Awakin Calls

Yoav Peck is the co-Executive Director of the Sulha Peace Project, a group of Israelis and Palestinians who meet regularly "to encounter the other in our full humanity." Recognizing the mutual fears, alienation and suspicion that exist between Israelis and Palestinians, the Sulha Peace Project brings together such diverse factions as soldiers, stone throwers, young professionals, academicians and laborers for face-to-face encounter.

A native New Yorker, Yoav has lived in Israel for 40 years.  Migrating to Israel in 1973, he lived on a kibbutz for 15 years before moving to Jerusalem in 1988.  Professionally, he is an organizational psychologist, coach and consultant who specializes in systematic programs for the advancement of human dignity.  He is also a lifelong peace activist, beginning in the 1960's with the movement to end the war in Vietnam. 

As co-Executive Director of the Sulha Peace Project, Peck helps bring Palestinians and Israelis together for person-to-person contact. Once a month, Sulha holds "Tribal Fires" in which 100-150 Palestinians and Israelis gather to reach beyond arguments and political posturing to the essential humanity longing to be heard. They work in listening circles, praying, singing, eating, and talking.

According to Yoav, "We painstakingly work with an often uncooperative military to obtain entry permits for West Bank Palestinians so that we can be together. Sometimes we meet in the territories, to make Sulha accessible to those Palestinians who cannot leave. As we depart from the Tribal Fire, we are profoundly empowered, carrying with us renewed inspiration, hope, and determination to continue working to bring the conflict to an end."

Several times a year, Sulha also sponsors "Sulhita," a gathering of 40-80 youths (ages16-21) who spend several days discussing the issues that concern them. Young Israelis, pre-army service, and their Palestinian peers discuss how they feel about the fact that they may soon find themselves facing each other in confrontations at roadblocks, or in battle. The youths hike in the Judean desert, prepare meals together, sing, drum, dance, and talk deep into the nights, sharing their visions of possible futures. They attain a sense of commonality that lasts well beyond Sulhita, and many of them become volunteers at adult Sulha events.

In addition to Sulha and Sulhita, the Tent of Sarah and Hagar brings women together to provide a safe environment for religious and secular Jewish and Palestinian women to reach out to each other.

Yoav writes: "Through shared prayer, song, circles of listening, active translation...we reach across gulfs and connect, inspiring profound hope in all present. While we avoid polarizing political declarations, we know that any political future must address the human needs of both sides, and we stand on the front lines of the struggle to return decency and compassion to our shared land.

Yoav received a Bachelor's degree in Psychology and Sociology from the University of California at Berkeley and a Master's in Organizational Psychology from Norwich University.

 

A facilitator of personal and collective transformation, Nilima Bhat facilitates leaders in achieving self-mastery in the areas of business and leadership. Her book, Shakti Leadership: Embracing Feminine and Masculine Power in Business (co-written by Raj Sisodia, co-author of Conscious Capitalism), shows leaders how to lead from a place of service by guiding them through experiences that identify their higher purpose and create cultures of meaning. By harnessing “Shakti” or a deeper feminine “force” of energy, a new type of entrepreneurial culture can be born – one that models humility and compassion, recognizes the value in different kinds of minds, and believes in the wholeness of all things.

“’Business as usual” runs on ego-based power,” Bhat writes.  “Conscious Capitalism runs on Shakti-based power. Shakti is power that comes from an infinite source within you that you can tap into at all times. … Unlike the ego, which can be broken down, no one can take Shakti-based power away from you. … [I]n the yogic tradition Shakti is not an impersonal, inanimate force; it is intelligent and conscious. You can enter into relationship with it. Once you do, it serves you, moves you, and fuels you.”

Bhat leverages her 27 years of corporate experience, conscious leadership and integral health practices to liberate the superhuman, entrepreneurial drive innate to men and women of every culture. The dominant leadership model is essentially masculine and therefore incomplete. She proves that by elevating the qualities and abilities traditionally considered feminine, all will experience personal and collective transformation resulting in creativity, sustainability and success.

“Critically, Shakti brings in the feminine dimension, which is lacking in the world and has been for a long time—if not for all time. Shakti is understood as creative and generative, and is therefore represented as feminine. Men as well as women can tap into it. In the yogic tradition, the human journey is one that seeks to end the duality between masculine and feminine, or Shiva and Shakti. It’s not about ‘separate but equal,’ but about evolving into an integrated and synergistic combination of both.”

Based in Mumbai India, Bhat has used her expertise to help build long-lasting institutions and change-agents, especially women, who can lead India and the planet to sustainable solutions and positive impact. She is an active member of the Conscious Capitalism movement and recently served as core faculty for the Academy of Conscious Leadership for Whole Foods Market. Her assignment included consulting on the design and delivery of curriculum and training for over 1200 of their top leaders. In addition, she has served as guest faculty at Bentley University and Babson College in Boston as well as the Esalen Institute in Big Sur.

