~Part of the Widening Circles Series Co-Presented with Healing Circles Global~

Join us for an intimate conversation with Michael Lerner, Commonweal President, and the acclaimed Janie Brown, founder of Callanish Society, a grassroots non-profit organization in Vancouver, BC, for people living with, and dying from, cancer.

In this conversation, we’ll explore:

The personal impact of intentional healing in removing obstacles and supporting healing in every possible way.

How to set the conditions for healing in the retreat setting.

How radical acts of love can promote healing up to the moment of death.

Find out more about Healing Circles Global: healingcirclesglobal.org
Find out more about The New School at Commonweal: tns.commonweal.org.

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New School Conversations

2021:04.23 - Janie Brown & Michael Lerner: Intentional Healing: Transformative Retreats

~Part of the Roots of Resilience in An Age of Crisis series co-presented with Real Food Media~

Seed savers Kristyn Leach of Namu Farm and Second Generation Seeds in Yolo County, California, and Jessika Greendeer of Dream of Wild Health in Twin Cities, Minnesota, will talk about the “why” behind their seed-saving practices. Together with Host Tiffani Patton, Jessika and Kristyn will explore the role of seed-saving in preserving and connecting to culture and why we need seed diversity to withstand the climate crisis.

(Photo: Tiffani Patton)

Kristyn Leach grows Asian crops in California’s Central Valley. Her focus is on preserving and adapting Korean plants, agronomic wisdom, and culture. She partners with the Namu Restaurant Group, providing their restaurants with produce and working with their chefs and cooks on breeding projects. She founded a seed line within Kitazawa Seed Company, the oldest purveyor of Asian vegetable seeds in the United States, called Second Generation Seeds. Second Generation is a collaborative project that hopes to connect or reconnect communities of the Asian diaspora with the crops that have sustained them.

Jessika Greendeer is a Ho-Chunk Nation tribal member from Baraboo, Wisconsin, and a member of the Deer Clan. She is currently the seed keeper and farm manager at Dream of Wild Health. Jessika has worked as the Agricultural Division Manager for her nation and had previously served as a garden mentor within her nation’s organic community gardens. She is a U.S. Army combat veteran and completed a Veteran-to-Farmer training program at the Rodale Institute in Pennsylvania.

Host Tiffani Patton is a lifelong “foodie” turned activist, writing and researching food system change for more than seven years. A gifted writer and storyteller, she leads several areas of educational programming, communications strategy, engagement, and internal operations at Real Food Media. She co-produces and co-hosts the Real Food Reads and Foodtopias podcasts with Tanya Kerssen. Tiffani brings years of active engagement in food policy discussions, event organizing, storytelling for change, facilitating important discussions around food system transformation, and the connection of art, music, and culture to food in the Bay Area and beyond.

Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

2021:05.21 - Kristyn Leach, Jessika Greendeer & Tiffani Patton - Seed-Saving

Join Dr. Rachel Naomi Remen in conversation with host Michael Lerner as she reads from and discusses her newest children’s book “The Birthday of the World: A Story About Finding Light in Everyone and Everything”

Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

2022:09.21 - Rachel Naomi Remen and Host Michael Lerner - The Birthday of the World

~Co-presented with Commonweal’s Collaborative for Health and the Environment~

We’re now in the dangerous, uncharted territory climate scientists have been warning about for decades. Meanwhile, biologists and toxicologists are sounding the alarm about surpassing the “planetary boundary” for chemical pollution, beyond which both ecosystems and our health are endangered. We know climate change and chemical pollution are related in ways that can accelerate both crises, but does their interlinked nature also offer opportunities? Join Host Kristin Schafer with biologist and systems thinker Dr. Elizabeth Sawin and chemicals expert and clean production advocate Beverley Thorpe as they explore opportunities to prioritize solutions that concurrently address climate change and the global crisis of chemical contamination — while also improving public health, equity and economic vitality. 

