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

COMMUNITY Jean Vanier (1989, orig. 1979). Community and growth. Vanier writes from a 25 year experience of living in a community of persons with disabilities at L'Arche, France. He defines community as, "...groupings of people who have left their own milieu to live with others under the same roof, and work from a new vision of human beings and their relationships with each other and God" (p.10). Writing from a Catholic perspective, Vanier quotes scripture and saints, and some of the topics covered include: heart, covenants, mission, growth, authority, gifts, welcome, and celebration.  The difficulty i have is there is almost nothing on the pragmatics living in community, especially farming and everyday work and play. I agree with his premise that many modern cities in the industrialized west in particular create conditions that foster individualism, consumerism, and loneliness, and that many of these individuals feel the need to be loved and cared for in a place where th...

EMPOWERED! Marc Prensky (2022). EMPOWERED!:                                     Reframing 'Growing Up' for a New Age Prensky, graduate of Harvard Business School, coined the phrase "digital native" in 2000, and as of 2023 wrote 10 books, mostly about digital natives (those born roughly from the year 2000 onward). The book is a radical reframing of beliefs, worldviews, paradigms, and mindsets regarding the process of growing up with a focus on people that are young during the next 20 years...from parental control to guidance, from academic schooling to empowerment, from jobs/careers to pursing dreams that make the world a better place...he calls this EMPOWERMENT. Empowerment supports people that are young in choosing real world projects to accomplish. Every project has a measurable positive impacts on the world (pre-post measures). Every project helps people that are young discover and develop ...

HEALING METHODS Serge Kahili King (2000). Instant Healing Now! Kahili King is a PhD and Hawaiian shaman. He distinguishes between 3 time periods for healing: less than an hour is instant, less than a day is rapid, and less than a week is fast. He covers all three kinds of healing methods in the book. The healing principles he covers are sound: power of the imagination--if we pick a healthy image to focus on, the mind will activate healthy memories, power of words--the words we choose direct the focus of our attention, power of focus--if we focus attention on a specific body part, that part increases in blood circulation, warmth, expansion, and cell activity.  There are MANY practical healing methods presented in the book, here are a few to test out: 1) place your hand over the painful body part, resting it there until some relief is felt. 2)cup a glass of water with the hands for 3 mins and then drink. 3)describe the shape, size, weight, color, and place of the pain--pull it out an...

HYPNOTHERAPY Jeffrey Ennis (2017). Hypnotherapy for pain control:                                     A Safe and Nonaddictive Way to                                     Relieve Chronic Pain. Ennis is an medical doctor and psychotherapist who ran a chronic pain clinic for more than 20 years. More incredible is his heroic personal story of dealing with chronic pain since age 16. Among the many treatments he explored over the years, only hypnotherapy produced consistent results in decreasing his pain without the side effects of others kinds of treatments, especially pain medications.  Ennis maintains that hynotherapy isn't a cure all. Personally, it reduces his pain by 30 per cent and lasts for an hour before he has to re-dose. And for those that suffer with chronic pain, any reduction in pain for ...

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...