3 X 5's: Index Card Wisdom from Best of Books

INTENTION Lynne McTaggart (2007). The Intention Experiment:                                            Using your Thoughts to                                            Change your Life and the World. McTaggert is a journalist providing an exhaustive review of the scientific literature on intention...she describes this research by breaking down the research into readable story form...this is the first 200 pages followed by the most useful part of the book, the "experiments" which translate the research findings into "best practices" for intention experiments that anyone can perform.  Some of the best practices include: creating a comfortable private space, powering up with meditation, becoming mindfully aware of the present moment, focusing on compassion, stating a ...

DEEP LEARNING Ken Bain (2021). Super courses:                               The future of teaching and learning. Bain is a history professor and researcher of teaching and learning...this is his third book in a series: What the best college teachers do (2004), What the best college students do (2021), and now Super courses (2021).  Bain's focus is DEEP LEARNING through asking/answering questions, solving problems that are important, intriguing, beautiful and fun. Insights from multiple disciplines reveal characteristics common to super courses that facilitate deep learning:  working on projects that are personally meaningful,  allowing redos after receiving feedback and before any formal evaluation,  giving control via choices on what to learn to increase intrinsic motivation,  increasing collaboration with others in an atmosphere that encourages mutual learning,  finding others...

FRIENDSHIP Andrew Greeley (1970). The Friendship Game. Greeley is a Catholic priest and sociologist, and at the time of this writing, as a young parish priest, he is writing about friendship as an invitation to ecstasy, a promise of delight, the gift of self, an inducement to play that requires self-revelation, risk, comedy, solitude and silence together to discover our real needs, a special type of demanding of time/energy for the friendship and a demanding that the friend grow into their best self, to be patient with uncertainty and conflict, offering displays of tenderness and protection, and most of all love for one another.  Greeley also includes some sobering advice: we tend to take the unresolved issues from our family of origin and transfer them to our friendships (beware of treating your friend like your father or mother), there is terror in looking into the eyes of another and risking movement in the direction of friendship, but there are also rewards of great joy and fun...

LETTERS Andrew Greeley (1964). Letters to Nancy Greeley is a Catholic priest and sociologist, and in 1964 he is a young priest, only later did he become the story teller of romantic and Godly love novels that he is best known for.  Greeley provides priestly advice to young Catholic women by writing a series of letters to one particular young women (another book published one year before this one addresses young men in a similar letter writing format:  And young men shall see visions , )...the advice ranges from theology and philosophy to college and career to relationships and sex. Some main ideas: be faithful to the Christian VISION, live life in cooperation with the voice of the Holy Spirit, say YES to your true self, channel the powerful sexual energy into loving others, be a good human being (mature, grow, develop, use your imagination) before you enter into a lifetime partnership with another, combine contemplation with action, live simply trusting that G will take care o...