Multisolving Institute a think-do tank that helps people implement solutions that protect the climate while improving, equity, health, biodiversity, economic vitality, and well-being. Beth writes and speaks about multisolving, climate change, and leadership in complex systems for both national and international audiences. Her work has been published widely, including in Non-Profit Quarterly, The Stanford Social Innovation Review, U.S. News, The Daily Climate, and System Dynamics Review.  In 2010, Beth co-founded Climate Interactive, which she co-directed until 2021. Since 2014, Beth has participated in the Council on the Uncertain Human Future, a continuing dialogue on issues of climate change and sustainability. She is a biologist with a PhD from MIT who has been analyzing complex systems related to climate change for 25 years. Beth trained in system dynamics and sustainability with Donella Meadows and worked at Sustainability Institute, the research institute founded by Meadows, for 13 years. Beth has two adult daughters and lives in rural Vermont where she and her husband grow as much of their own food as they can manage.

Beverley Thorpe
Beverley is Co-Founder of Clean Production Action, and has researched and promoted clean production strategies to advance a non-toxic economy internationally since 1986. She was the first clean production technical expert for Greenpeace International on chemical and waste issues. Bev’s work on alternatives to PVC, organohalogens and hazardous waste incineration helped drive momentum for safer substitution practices in company practices. As the NGO representative in the first United Nations Environment Programme for Cleaner Production, she promoted the value of public participation in industrial policies. Bev received her degree in Geography from Leicester University, UK and is an annual lecturer at Lund University in Sweden on chemicals policy and corporate practices. She is a past Director of Greenpeace International and a founding board member of the Story of Stuff in the US. She lives in Toronto, Canada.

Host Kristin Shafer
Kristin is director of Commonweal’s Collaborative for Health and the Environment, and three decades of experience in the field of environmental health and justice. After working as a Communications Specialist at EPA and with World Resources Institute in Washington, DC, she moved back to Northern California where she held various roles—including executive director—over her 25-year tenure at Pesticide Action Network (PAN) North America. Kristin holds a Masters in Social Change and Development from Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. She lives with her husband in downtown San Jose where she loves to bike ride and garden, and currently serves as board co-chair for the community-building urban farm, Veggielution.

Find out more about The New School at Commonweal on our website: tns.commonweal.org. And like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

2024:01.25 - Elizabeth Sawin & Beverley Thorpe - Multisolving for Climate, Chemicals & Health

Orland Bishop
Spiritual Biography
In this remarkable series of four interconnected conversations, we trace Bishop’s spiritual biography from his childhood in Guyana to his teen years in Brooklyn, his college years in California, and the subsequent conscious emergence of his shamanic journey. These conversations with Michael Lerner took place in the presence of a small group of friends at The New School at Commonweal.

Orland Bishop combines an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology and indigenous cosmologies with a deep dedication to human rights advocacy and cultural renewal. He was a research fellow at the Center for the Study of Violence at Charles R. Drew University of Medicine and Science in Los Angeles and has consulted for many human development organizations in the United States and internationally.

Orland is co-founder and Executive Director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, California, a unique organization devoted to the mentoring of young people and the creation of communities to support them. Through ShadeTree, Orland has pioneered approaches to urban truces and working with at-risk youth that combine indigenous wisdom and practices with contemporary methodologies designed to mentor the human potential and create intentional communities. He has developed processes that support people to come into deeper inner and collective agreements in order to heal violence and social exclusion. Orland is currently focusing on understanding the deeper meaning money as a pathway to designing new economic forms that support healthy community life.

Orland Bishop
Orland Bishop is the founder and director of ShadeTree Multicultural Foundation in Los Angeles, where he has pioneered approaches to urban truces and mentors at-risk youth that combine new ideas with traditional ways of knowledge. ShadeTree serves as an intentional community of mentors, elders, teachers, artists, healers, and advocates for the healthy development of children and youth. Orland’s work in healing and human development is framed by an extensive study of medicine, naturopathy, psychology and indigenous cosmologies, primarily those of South and West Africa.

Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

2011.08.17:  Orland Bishop - Spiritual Biography Part 4

Join TNS Host Steve Heilig in conversation with one of the most renowned voices of our time, ecophilosopher Joanna Macy. Joanna is a scholar of Buddhism, living systems theory, and deep ecology. Respected in the movements for peace, global justice, and ecological sanity, she interweaves her scholarship with six decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work that Reconnects Network, her ground-breaking theoretical framework and interactive practices combine spiritual breakthrough with social transformation.

Joanna Macy, PhD
Joanna’s wide-ranging work addresses psychological issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of an ecological identity, and the clarifying resonance between Buddhist teachings and contemporary science. Her work is used around the world to help people turn despair and apathy in the face of social and ecological crises into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world—as our larger living body—freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten all life on Earth.

Macy graduated from Wellesley College and received her Ph.D in Religious Studies from Syracuse University. She is the author of twelve books, including Coming Back to Life: The Updated Guide to the Work That Reconnects; World as Lover, World as Self; Active Hope: How to face the mess we’re in without Going Crazy; and three volumes of translations of Rilke’s poetry.

2018:04.29 - Joanna Macy - World as Lover, World as Self: The Wisdom of our Grief and Outrage

A beautiful song about transformation and renewal by Coco Love Alcorn, arranged and recorded by Devi Daly for West Marin Choir. Thanks to Wholehearted Chorus and Lisa G. for teaching me this song!

The River

Reb Irwin performs this beautiful setting of Psalm 148:1-6 by Yoel Sykes of Nava Tehila(www.navatehila.org). On guitar is Suzanne Shanbaum; on bass is Lynn Keller. Coming soon: an enhanced version with additional Ner Shalom singers and instrumentalists.

Text:

הַלְלוּיָהּ הַלְלוּ אֶת־יְיָ מִן־הַשָּׁמַיִם הַלְלוּהוּ בַּמְּרוֹמִים:    
הַלְלוּהוּ כָּל־מַלְאָכָיו הַלְלוּהוּ כָּל־צְבָאָיו: 
הַלְלוּהוּ שֶׁמֶשׁ וְיָרֵחַ הַלְלוּהוּ כָּל־כּוֹכְבֵי אוֹר:    
הַלְלוּהוּ שְׁמֵי הַשָּׁמָיִם וְהַמַּיִם אֲשֶׁר מֵעַל הַשָּׁמָיִם: 
יְהַלְלוּ אֶת־שֵׁם יְיָ כִּי הוּא צִוָּה וְנִבְרָאוּ:   
 וַיַּעֲמִידֵם לָעַד לְעוֹלָם חָק־נָתַן וְלֹא יַעֲבוֹר:

Haleluyah. Haleluyah. Haleluyah. Haleluyah.
Halelu et Adonai min hashamayim. Haleluhu bamromim. 
Haleluhu kol malakhav. Haleluhu kol tz'va'av.
Haleluhu shemesh v'yareach. Haleluhu kol kokh'vei or. 
Haleluhu sh'mey hashamayim v'hamayim asher me'al hashamayim.
Y'halelu et shem Adonai ki hu tzivah v'nivra'u. 
Vaya'amidem la'ad l'olam, chok natan v'lo ya'avor.

Hallelujah! Praise Adonai from the heavens; praise Yah in the heights.
Praise Yah, all you angels; praise Yah, all heaven's host.
Praise Yah, sun and moon; praise Yah, all you stars of light.
Praise Yah, heaven of heavens, and you waters that are above the heavens.
Let them praise the name of the Adonai; for God commanded, and they were created. Yah established them for ever and ever; Yah's law shall endure.

Hallelujah (Solo Version)

The New School presents conversations, book signings, art, and lectures with thought and action leaders of our time. We are a learning community of 4,000 people in the Bay Area and around the world dedicated to learning what matters. 

TNS focuses on the emergent, seeking out the thought and action leaders who are bringing discussion, beauty, and change to the world. We present events and podcast them in many areas: arts and sciences, health and the environment, and inner life. We follow streams of inquiry, including our End-of-Life Conversations, and series on Resilience, Archetypal Psychology, and Healing Circles.

2024:01.25 - Elizabeth Sawin & Beverley Thorpe - Multisolving for Climate, Chemicals & Health

The New School at Commonweal

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