Melanie Kahl
http://www.melaniekahl.com
Reading his story is difficult but necessary. We need to learn things about our criminal justice system, about the legacy of racial bias in America and the way it can blind us to just and fair treatment of people.
“My life of conversation leads me to reimagine the very meaning of hope. I define hope as distinct from optimism or idealism. It has nothing to do with wishing. It references reality at every turn and reveres truth. It lives open eyed and wholeheartedly with the darkness that is woven ineluctably into the light of life and sometimes seems to overcome it. Hope, like every virtue, is a choice that becomes a habit that becomes spiritual muscle memory.”
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
“And that’s the first surprise about change: What looks like a people problem is often a situation problem.”
― Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
― Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard
“Generous listening is powered by curiosity, a virtue we can invite and nurture in ourselves to render it instinctive. It involves a kind of vulnerability—a willingness to be surprised, to let go of assumptions and take in ambiguity. The listener wants to understand the humanity behind the words of the other, and patiently summons one’s own best self and one’s own best words and questions.”
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
“The mark of a person who is in control of consciousness is the ability to focus attention at will, to be oblivious to distractions, to concentrate for as long as it takes to achieve a goal, and not longer. And the person who can do this usually enjoys the normal course of everyday life.”
― Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
― Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
“I’ve come to understand the cumulative dialogue of my work as a kind of cartography of wisdom about our emerging world. This book is a map in words to important territory we all are on now together. It’s a collection of pointers that treat the margins as seriously as the noisy center. For change has always happened in the margins, across human history, and it’s happening there now. Seismic shifts in common life, as in geophysical reality, begin in spaces and cracks.”
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
― Becoming Wise: An Inquiry into the Mystery and Art of Living
Melanie’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Melanie’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
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