An unexpected letter landed on our columnist's doorstep the other day. It contains a surprising lesson on the meaning of community — and an opportunity to open up to a fellow flawed and striving human being.
Courtney E. Martin
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In doing good community work, Courtney observes, our focus on ingenuity, success, and failure is sometimes misplaced. Instead, she looks to her mother and the film festival she founded for guidance — on providing for our communities with humility and unfussy boldness.
Learning to accept the anxieties of motherhood can help bring in wonder and gratitude for the mundane moments of parenting.
As a parent of privilege, the decision to send your child to an underperforming school can be met with judgment and worries about safety and lack of resources. But what if these concerns aren’t as true as we believe them to be?
With the ever-widening wealth gap between the rich and the poor, statistics abound. But they fail to animate the human spirit. Story is a way into history and "teaching our hearts how to live as choiceful human beings."
What are the mysteries that remain once our well-crafted lives take a detour down uncharted narratives? A reflection on the messiness of a life less authored and more lived.
The best ideas are often the simplest ones, but their inception is mysterious and complex. Courtney Martin on serendipity and community, rather than process, as the crucial elements of creativity.
Sometimes the refuge we need is not an escape, but a safe place to grapple with our hardest questions, and to challenge ourselves to be better.
White supremacy is newly palpable in unsettling, violent ways. But what if our public conversation about race can encourage a new, redeemable, and joyful whiteness to come to the fore?
In a culture with too few rituals, what role does drink play in the contemporary rituals of our times? Courtney Martin on memory, communal moments, and the potential for a true suspension of self.
Nowadays there are unintended consequences for just about everything we do. An encouragement to strive for curiosity over goodness, to seek gentleness over righteousness, and engage with ethics as a process rather than a destination.
So often it's the quiet moments with someone that cements and deepens a relationship. An acknowledgement (and a bit of a love letter) to the silence that joins us together.
The term "scale" is the buzzword in social entrepreneurship circles. But, as Courtney Martin Often shows us, changing the world is about changing systems and helping others one person at a time.
Compartmentalizing can be a useful tool — whether dealing with the empty voids of our working lives, or the prolonged absence from the ones you love — in making it possible to live a whole life.
Does destiny and fate truly exist? An age-old question, to be sure. Courtney Martin ponders that question and traces how each of our paths may be shaped by willful action and serendipitous encounters along the way.
In the absence of a religious tradition, is there a fundamental need for prayer? Courtney Martin on finding comfort in praying to her late, burly grandfather rather than a god to whom she couldn't relate.
Cross-generational relationships may be one of our greatest untapped resources today. But, people in their "third act" of living are creating new encounters and meaningful differences among youth and our communities.
More and more fathers-to-be are expressing hopes to have daughters. Courtney Martin explores the well-intentioned feminism behind this desire, and finds that focusing on masculinity might be even more radical.
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