Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, commonly represented as a pyramid, has physiological and safety concerns at its base. These basic concerns include food, shelter, and freedom from violence, and it makes sense that people need these existential needs met in order to live well. But it’s easy to focus on planning for everything else except the […]
Environments that enable
Thanks to NBC’s unimpressive approach to global sports journalism, Saturday’s news has revolved around the Rio Olympics swimming and track results. Part of NBC’s narrative programming is marketing the belief that hard, individual work plus supportive nuclear social networks equals success. The formula appears in US advertising, such as Proctor and Gamble’s “Thank You, Mom” campaign and Minute […]
LGBT Youth Homelessness? Not The Time To Argue
I recently learned that an unofficial student group at Andrews University has been blocked from fundraising on campus to support a regional LGBT youth homelessness organization. (Read more via Blue Nation Review, Windy City Times, and Raw Story.) I’ve heard for years about the differences in how heterosexual and LGBT youth experience homelessness and youth services, but I […]
Moving forward
This was part of the last sunset of 2013. My Australian friends have been enjoying 2014 for almost a day now, but I still have a few hours to wait, work, and reflect. This Site I started mackenzian.com last January as a space for writing, exploring ideas, and connecting with others, and also as an […]
On Graceful Acceptance
THE QUESTION Do you incessantly beat yourself up after a lapse in judgment? WHY IT MATTERS Most of us have done something we cannot believe we did—unexpected and seemingly uncharacteristic. But it was in our character, if only in a very small part of it—a part we have not fully acknowledged, and a part that […]
In Search of My Mother’s Garden — Walker
From Robin Carnes and Sally Craig’s book Sacred Circles: “In search of my mother’s garden, I found my own.” —Alice Walker “We might look at our mothers as our first mirrors of ourselves. What they reflected back to us about ourselves we often took as the truth. When we begin to see our mothers as real […]
