Connecting with the dead
can’t explain. Her explanation is that the body is walking in the physical world and spiritual world at the same time. Those “serendipitous” moments? They’re the spiritual world showing itself, she said.
“God touches my life every day,” Boyd said, mentioning prayers for green lights when she’s in a rush, or for an open parking spot, or for help with anxiety. Whenever she loses something, she has a conversation with St. Anthony, Roman Catholicism’s patron saint of lost things.
with enough profit to invest in growing the publication, according to Harvey. That includes a part-time staff of six and at least 2,000 issues in its first printing — possibly as many as 15,000. The paper also is accepting a small number of advertisements, he said, and even those will be from brands that have what he called a “social good message.”
It’s just the latest of Harvey’s “good news” ventures.
In his weekly “Sounds Good” podcast, he interviews fellow optimists about topics like mental health, social justice and using influence for good. He also curates a weekly email newsletter called the Goodnewsletter that links to hopeful headlines from around the world.
But Harvey, originally a photographer, never set out to become a purveyor of good news, he said.
“At this point, it’s very evident to me — ‘Oh, everything I’m doing is focused on good news’ — but it was just kind of one brick at a time of being like, ‘Oh, I’m passionate about this thing,’ ‘Oh, I’m interested in this thing,’ and then all of a sudden I looked and all those bricks had spelled out the words ‘good news,’” he said.
Harvey said he’s always been “a hope-focused, optimistic guy.”
That’s something he said he learned from his grandfather, a Southern Baptist pastor in his hometown of Pullman, Washington. His grandparents always were inviting people over for dinner or to stay with them, and they taught conversational English classes to international students at a local university.
“I feel like a lot of my faith has been really shaped by the examples of others and, most specifically, by the examples of others who used their faith not to restrict and not to build up walls, but to build bridges and connect with people,” Harvey said. “… Their faith informs their opportunity to love people and specifically to do it in a creative way that’s geared toward their own unique abilities and talents,” he said.
Good news isn’t all candy and butterflies and puppies, though, Harvey said. It’s not ignoring the bad news and real injustices in the world, he said.
For instance, he said, the Goodnewsletter he sent after the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando, Florida, didn’t ignore the tragedy. It included links to stories about people risking their lives to save others during the attack and lining up to donate blood to victims.
“When you acknowledge the brokenness in the world, you believe there are good things in the midst of it, that’s when you have the opportunity to be a part of those good things,” Harvey said. “You have the opportunity to challenge the broken things in the world and become the solution.”
That’s what he hopes the Goodnewspaper will inspire people to do, he said.
Harvey expects to deliver the first issue of the paper this month.