At twelve years old, most of us were trudging through the awkwardness of adolescence, developing friend groups, and struggling to master pre-algebra. But at that age, Kiran Sridhar, a teenager from California’s Silicon Valley, had larger concerns on his mind.

According to the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research, nearly 4 million people in California are “food insecure,” which means they cannot afford to buy enough food to sustain themselves. Southern California is disproportionately ailed by hunger in comparison with the rest of the state, but the Bay Area also contains some of the largest numbers of food insecurity. This may seem counter intuitive, especially considering the ever-growing prosperity of Silicon Valley, in particular, with its booming tech economy. But the reality that Sridhar learned as a middle schooler was that many in his own community were suffering, even in the midst of such prevalent wealth.

Shocked and inspired by this revelation, Sridhar got to work. He founded the non-profit organization, Waste No Food, to connect restaurants and farms to food banks that would distribute their excess and leftover food. According to the organization’s website, a whopping one third of California’s food goes to waste. With so many in the state hungry, such waste is simply unacceptable, and Waste No Food works to get that food to those who desperately need it.

If you’ve ever worked in a restaurant or cafe, then you know how much food gets thrown out at the end of each day. Oftentimes food service workers just feel limited by the effort to transport leftover food, or else the fear of liability. But through the program, all the work is done for them with the click of a button. Farms, restaurants, cafeterias, and grocery stores can sign up on the website to donate their excess food, and Waste No Food then connects them to aid organizations (already vetted for authenticity) who are responsible for all food transportation and handling. It’s a win-win all around!

Now a 10th grader in high school, Sridhar hopes to expand the program to other parts of the Bay Area, and we have no doubt the enterprising teenager will succeed in his aims. As he told CBS San Francisco:

“When you’re hungry, that is your primary focus, figuring out what your next meal is going to be. But when you have your needs for food met, than you can actually be a positive contributor to the community and to the economy.”

It’s inspiring to see not only what such a young person is capable of accomplishing, but also more generally the length a concerned citizen is willing to go to support his community. Over 50 million Americans live in households that quality as “food insecure,” the highest percentages occurring in Texas, Mississippi, and Arkansas. These are our communities, our neighbors, and our families. Let Kiran Sridhar and the Waste No Food program inspire you to make a difference.

Via Intent Blog

I had the opportunity to listen in on a discussion about St. Francis.

St. Francis was an Italian Catholic friar and preacher. He lived in the 12th and 13th centuries.

I listened in on a man talking about him a few weeks back. Here are my notes:

–In order to go out and evangelize – to bring the message to others. We must first have the message in us.

–He suggested we LOVE and LOVE at all times.

–Modern man listens more willingly to witnesses than it does to teachers. And if he does listen to teachers it is because they are witnesses.

–If we don’t live out what we are trying to bring to the world- than people don’t and will not pay attention.

–St. Francis was a wordless witness. He didn’t need to use words a lot, he used them sparingly and effectively. It was the way he lived.

–St. Francis said, “love and do not expect others to change.”

–He also said, “Love and do not wish people to be more religious or less religious. Just love.”

–“Love and always be merciful.”

–He believed he was here to bring the message of Love.

I am happy to join with you today in what will go down in history as the greatest demonstration for freedom in the history of our nation.

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Negro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languishing in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to dramatize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation’s capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the inalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check which has come back marked “insufficient funds.” But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check — a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God’s children. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro’s legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. Nineteen sixty-three is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the palace of justice. In the process of gaining our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of

We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, “When will you be satisfied?” We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies, heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodging in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as the Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to Georgia, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment, I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at a table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state, sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return to the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to struggle together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with a new meaning, “My country, ’tis of thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I sing. Land where my fathers died, land of the pilgrim’s pride, from every mountainside, let freedom ring.”

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous slopes of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from Lookout Mountain of Tennessee!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

And when this happens, when we allow freedom to ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, “Free at last! free at last! thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”

It’s true what they say about doors. How when one door closes another one opens. And not just one door but many.

