A Peace of My Mind

Last week I was grateful to be a part of Title V activities that honored Adams State University’s history as a Hispanic Serving Institution since 2000. We installed our American Stories exhibit, I visited classrooms and led programming. As a part of the week’s engagement, the Title V office wanted to encourage more conversations about race and bridge building. We set up a studio and asked, “What is the unique opportunity or challenge around talking about race at this moment […]

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It’s become one of my favorite places. For the past five years, I have been a part of the teaching staff at Holden Village, a retreat center tucked into a remote valley in the Washington Cascades. The journey to Holden is an adventure. You ride a boat 20 miles up a wilderness lake, climb aboard an old school bus for an 11-mile drive up a winding gravel road and eventually arrive at an old copper mining camp that was sold […]

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Nobody should go to Africa for just four days. But four days is better than none. A door opened, an invitation was offered, and we squeezed A Peace of My Mind’s first international engagement into an already full schedule. In June, we had our exhibit and studio at a conference for Points of Light and there we met some folks from Good Deeds Day, an organization based in Tel Aviv that is active in 108 countries and encourages acts of […]

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Many of the biggest challenges we face are global in nature. Climate change is a global challenge. Terrorism is a global challenge. Poverty and food security are global challenges. These issues will impact people across borders and will require cooperative effort to resolve them, yet the tools we have to govern policy on a global scale are not strong and trends toward unilateralism will exacerbate the problem. Collaboration, cooperation and collective effort increase our odds of success as we tackle […]

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“Now I’m able to think twice before I say anything or do anything.  I deal with each individual for where they at. So I would say that I am a different person today then what I was 17 years ago.” Pete Russell was convicted for the murder of his girlfriend Tanjala Brewer and has been an inmate on Texas Death Row since 2003. While he was in prison, he embraced meditation and authored the book, Texas Death Row Yogi. Pete: […]

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At Carleton College last week, we asked, “When have you been your best self?” We were hosted by the Office of Intercultural and International Life and on Tuesday, 53 students, faculty and staff stopped by to share their response. You can view the collection in the video below or continue scrolling down to see all of the individual responses. Carleton College 2019 from John Noltner Photography on Vimeo.

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It’s important that we celebrate examples of success. Our world is filled with challenges, many of them daunting. And it’s important that we address those challenges honestly and directly. But we also need to believe that something better is possible and we do that by acknowledging the times we have gotten things right, amplifying those examples and using them to guide our way forward. Last week we joined The Forum on Workplace Inclusion in Minneapolis and asked, “When have you bridged […]

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Last Tuesday night we filled the house (Squirrel Haus) to celebrate A Peace of My Mind’s 10th anniversary. I was touched to see so many people in the room who have helped to nudge this project along through the years. People who have shared their stories, designed our exhibits, edited the books, helped fund our Kickstarter and Indiegogo campaigns, hosted programming, brainstormed ideas and kept me awake with phone calls during cross-country drives. It was a night to celebrate and […]

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As a 20-something and a brand new parent, I sat with the pastor of my church and explained to him that I had always wanted to be a part of a church that had a global vision. I wanted to be involved in a group that could offer service to the world, whether it be a health clinic, micro-finance, education or a building program. My pastor listened carefully and then replied, “John, I think that’s a great idea.” I was […]

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When the Methodist church voted this week to uphold its opposition to gay marriage and gay clergy, I though immediately of Jarell Wilson, who started his interview by saying, “I am a black gay man living in the south, and I am a Christian.” More specifically, he is a Methodist. Jarell talks about the weight of carrying all of these identities “in a society that is not welcoming of two-thirds of my identity.” Yet he also talks about the beauty […]

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