life's ups and downs as part of a sacred rhythm. The book features a conversation with Truckee local, Alex Heyman. Alex is an avid skier, ski instructor and author. In the book Alex shares the issues he sees people facing during instruction and also his love of the mountains.

An Excerpt from the book:
A Conversation with an Adventurer, Alex Heyman, Ski Instructor

Question: How do you talk to adults about getting past their heads?
Alex: I will often start by saying, "Let's not focus on anything particular right now. I just want you to notice what is going on in your body. Notice how your body is moving down the hill." It is about getting the focus in your body before you start to pick everthing apart. And maybe also not getting too overly technical, because you can get overloaded. Take one thing and incorporate it into your body awareness. I say," Don't try to tell yourself to tell yourself what to do or tell yourself that you are not doing it well. Just put awareness in your body. Just notice." I use the term "soft focus": We are not concentrating hard; we are just noticing. There is a focus, but it's an awareness focus instead of trying to get it done at all costs.

The book can be purchased here online or come and see us at For Goodness Sake. We have it here!

November 2009: Reno Conscious Community featured in Bruce Lipton and Steve Bhaerman's new Book "Spontaneous Evolution"

Excerpt from the book: Page 333. Healing the Body Politic

"We have seen how a body politic that has lost connection with its heart and soul can lose its way. To emerge a new political order in which each individual is viewed as an equally valuable cell in the body of humanity involves shifting our focus from a fear-based homeland security to a love-based heartland security.

In her aptly titled book Waking the Global Heart: Humanity's Rite of Passage from the Love of Power to the Power of Love, author and therapist Anodea Judith wrote that "the rite of passage into the future" is through an awakening of the global heart. If future generations are alive to tell the human story, "it will only be because the best of humanity prevailed and pulled together with a love so profound that the seemingly impossible was achieved."

The best of humanity to whom Judith refers isn't some righteous elite but, rather, the potential that each of us holds within. Perhaps love- the invisible force that can induce a cancer cell to slow its growth-is humanity's secret peaceful force that will enable us to transcend survival and live into thrival. If so, it's the most underutilized tool in our political toolbox and the one ripest for development. As discovered by HeartMath researchers, coherent hearts entrain with one another. Consequently, it is feasible that we can entrain our hearts to collectively focus love energy into a coherent healing force.

Indigenous cultures and medieval villages often had a communal hearth at the center of the village. Initially, the fire was used to keep predators away. Over time, it came to represent the presence of spirit looking over the community. In Western culture, where tending the spiritual fires has been left to religious authorities, people have become disconnected from their common spiritual bonds. The only time the masses experience a collective connection is when an extraordinary event occurs, such as a man walking on the moon, or when tragedy strikes, as in New York on September 11, 2001.

What would it be like to have a preemptive secular, yet spiritual, connection in every neighborhood, city, and nation to affirm the values that the vast majority of people have in common?

Conscious Community Network

Such a network has been quietly evolving in Reno, Nevada. Launched in 2003, an organization called the Conscious Community Network (CCN) brings together diverse elements of the city and surrounding region to improve the communal, economic, and spiritual quality of life in the area. Without fanfare-but with lots of fans-CCN has based its work on what it called "the universal spiritual virtues of Love, Integrity, Courage, Service, and Respect."

The CCN organization and its leadership mobilized local and state governments to establish Independents Day, an awareness campaign to encourage the public to buy local goods and services. They created a Local Food System Network of local producers and consumers that birthed an alliance of persons with diverse religious beliefs who share a common desire for organic produce.

By weaving together common sense traditional values with the global understanding that we're all in this together, the Conscious Community Network created what is termed a third force, a political entity that more closely resembles the circle than the conventional American political box. CCN's work supports transpartisanship, which acknowledges the validity of truths across a range of political perspectives and seeks to synthesize them into an inclusive, practical unity outside of conventional political dualities.

CCN relies on grassroots volunteers who work directly with people, thus sidestepping the government or other established institutions. This completely organic and non-coercive, self-generating project offers an evolutionary model for non-governmental governance that expands awareness by creating community.

