Tricycle | Awake in the World

During the month of February, we're reading Allan Lokos's Patience: The Art of Peaceful Living at the Tricycle Book Club. Pick up a copy and join the discussion here. Below is an excerpt from the book. What is there about the quality of patience that causes so many of us to respond to the very word with a sense of deficiency? “I don’t have enough,” we say, suggesting that patience is some sort of commodity. More »

The Meaning of Nice: How Compassion and Civility Can Change Your Life (and the World), a new book from Tricycle's editor at large, Joan Duncan Oliver, takes a closer look at the cliched idea of "nice" as a mild, inoffensive, and rather bland sort of praise. After examining the word through the lenses of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and religion, Oliver concludes that "nice" is, in fact, complex, multifaceted, and less a single quality than a group of qualities that constitute a way of being in the world. Being a "nice" person is taking an approach to life that's grounded in kindness, compassion, integrity, loyalty, generosity, courtesy, respect, and humor. Character, in other words. More »