This week Awesome Stories brings you the Chicken Lady, playing with koans, serving tea and protecting mother earth.

The Chicken Lady

Amy Murphy dreamed up a great way to help those in need in her town of Greensboro, NC. She grew up eating fried chicken as a Southern comfort food and wondered if there was a way to use the leftovers from a local Church’s Chicken to feed the homeless. They agreed to give her their leftovers to give out to the community. Three years later, Ann is called the Chicken Lady, and her band of volunteers is feeding friends a breakfast buffet every Monday. What’s most inspiring to me is Ann’s compassion and kindness. She feels a part of the community and views the people she feeds as family and the same as her. She is not “feeding the homeless.”

Playing with Koans

John Tarrant helps people play with koans, using them to meditate, explore who we are and embrace the unknown. The traditional use of koans, or unanswerable questions, is to help us open our minds and consciousness to something more, the light, dark and the unknown. In John’s view, when you embrace uncertainty, then you don’t have to find solutions. Instead of viewing things as problems, you simply embrace it as your life to live. You learn to question your mind, thoughts and beliefs, opening to the vast unknown of ourselves and the world.

Serving Tea

Giuseppi Spadafora has been traveling, adventuring and serving tea for the last 10 years. It started one night in Hollywood with time on his hands when he decided to buy some tea, brew it and share it with people on the streets. He found real conversations, connections and value that he didn’t often find in commercially driven interactions. Gus, aka the tea-guy, found great joy in serving tea. Over time, he added the Gift & Take drawer for people to give or take however much money (or other items) they want. The drawer has never been empty, and he finds that when given trust and responsibility, people will rise to the expectation of goodness. This process helps challenge our notions of commerce, money and giving. Kudos to Guiseppi!

Sacred Living

It establishes a new relationship between man and nature, the harmony of which must be preserved as a guarantee of its regeneration. ~ Vice President Alvaro Garcia Linera

In response to an understanding of the impacts of climate change on the nation’s economic and community health, Bolivia has been restructuring its laws to protect both its citizens and the natural world. Specifically, Bolivia passed “The Law of Mother Earth” which offers 11 core rights to the earth including the right to harmony, collective good, regeneration, multi-culturalism, and specific rights protecting mother earth as the source of life. Wow! I would love to see all countries adopt such enlightened laws!

May we learn to live in harmony with each other and our mother earth. AMEN!