A passionate advocate for women in leadership, Bhat is a regular key-note speaker and facilitator at the global WINConferences held in Rome, Tokyo, Prague and Berlin. Her areas of focus are gender-diversity & cross-culture sensitization, stress management, self-awareness for work-life balance as well as Indian wisdom and wellness traditions. Bhat’s holistic approach combines the best practices and paths from around the world and are tailored to meet the needs of her audience. Her particular expertise is in developing BQ & SQ (Body Intelligence & Spiritual Intelligence).

Previously, Bhat spent 10 successful years in Singapore, London and Hong Kong heading Corporate Communications and PR for major corporations. She returned to India in 2004 with her husband to set up a leadership coaching, training & consulting firm, Roots & Wings. Her extensive client base includes blue-chip companies as well as academic institutions and developmental organizations and professional networks such as the YPO, Indus International School, SKS Microfinance and Masoom.

Bhat graduated from St. Xavier’s College, Mumbai in Life Sciences and Biochemistry, winning the ‘Best Student’ award twice for academic as well as extra-curricular excellence. She has a PG Diploma in Social Communications Media from Sophia Polytechnic, Mumbai.

A qualified yoga teacher from the International Sivananda Yoga Vedanta Centre, Bhat is also a teacher-practitioner of the Integral Yoga of Sri Aurobindo & The Mother. With her husband, she co-authored My Cancer Is Me, outlining the integrative medicine-based ‘Sampurnah Cancer Program’ developed by her. She is a trained dancer and choreographer, and co-founded a professional dance company whose mission is to de-mystify Indian dance and spiritual sciences for international audiences.  Nilima is now focused on building a global network of Shakti-based leaders and entrepreneurs who collaborate to create peace and beauty through fair exchange.

As she has written: “Becoming a conscious leader requires a transformational journey. You do not become a conscious leader just by getting behavioral skill training in ‘what leaders do.’ Deeper, foundational shifts are required to connect you to new and true bases of consciousness and power. The person you are is the leader you are; therefore, you have to make the journey inward to transform yourself.”

 

"As one re-reads Marjorie's poems, which have airy beginnings usually in breath, voice, intimation, they grow increasingly concrete until situations, relationships, and feelings are palpable and deeply moving."

-A.R. Ammons on Maddox's poetry collection As Perpendicular as I.

Marjorie Maddox has a dedication to exploring the world through the written word that is hard to miss. And it started young. This poet, professor, fiction writer, editor and self-described bookworm grew up reading in the branches of trees, suspended upside down on the couch, and by flashlight under bedtime blankets. Named after an artist aunt and born into a family that encouraged her writing, Maddox began composing and giving away her poems in childhood. Her early captivation with the alchemy of words led to a lifetime calling. Her gifts were honed at a series of institutions; a BA from Wheaton College, an MA from the University of Louisville and an MFA from Cornell, where she studied under the tutelage of the celebrated poet AR Ammons.

Maddox's poetry collection "Local News from Someplace Else" weaves together an exploration of the horrors and threats of the modern world with the universal hopes and joys that exist in the midst of it. Many of the collection's poems take their subject matter from newsletter clippings. 9/11, school shootings, Hurricanes Sandy, Katrina, and more. "I was really fascinated by this idea of what do we call safe anymore. How do we raise a family in a world where we see these tragedies happening every day how do we struggle with, and balance what we see in our lives?" Her poems peer into the darkness with unflinching, empathic eyes. They seek for and reveal the transcendental qualities of the human spirit that have seen us through the millennia. [Example, her moving poem "Seven-year-old Girl Escapes from Kidnappers"].

Today Maddox is the author of eleven collections of poetry. She has in addition published several children's books, and over 500 stories, essays, and poems in journals and anthologies. A slew of awards have found her over the years, including Cornell's Casen Award, the 2000 Paumanok Poetry Award, an Academy of American Poets Prize, a Breadloaf Scholarship and four Pushcart prize nominations. Currently Maddox is the director of the creative writing program at Lock Haven University.

As a creative writing professor she is passionate about the work of facilitating students' introduction to the world of ideas and to places and points of view that are different yet related to their own. "I love to get them to think about what literature has to do with everything you go through day-to-day," she says. And it is all a mutual process, in her eyes: "Writing and teaching are both a process of discovery."

Empathy is writ large between the lines of her work. As one of her interviewers put it, Maddox has a gift for "getting into other people's skins." She employs particular stories about specific events, places and times in her poems and through them opens a door into the universal. Of her book "What She was Saying" author Robert Morgan says, "Maddox's stories open up unexpected, little noticed corners of our world. . . . Some read like fables; some surprise with bold humor. All celebrate the mystery of the familiar, the strangeness of the ordinary, and the humanity of marginal lives."

Maddox lives with her husband and two children in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, home of the Little League World Series. Her array of poetry books include three on baseball — a subject that is part of a rich family legacy. Her great granduncle was Branch Rickey, the former Brooklyn Dodgers general manager and team president who changed history by signing on the Major League's first black player: Jackie Robinson.

Maddox's relationship to poetry brims with metaphor. And her process takes different forms. As she likes to tell her students, "Sometimes poems come in through the front door." You begin already knowing exactly what you want to write about and how. But sometimes poems arrive, "through the backdoor and...I will discover what I want to write about after I follow an image or an idea." In her experience the writing is often a doorway, an entry point and means by which to meditate upon a certain thought, visual, or even landscape.

Tucked into the rigors and the discipline of the practice are also its priceless rewards. Through it Maddox is reminded to slow down and cherish the times of joy and community and "all the good things that we give each other."

What part of the writing life does she cherish the most? "That 'ah' moment when things finally start to click into place and you see all those connections."

Join us in conversation with this gifted poet and teacher!

 

Charlie Halpern is a public interest pioneer and an innovator in legal education. Author of Making Waves and Riding the Currents: Activism and the Practice of Wisdom, he has made multiple big waves in the public sector – as the "father" of the public interest law movement, as a social entrepreneur, and as a pioneer in the movement to bring mindfulness to the law and social justice efforts.  The outer waves of social transformation that Charlie has supported have been enabled by his inner waves of personal transformation.  And those inner waves are supporting him on his latest challenging quests: working for the mindful transformation of the criminal justice system, and preserving our social commitment to core values and practices – such as democratic participation, equality, and respect for marginalized communities.

Charlie began his career as a conventional high-achieving lawyer.  He graduated from Harvard College and Yale Law School.  After a prestigious federal appellate clerkship, he worked as a young corporate lawyer at the noted law firm of Arnold & Porter in Washington, D.C.

“Like many lawyers, I did this work that I basically didn't believe in, taking satisfaction in the skillful and responsible way that I executed my assignment," Charlie wrote.  In that manner, he fell into what he calls the "success trap," which is when one gravitates only toward the things one excels at while avoiding risks.

While working on a socially significant pro bono case related to the provision of adequate treatment for mentally ill patients, Charlie realized that "the commitment to lawyerly abstractions, even noble ones like due process and equal protection, was much stronger if it was coupled with human connection and empathy."  With the hope of living a more authentic and connected life, Charlie left his corporate law job – thereby "abandoning the linear path of academic success and professional ambition" – and began to set up a law firm that would represent non-corporate, public interests on issues like the environment and consumer rights.  This "public interest law firm" was a risky proposition, as there was at the time no obvious way to make money representing unrepresented interests in Washington D.C.  But he was willing to take that risk, as it meant aligning his work with his values.

Charlie thus founded the celebrated Center for Law and Social Policy (CLASP), the first national public interest law firm.  CLASP enjoyed a number of successes in the areas of environmental rights (for example, the organization obtained an early injunction against the building of an Alaska pipeline as well as the banning of DDT); corporate governance/shareholder activism; and rights of the mentally ill and mentally retarded (which led to the separate formation of the Mental Health Law Project); among other areas.  CLASP was also successful in cultivating a new generation of public interest lawyers.

A decade later, Charlie discovered another avenue for advancing the public interest law movement.  He became the founding dean of the City University of New York Law School (CUNY), a law school with a public interest mission and curriculum.  The school was to be composed of students dedicated to becoming public interest lawyers.  Although gratified by the recognition his school received for having a unique public interest curriculum and by his participation in the "students' realization of the American dream," Charlie "often found [himself] angry and frustrated" and "over his head – emotionally, morally, and psychologically," as he was "frequently caught between intransigent students, hostile academic administrators, and corrupt Queens political leadership."

It was during his time at CUNY that a friend recommended that he try meditation.  At first, Charlie felt that meditation, while helpful in managing a stressful job, was "peripheral to the ‘real work’ that [he] was doing as a public interest advocate and institutional innovator."  But what started out as a simple stress relief tool ended up becoming something far more significant in Charlie's mind, as meditation – along with several other tools for inner exploration that Charlie had developed – opened up the possibility for the cultivation of wisdom.

For Charlie, the wisdom that emerged from mindfulness practice had a direct bearing on his social advocacy, as he wondered: "Could this be a new way to approach activism, to start from the place of wisdom and compassion rather than the place of anger and insistence on legal rights? . . . Meditation, wisdom, and the commitment to social transformation could flow together.”

"I had a growing intuition that something was missing [from my personal and professional life], and I sought ways of developing inner resources that complemented my cognitive and adversarial skills.  These explorations led me to the conviction that the practice of wisdom is essential both to my own effectiveness and wellbeing and to our collective capacity to address the challenges of the 21st century successfully."

Charlie thereafter served as the first President and CEO of the Nathan Cummings Foundation, which, under his leadership, "developed a unique blend of grants, integrating support for forceful cutting-edge advocacy with support for meditation and other inner work."  On the social advocacy side, the Foundation helped establish progressive and activist organizations such as "Demos: A Network for Ideas & Action."  On the inner work side, the Foundation facilitated a dialogue between Jewish rabbis and mystics and the Dalai Lama, and funded the National Religious Partnership for the Environment.  The Foundation also helped create the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society, which seeks to infuse law, journalism, and business with a contemplative dimension.

In 2011, Charlie was appointed Director of the Berkeley Initiative for Mindfulness in Law, where he developed a curriculum – including a popular and often over-subscribed seminar – for exploring the connection between mindfulness/meditation and the law.  “When I tell people that I teach a class in law and meditation at UC Berkeley’s law school, I often hear snorts of disbelief. ‘It’s easier to imagine a kindergarten class sitting in silence for half an hour,’ a friend said to me, ‘than two lawyers sitting together in silence for five minutes.’”

But the class was no joke, Charlie reminds us.  And, in his recent work, Charlie has introduced judges, prosecutors, and defense attorneys to mindfulness practice in order to transform the criminal justice system, as well as help to form a more empathic, inclusive, and sustainable nation.

Join us in conversation with this remarkable leader!

 

Joshua Gorman is a writer, speaker, changemaker, community builder, and a voice championing the paradigm-shifting role of the Millennial Generation.  He is the founder of Generation Waking Up, an organization that ignites young people to bring forth a thriving, just, and sustainable world.  Generation Waking Up has focused on systems change through three strategies:  awakening in young people a generation-wide identity and global calling by using arts, media, and interactive workshops that support them in seeing who they are as a generation, the global challenges and opportunities before them, and their unique role in shifting the course of humanity; empowering young people to function as thriving, 21st-century agents of change by offering trainings to impart to them knowledge, skills, capacities, and support for creating lasting social change while deepening their own personal transformation; and mobilizing young people around shared purpose, holistic vision, and collaborative action by creating networks to connect young people and youth initiatives across issues to create whole-systems change.

“There’s a new generation of young people waking up and coming of age all across the planet, a generation rising between an old world dying and a new world being born,” Joshua says. “We are the make-it-or-break-it generation. The all-or-nothing generation.” From education, politics, the environment, to even religion, “the new story is playing out in every sector and we all have a role to play. Young people are finding their gifts, finding their passions, realizing that ‘hey, we’re all in this together and we’re going to make it happen’. That’s why we’re here, right? That’s why we’ve been born at this time to take the largest step that humanity has ever taken before, right? To step from an old world dying into this new world that’s being born.”

Joshua grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C.   Recounting his own awakening and call to action, he has described:  “When I was [around 14], I started to really begin to wake up.  I started to really suddenly pay attention to the wider world around me, and I was really deeply troubled by what I confronted.  My family was having a really hard time; in my community I just saw a lot of unhappiness and a lot of suffering.  And I looked out at the state of the world and I saw how hard things were and it just overwhelmed me, and it troubled me.  … I went through a kind of existential crisis. … So I spent many years traveling and studying and researching and learning from other people …. I had this really powerful vision one day where I just saw so, so clearly the role that we can play as young people today.  We are not just a generation born into the end times to watch the world fall apart.  We’re actually a generation born at this significant moment in history where a new chapter is opening up, and we get to be the authors if it.  We get to write that story.  We get to create a new world.”

Through speaking, workshops, and leadership trainings, Joshua has the opportunity to connect with thousands of people each year.  A student of human development and transformational education, Joshua specializes in the experiences, knowledge, and skills that people need to thrive in the twenty-first century.  He self-designed a major titled 'Global Youth and Social Change' at George Mason University and supports youth-led projects and movements internationally.  He is a founding member of Youth Passageways, a network of individuals and organizations working in the fields of youth and community development, contemporary rites of passage, intergenerational collaboration, and cultural renewal.

Currently, Joshua is working on a number of projects relating to the future of religion, spirituality, and secular culture with a focus on Millennials and the religiously unaffiliated called 'the Nones'.  Noting that one out of every three Millennials belong to this cohort of spiritually unaffiliated, Joshua speaks about how the next generation is redefining our sense of purpose, spirituality, and meaningful community. He is a co-founder of Thrive East Bay, a new kind of purpose-driven community bringing people together at the intersections of science, spirituality, and social change.

Joshua lives in Oakland, California where he is completing a book titled Generation Waking Up: The Rise of Global Millennials and A Thriving New World.

Mushim Patricia Ikeda is a sansei (third-generation Japanese American) poet and writer, social justice activist, diversity and inclusion consultant, secular mindfulness coach and core Buddhist teacher based in Oakland, California.  She teaches primarily at the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in downtown Oakland, where she also served on the board of directors, known as the Leadership Sangha, for seven years.  She now works part-time on EBMC's staff as the community coordinator.

Born in 1954 and raised in rural Ohio, Mushim was among the first Asian American poets to publish (under her secular name Patricia Y. Ikeda), in a volume of poems published by Cleveland State University in 1978 and in the 1983 anthology Breaking Silence: An Anthology of Contemporary Asian American Poets.  After receiving her MFA in English (poetry writing) from the University of Iowa Graduate Writers Workshop, she jumped the tracks of a potential career of teaching creative writing and contemporary literature in colleges and universities.  An increasingly urgent spiritual quest led her to renounce what belongings she had and to move in May 1983 into the just-starting-up Zen Buddhist Temple in Ann Arbor, Michigan, as a full time resident under a vow of poverty.  Designated the office manager, she began with a landline phone, a small wooden bench to write on, some pens, the temple checkbook, and a shoebox for petty cash and receipts, and over the next several years helped to build the temple along with a diverse Sangha (spiritual community) that included Zen practitioners from the U.S., Mexico, Canada, Korea and Japan.

A period of spiritual seeking throughout the U.S. and to the monasteries of South Korea and back from 1986 through 1988 came to a close and a new chapter in Mushim's life began with the birth of her son in 1989 in Northern California, and the instruction from several Asian Zen teachers to direct her spiritual practice toward raising her child. She also received encouragement to begin writing again, in whatever small periods of time that she could carve out from parenting, and slowly began to publish new work, including a quarterly column on Buddhist family practice published in the Buddhist Peace Fellowship's magazine, Turning Wheel, over a period of ten years. 

Mushim volunteered for 11 years in the Oakland Unified Public School District, which her son attended K through 12.  "People who know me know that being a mother and having spent a lot of time as a classroom volunteer in the Oakland Unified School District is hugely important to me," she has said.  "Anything I'm doing right now, I'm doing with children in mind. The stories and memories we pass on to them are political -- these stories and memories need to be fresh, empowering and liberating!"

Mushim has become widely known for her down-to-earth, humorous, and penetrating approach to spiritual practice and social transformation.  She has taught residential meditation retreats for people of color, social justice activists, and women nationally, and her work is based in values of cultural humility, acknowledging the wisdom that is ever-present in individuals and collectives, and the need for expression, empowerment, and co-creative self-determination in marginalized communities. 

In describing her approach to training, she says that "I've been training mindful social justice activists for the past year and two of my questions to them have been: What do you do for fun? What makes you increasingly joyful? Wherever I go, I emphasize the importance of taking a vow to not burn out, choosing instead 'to celebrate, celebrate, celebrate' -- as activist Paul Kivel says in the 'Resistance' chapter of his magnificently useable book, You Call This Democracy?: Who Benefits, Who Pays, Who Really Decides."

Mushim is the recipient of the 2014 Gil A. Lopez Peacemaker Award from the Association for Dispute Resolution of Northern California, recognizing her innovative one-year program, Practice in Transformative Action (PiTA), mindfulness training for social justice activists, at the East Bay Meditation Center.  PiTA trains change agents in how to skillfully spread mindfulness practices in all of their spheres of everyday activity.  In September 2015 she received an honorary Doctor of Sacred Theology (sacrae theologiae) degree from the Starr King School for the Ministry.

As a writer, Mushim is the recipient of the first Alice Hayes Fellowship from the Ragdale Foundation to support a one-month residency for a writer working on social justice and environmental issues.  Under the name "Patricia Y. Ikeda," her poems have appeared in groundbreaking Asian Pacific North American anthologies such as Breaking Silence (1983) and Premonitions: The Kaya Anthology of New Asian North American Poetry (1995). 

Mushim has been featured in the award-winning documentary film Between the Lines: Asian American Women's Poetry and as one of three subjects in the documentary Acting on Faith: Women's New Religious Activism in America, distributed by the Pluralism Project at Harvard University.  Mushim has published nonfiction essays on Buddhism and diversity, and taught a one-month online retreat on that topic for www.tricycle.com in August 2013.

Rhonda Magee is a teacher of mindfulness-based stress reduction interventions for lawyers and law students, and for minimizing social-identity-based bias. A full-time faculty member at the Jesuit University of San Francisco since 1998, and a full professor since 2004, she is dedicated to exploring the inter-relationships between law, philosophy, and notions of justice and humanity, with a commitment to listening to, and retelling the stories of, the impact of law on the lives of traditionally marginalized and subordinated people.  She is an expert in Contemplative Pedagogy, Race Law, Identity-Sensitive Pedagogy, and Critical Race Perspectives on the Intersection of Race and Immigration. 

Professor Magee’s writing and teaching is inspired by a commitment to education for effective problem-solving and presence-based leadership in a diverse and ever-changing world, and to humanizing legal education. She is the author of numerous articles on mindfulness in legal education, including Educating Lawyers to Meditate? and The Way of ColorInsight: Understanding Race and Law Effectively Using Mindfulness-Based ColorInsight Practices.    

Born in the segregated town of Kinston, North Carolina, and raised in Hampton, Virginia, Professor Magee learned at an early age that she would need tools for "grounding myself for work in a world not created for our success."  While in law school, Magee’s interest in restorative justice, reconciliation, and the contemporary effects of unredressed historical wrongs led her to publish an article in the Virginia Law Review on the subject of the African-American reparations, “The Master’s Tools, From the Bottom Up: African American Reparations Theory in Mainstream and Outsider Remedies Discourse.” It was one of the earliest treatments of the topic in a mainstream legal scholarly journal.  After law school, she discovered meditation as a tool for personal grounding.

“In my own work, I identify, develop and examine the efficacy of a set of practices that intentionally link inner and outer work to raise awareness about race and racial experience in our lives, with a focus on personal, interpersonal, and systemic or structural levels,” Magee has described.

In addition to her scholarly work utilizing mindfulness strategies to uncover and ameliorate racial bias, she embraces mindfulness as a tool to unearth and alleviate other forms of social injustice.  “A commitment to becoming more aware of our interconnectedness leads to deeper understanding of injustice in our midst. It leads to the will to closely examine inequality today—inviting a look beyond individuals to systems and structures, and providing a basis for law and policy that improves all our lives,” she says.  “It reveals, for example, that problems as seemingly disparate as a water quality crisis and the excessive use of police force are caused by the same lack of compassion for our fellow human beings, and can be redressed—and more importantly, prevented—by developing that very compassion.  Engaged mindfulness practices are just one way to increase our capacities to see a role for each of us in ameliorating [structural] inequality. They are one tool for building bridges between disparate causes, concerns and people, and for supporting the ongoing shifts in understanding that are necessary for law and policy that truly provides equal protection and justice for all.  Such practices can be brought into our most besieged communities and applied to our most intractable problems, providing a foundation for social justice work that transforms individuals and the world around us.”

Professor Magee presently serves as President of the Board of the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society.  She is a member of the Project for the Integration of Spirituality, Law and Politics; a member of the Board of Advisers of the Center for Mindfulness; and a member of the Steering Committee of the Mind and Life Institute.  She contributes to Mindful.org and the Greater Good Science Center.  She is a member of the board of advisors to the University of Massachusetts School of Medicine’s Center for Mindfulness.  She is a founder of the effort to transform the criminal justice system through mindfulness and compassion practices (Transforming Justice).  She has served on the board of directors of a number of other organizations, including the Center for Youth Development Through Law, the National Coalition Against Crime and Delinquency, Asian Pacific Islander Legal Outreach, and the Humanizing Legal Education Section of the American Association of Law Schools.

She has made her home in San Francisco since 1998. Among other local civic engagements, she has served as a consultant to the San Francisco African American Historical Society, and to the San Francisco District Attorney’s Office on matters of mindful relations with the Black Community.  She is a trained and highly practiced facilitator, with an emphasis on mindful communication, trained through programs at the University of Massachusetts’s School of Medicine’s Oasis Teacher Training Institute, and the Stanford Graduate School of Business Facilitator Training Program.

Join us in conversation with this remarkable thought (and heart) leader!

 

Libby and Len Traubman are peacemakers, filmmakers, authors, and co-founders and co-leaders of a 24-year-old nonviolent conflict resolution group, the Jewish-Palestinian Living Room Dialogue Group, established in 1992 in San Mateo, California, and preparing for its 289th meeting on the San Francisco Bay Peninsula.  The one-to-one, face-to-face method of conflict resolution modeled by this dialogue group has been looked to globally by educators, researchers, journalists, activists, trainers, and strategists including the U.S. Department of State, which distributes the dialogue group's instructive films in Africa.

Libby and Len embarked on lifelong journeys of self-reflection and outward action near the onset of their 50-year interfaith marriage across cultures. They continue generously sharing their learned lessons and communication tools with individuals and communities whose lives might otherwise have been torn apart by violent cultural divisions.  They have guided hundreds of dependably successful dialogues on high school and university campuses, and in neighborhoods across America and overseas.  Their all-volunteer life of championing civil discourse has been featured on every major print and broadcast news service, including CNN, NPR, MSNBC, and Voice of America.  Roots of the Traubmans’ dialogue models are in South African inter-racial, inter-religious story- and meal-sharing during apartheid 1980s, and in early 1990s black-white meal-sharing in San Mateo homes.  Two hour-long films have documented their work, 20 YEARS OF PALESTINIAN-JEWISH LIVING ROOM DIALOGUE, and TURNING ENEMIES INTO FRIENDS FOR 24 YEARS.

In establishing the Jewish-Palestinian Living Group, Libby and Len intended to create a people-intensive—not money-intensive—easily reproducible, in-home model for dialogue to parallel and complement the government peace process in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as in other regions of the world.  As designed, the living room dialogue group format gives dynamic form to the emerging paradigm of people-centered human security that challenges traditional notions of government-centered national security.  This type of dialogue aims at conflict transformation rather than conflict resolution; it is used to introduce, familiarize, humanize, dignify, and empathize with all the people in the room, so that conflict resolution can then take place on a solid foundation.  The dialogue process begins with exploring each person's life narrative, on the understanding that in many cases "an enemy is one whose story we have not heard".  This approach is not a quick fix but requires time, and thus is referred to as sustained dialogue.

Always seeking to expand the network, participants in the Jewish-Palestinian Dialogue Group communicate daily through face-to-face, e-mail, telephone, and Skype methods with citizens worldwide to encourage new groups and to provide both graphic and written how-to guidelines. This dialogue group regularly publishes e-mail reports on the global success stories regarding the expanding public peace process.  The Traubmans also have created and disseminated extensive resources for communities to engage in effective dialogue.

Libby and Len continue to facilitate face-to-face community-building experiences of dialogue, and sometimes co-produce documentary films that help people to successfully engage.  Over the decades, they have initiated several hundred outreach activities globally.  They have supported, including with long-distance facilitation via Skype and Zoom, live face-to-face dialogue between diverse citizens of Korea, Japan, Singapore, and Myanmar, as well as in Africa and the Middle East.

Libby is a retired clinical social worker whose social activism took off when she helped organize the 1991 Beyond War conference for Israeli and Palestinian citizen-leaders – resulting in a historic signed document, Framework For A Public Peace Process. She co-produced three films modeling a new quality of listening and communication – PEACEMAKERS: Palestinians & Jews Together at Camp, DIALOGUE AT WASHINGTON HIGH, and CROSSING LINES IN FRESNO.  For her community service and global influence, Libby was inducted into the San Mateo County Women’s Hall of Fame.

Len is a retired pediatric dentist who for more than 30 years has helped bring “enemies” together and has published on successful public peace processes from personal experience with Soviets and Americans, Armenians and Azerbaijanis, Jews and Palestinians, and most recently Muslim and Christian Nigerians. He co-produced the 2012 documentary, DIALOGUE IN NIGERIA: Muslims & Christians Creating Their Future, and in 2013, DOZOS-GUERRE TRIBAL HEALING IN COTE D’IVOIRE.  Len was the 1998 Distinguished Alumnus of the University of California School of Dentistry.

Libby and Len, married nearly 50 years, live in San Mateo. They are parents to a daughter and son educated in San Mateo public schools, and grandparents to two boys and a girl.

Join us in conversation with this remarkable couple!

 

Makala Kozo Hattori is a healer, counselor, host and writer who was diagnosed with stage 2 colorectal cancer in July 2015. Rather than pursue traditional Western medicine’s allopathic treatments, he chose a path of natural medicine, diet, spiritual practices, and relational healing. “I had a 7 cm tumor in my intestinal track,” Kozo says. “The doctors wanted to immediately start chemo and radiation followed by surgery, but I chose to pursue a path of wellness by following alternative treatments including Hawaiian healing arts. What I found is a healing that went far beyond my body. This dis-ease called cancer lead me to an ease and peace that encompasses all parts of my life including my relationships, my psychological wellbeing, and my spiritual connectedness with Nature, God, and Community.”

Cancer has offered Kozo the opportunity of healing that his body, mind, and soul required. "Cancer, like difficult others, gives me the opportunity to heal, grow, and love in a way that I have never been able to do before its arrival."  Cancer has also gifted Kozo with a reconnection to the teachings of his Hawaiian elders. "Cancer brought me back to Aloha, especially Kapu Aloha--sacred love. Kapu Aloha, like Gandhi's ahimsa, always keeps the heart open, no matter what is going on with others. I had to learn to stay in Aloha no matter what, even when faced with a deadly disease. Rather than battle cancer, I intend to love it in the Aloha Spirit. This intimate relationship with cancer modeled for me how to be in relationship with others. When my sons are throwing tantrums, I try to stay in kapu aloha. Rather than judge, I try to find a way to help."

To share his healing journey, Kozo created an online class and workshop called "Healing Dis-ease with Aloha." As he humbly says, “I am not an expert nor a master. I bring forth and share what has been given to me from my ‘Aumakua, my teachers, and my Hawaiian grandfather.  I have been blessed to study aikido, zen, vipassana, surfing, ho’oponopono, qigong, and aloha from a variety of masters. Trying to preserve Hawaiian wisdom, I interviewed kûpuna like Pono Shim, Paul Strauch Jr. and Suzi Kawaiohiokekaikaiona’okalâni Ko. I also created the Compassionate Men’s Interview Series which includes interviews with Thich Nhat Hanh, Rick Hanson, Father Richard Rohr, and Dan Siegel.” 

In the spirit of gift ecology, Kozo gives his online class freely along with weekly conference calls to hold a sacred space of healing for anyone who needs it. "Every week I am reminded that we are all connected--my healing is your healing, and your healing is my healing."

Kozo also concentrates his energies and writing on infusing the masculine spirit with greater compassion.  He works full time trying to raise compassionate boys, and in turn is growing in compassion through his parenting.

He is currently writing a book called "The Healing Gift of Cancer." His essays and articles have been published at Yes Magazine, Mindful Magazine, Greater Good Science Center, The Elephant Journal, and The Good Men Project.

Join us in conversation with the remarkable and inspirational healer, and gentle soul!

 

David Milarch hovered above the bed, looking down upon his own lifeless body lying there. A loving husband and father, a life derailed by alcoholism, a life saved by a seemingly divine plan to clone trees. From a life-threatening trip to the emergency room -- to building a “Noah’s Ark” filled with tree genetics for repopulating the ancient trees of the world -- a near-death experience planted a seed that has grown into a most remarkable journey. At first glance, his story seems farfetched. It may even sound impossible. As David would say, “Impossible just takes longer.”

A third generation nurseryman, David Milarch grew up working on his father’s tree farm. In 2008 David founded the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive (AATA) with a mission to restore “the lungs of the planet.” The AATA grew out of an organization David had started many years earlier with his family, the Champion Tree Project. David has spent the last 20+ years cloning old-growth trees, the oldest and largest living organisms on our planet. These trees store carbon faster than any other species on Earth. A mature Sequoia weighs 1,000 tons, 40% of which is stored carbon. “Before we even knew the role trees play[ed] in our ecosystem,” David says, “we cut them down.” In the United States alone we have cut down 98% of our old growth forests.

With climate change looming large, David has turned his lifelong love of trees into a quest to clone and regenerate the champion trees that we have lost. “The Era of Preservation is over. There aren’t enough old-growth habitats left to preserve. We’re entering the Millennium of Restoration. We’ve got to rebuild with the best we’ve got, the largest and oldest living things on earth.”

Through the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive, David’s mission is to propagate the world’s most important old growth trees before they are gone, reforest the Earth with the offspring of these trees, and archive the genetics of ancient trees in living libraries around the world for the future.

David’s travels down this path started twenty-four years ago with a devastating near-death experience. To look at David before and after that experience is to see two different men. "I was an atheist, a biker, an alcoholic arm wrestler, a bare-knuckle fighter that really didn't love anything or myself, or respect anything," he said in an interview. "Until this happened."

Facing the sadness and regret that his drinking had caused, he decided to quit cold turkey. He placed a bottle of vodka and a six-pack outside the bedroom door and locked himself inside. He wound up in the hospital three days later with a failing liver and kidneys. When he returned home it was with the understanding that he had only a little time left. In his bed, looking back on his life and accomplishments, David kept returning to thoughts of his wife and sons, to the tree farm.

Suddenly, he felt himself floating, looking down at his body lying there motionless. To his right hovered a beautiful woman radiating light. “We’re here to help,” she said. Those angels took David on a remarkable journey through brightly lit tunnels to a sandy beach. “You have work to do,” they said. David recovered.

One night during the following winter he woke up and heard a voice. “Get a pad and pen,” the voice said, “and go to the living room.” He awoke again hours later with a pad and pen in his lap and page after page of writing. What he found written there would become the outline for his life’s work. That outline turned into The Champion Tree project and evolved into the Archangel Ancient Tree Archive. The summer following his writing experience, David and his son Jared collected their first DNA samples.

It is easy to draw parallels between David’s own story and vision for the future of old growth trees. Perhaps looking at his own history and seeing a similar fate in store for our planet’s old growth trees, David dedicated his effort and energy towards giving the trees something he himself had graciously received, protection from destruction, a chance for new life. A heavenly presence to protect and transform what is left of our old growth forests.

From an early age David was gifted a first-hand look at the astonishing beauty of a forest of trees. The weeding, digging, and planting he did as a boy on his father’s farm also acquainted him with the notion that nothing worth protecting can be preserved without hard work, love, and dedication. Throughout David’s life, he has been uniquely prepared to fulfill his role as preserver. It is his mission now to spread his knowledge, his love, and his story with the world so that he may fulfill his own divine mission: to rebuild the world’s first old-growth redwood forest. “Our trees,” he says, will be “gifts to our grandchildren and great-grandchildren, gifts to the world.”

In recognition for his work, David has been awarded, among many others, the Garden Clubs of America Distinguished Service Award, the National Daughters of the American Revolution National Conservation Medal, National Garden Clubs Award of Excellence for Conservation, Biography Magazine’s Hero Award, and the Grant Thornton Leader and Innovator Award.

David’s awe-inspiring life story has been chronicled by Jim Robbins in the book The Man Who Planted Trees.

Join us on December 17 to learn more about David’s astonishing life and work.