Business owner Richard Flyer, the organization's visionary founder, described this new awareness network as "an intentional community without walls, with a desire to open hearts and build bridges between people of diverse beliefs and backgrounds."32 Flyer sees himself and his organization as a weaver of health-enhancing, life-affirming, joy-producing elements in the community.

Flyer's communal matrix offers a largely invisible infrastructure of relationships that support individual, community, and planetary health. Flyer suggested, "By connecting the dots between 'like-hearted people' who want to uplift humanity-people found within every local community and in all social groupings-we release the 'creative intelligence' to grow a new society within the old."

People in Reno and in countless other communities where wisdom councils, world cafés, and other active listening groups form are discovering two profound truths. First, the connection in the heart is far more powerful than divisive beliefs in the head. Second, the circle of inclusion is much more beneficial than the box of separation.

The heart of humanity is calling for a safe, generative environment of respectful communication, which is the foundation for a healthy and sane political structure. As with so many other aspects of this new, transformational story, We the People are being called upon to release our either-or polar positions and embrace both-and opportunities. "

The Fire & Ice Ceremony for the Earth is held in a traditional Eskimo-Kalaallittupeq-tipi and tent encampment by the large lake of AajuittupTasersua near the Icecap. The daily agenda for the gathering follows traditional ceremonial protocol with the fire pit being the center of activities. The primary festivities include the reunion of the Elders, the ceremonial return of the Sacred Fire, deliberations and prayers revolving around the ice, as well as feasting, celebration and a traditional Paggattittineq, a Give-away ceremony.

Fire & Ice 2009 brings increased attention to the significance of the melting of the Big Ice, as well as new recognition and respect for indigenous peoples and their perspectives. This event adds the traditional indigenous voice to the dialogue on global warming and care of the earth, providing a very necessary, missing perspective.

Through Fire & Ice 2009 the indigenous voice powerfully focuses the attention of the world on our most urgent global issue, expanding our awareness and ultimately bringing about the paradigm shift that is of such vital importance to our survival and wellbeing.
Click here for the event schedule and more information.

"Dalai Lama Contribute to Student's Message of Hope for Hospitalized Children"
By: Carla Rivera, July 6, 2009, Los Angeles Times

One of the best-loved murals on the campus of 186th Street Elementary School in Gardena depicts some of the world's most inspirational figures -- Mahatma Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez -- underlined by a question, "Are you a peacemaker?" When artist and poet Fereidun Shokatfard visited an art show at the school where his wife, Rika, works as a special education teacher, he thought the mural would make a perfect backdrop for a book to be shared with children in hospitals around the world.
Click here for the rest of the article

"Those Down on Their Luck Find SOME Help"
By: Stephanie Green, July 1, 2009, Washington Times

In 1995, Bonnie McDonald was a 34-year-old lost soul adrift in a sea of addiction. "I was co-dependent on men. Many of them were drug dealers," she reflects. She says she spiraled so far down in life with drugs and alcohol abuse that she became a neglectful parent to her four children, who eventually had to be put into foster care. Without a job and family support, she agreed to visit an organization she knew little about, So Others Might Eat, known as SOME.
Click here for the rest of the article.

"'Mindfulness' Meditation Being Used in Hospitals and Schools"
By:Marilyn Elias, May 8, 2009, USA Today

Challenges are landing fast and furious on Capitol Hill. So Rep. Tim Ryan, D-Ohio, feels he has to arrive at the top of his game every day. And Ryan says he has found a way to do that: He meditates for at least 45 minutes before leaving home. Ryan, 35, sits on a floor cushion, closes his eyes, focuses on his breath and tries to detach from any thoughts, just observing them like clouds moving across the sky — a practice he learned at a retreat.
Click here for the rest of the article.

"Recalculating Happiness in a Himalayan Kingdom"
By Seth Mydans, May 6, 2009, The New York Times

If the rest of the world cannot get it right in these unhappy times, this tiny Buddhist kingdom high in the Himalayan mountains says it is working on an answer. "Greed, insatiable human greed," said Prime Minister Jigme Thinley of Bhutan, describing what he sees as the cause of today’s economic catastrophe in the world beyond the snow-topped mountains. "What we need is change," he said in the whitewashed fortress where he works. "We need to think gross national happiness."
For the rest of this article click here.

"The Woman Who Ran the World: The Inspirational Story of the Widow Who Conquered Her Grief By Jogging Around the Globe"
By Amanda Cable, May 21, 2009, the Daily Mail

Rosie Swale-Pope marked her 57th birthday by donning trainers, pulling on a backpack and leaving her pretty Welsh cottage to go for a run. Five years, 20,000 miles and 53 pairs of running shoes later, she hobbled back on crutches with a fractured hip but an unbroken, and truly remarkable, spirit. During her extraordinary (some might say fool-hardy) solo round-the-world run, she was shadowed by a pack of wolves in Russia, confronted by a naked gunman in Siberia and nearly froze to death in Alaska. In the end, it was both a bitter fight for survival and a vivid celebration of life - but it began because she found herself widowed and, for the first time in her life, alone. Just months after losing her beloved husband, Clive, to prostate cancer in June 2002, Rosie decided to embark on a charity run to raise money awareness. She says: 'I pulled out a map of the world and sat there trying to choose a destination for my run. Then the idea suddenly came to me. I thought: "I know, I'll run the whole world - it will be like a package tour on legs." So Rosie, a grandmother, began planning her adventure in meticulous detail.
Click here for the rest of the article.

"From a Mother's Pain, a Healing Place is Born"
By Christie Coombs June 18, 2009 from the Boston Globe

When Denise and Ken Brack lost their teenage son seven years ago in a drunken driving accident, Denise Brack was frustrated that she couldn’t find a peaceful place to go for counseling. The uncomfortable thought of having to go to a stark hospital or office setting for grief counseling never left her. Two years later, the Plympton resident began thinking of ways to change that. The Bracks turned an idea of opening a wellness center into reality this past January with Hope Floats Healing & Wellness Center in Kingston. Click here for the rest of the article:

"When Nature Gets a Second Chance"
By Elisabeth Ginsburg, June 17, 2009 the Christian Science Monitor

Nearly two decades ago, Steven Handel was asked to help breathe new life into a former landfill in Kearny, N.J. The barren tract – bounded by highways, salt marshes, and railroad yards – had been closed and covered for 20 years. But it was an ecological desert, supporting no birds or mammals and home to only two plant species, both of which were alien to northern New Jersey. After studying the site, its history, and the native flora and fauna of the area, the Rutgers University professor and his team of graduate students began installing groups of native trees in hopes of creating a dynamic, healthy ecosystem on top of the old landfill. Click here for the rest of the article.

"The Joy of Less"
By: Pico Iyer, June 7, 2009 the New York Times

"The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles." The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen," though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5.
Click here for the rest of the article.

The Shaw Family have just completed building a sustainable farm high in the Sierra Nevada Mountains of California near Lake Tahoe. They will be selling their items to the local community which will include: free-range pastured eggs, pastured chicken, turkey, lamb, pork, and beef, honey, and fresh produce. Their items will be availible at the local truckee farmer's market every thursday, and through individual sales. For more information Click here to visit the Shaw family website, and Click here information from their latest newsletter.

"The Woman Who Ran the World: The Inspirational Story of the Widow Who Conquered Her Grief By Jogging Around the Globe" By Amanda Cable, May 21, 2009, the Daily Mail

"The Joy of Less" By: Pico Iyer, June 7, 2009 the New York Times

"The Woman Who Ran the World: The Inspirational Story of the Widow Who Conquered Her Grief By Jogging Around the Globe"
By Amanda Cable, May 21, 2009, the Daily Mail

"The Joy of Less"
By: Pico Iyer, June 7, 2009 the New York Times