Except my story isn’t isn’t exactly about doors, it is about people. Actually, it isn’t’ t about people either. It is actually about Love.

We humans are like doors. We contract and close, we expand and open. Sometimes this happens consciously, other times unconsciously. And through us, when we make it so, when we allow for it, love passes. So my story starts when one door closes, when the person with whom I was exploring decides to close the door behind him, I am left on the other side: door in face. Maybe he is contracting, maybe he is expanding–I accept that’s his story.

My story, this one part anyway, starts when one path of love and light and transformation suddenly becomes impassable. A relationship ends and all that is warm and loving between two people is sucked into a void. What was once open is closed. And what happens then?

I have been writing for some time now about love. And I’m convinced through my own self-exploration, by this constant compulsion for putting my heart out there that real Love, real grace knows no boundaries. How it honors the free will of us mere humans, but also has a will of its own. It is beyond us. I believe that love exists before us and will continue existing when we are gone. It is never diminished, and if anything, it is constantly expanding. And that we simply experience it in different ways. Our perception of love is conditional. Though love itself is without condition.

And so a door closes. And for a split second, I feel darkness. Then one door opens. Then another. Then another. And light, light just floods in. Because, love, like flowing water, will find a way. How to explain that the rejection of one person can result in me falling in love with over a dozen people? Not necessarily in a romantic way, but really discovering love through others, through people’s goodness, their gifts, their peculiarities that make them so special.

I can only say that I was so focused on perceiving love in one particular form, in one particular direction, how for sometime, a beautiful time, my attention was on one person. But as he left, the space which he so lovingly once occupied filled up so quickly, so magically with such a motley crew of young love, of new friendships, of old bonds renewed, of teaching connections, of new cities and countries and opportunities that seem to be made just for me.

I still sometimes feel that door on my face, and annoyingly, I continue to feel it smite me occasionally. But I also see the many doors that have opened because of it, the open hearts of many who appeared seemingly out of nowhere to hold me, to hold my hand, to give me messages of love. How in this short span of time, of loss–supposedly–I have actually connected deeply with so many people and in ways that I might not have done, that the opportunity would not have been present, had I been focused on just one love nor would I have been vulnerable enough to expose myself and invite such love from others.

It is a true testament to how beautiful the heart is, how wonderful people are, how when one sees someone struggling–as I have been seen–people are inspired to help, to give so generously, so without question or condition. And as these now dear friends see me fight for myself, see me rise to the challenge of finding who I am in all this, they are inspired to celebrate. They are celebrating with me, they are cheering me on. And how amazing is that! How grateful I feel!

Love. Always present. Its messengers change, from time to time, however. But love, itself, is constant. We just have to continue to believe, to have presence enough to see it in whatever form it comes. To accept it graciously when it does. To value it. To respect it. To honor it. To allow it to teach us what it is about, to teach us how to love, and how to truly embody it in our very soul and being.

Via One Love and Kaz

“Enthusiasm comes from the Greek “enthousiazein [that] means ‘to be possessed by a god.’ With enthusiasm you will find that you don’t have to do it all by yourself. In fact, there is nothing of significance you can do by yourself. Sustained enthusiasm brings into existence a wave of creative energy, and all you have to do is ride the wave.”

~ Eckhart Tolle from A New Earth

Kasan, a Zen teacher and monk, was to officiate at a funeral of a famous nobleman. As he stood there waiting for the governor of the province and other lords and ladies to arrive, he noticed that the palms of his hands were sweaty.

The next day he called his disciples together and confessed he was not yet ready to be a true teacher. He explained to them that he still lacked the sameness of bearing before all human beings, whether beggar or king.

He was still unable to look through social roles and conceptual identities and see the sameness of being in every human. He then left and become the pupil of another master. He returned to his former disciples eight years later, enlightened.

-Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth