Sandbox Cooperative Podcast

Ever since we started this podcast, we have wanted to talk about the end of life. We finally made that a reality as we recently spent time at Seasons Hospice, a community based freestanding nonprofit hospice here in Rochester, Minnesota. Care is provided regardless of the religion or spirituality of the patient or family.

We were captivated by these conversations, and we ended up with something that we didn’t anticipate: We set out to talk about death, but learned much more about life.

Many thanks to the staff members at Seasons Hospice who shared their time and stories with us.

On May 1, 2016 Sandbox Cooperative welcomed Shane Claiborne to the Sandbox stage. This podcast contains the Q&A portion of the evening event.

Shane is a founder and board member of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped birth and connect radical faith communities around the world. He has served on peace delegations in some of the most troubled regions in the world. Shane led us in a conversation about social justice, peacemaking, and Jesus.

More about Shane at RedLetterChristians.org, @shaneclaiborne, Shane Claiborne on Facebook

On May 1, 2016 Sandbox Cooperative welcomed Shane Claiborne to the Sandbox stage.

Shane is a founder and board member of The Simple Way, a faith community in inner city Philadelphia that has helped birth and connect radical faith communities around the world. He has served on peace delegations in some of the most troubled regions in the world. Shane led us in a conversation about social justice, peacemaking, and Jesus.

More about Shane at RedLetterChristians.org, @shaneclaiborne, Shane Claiborne on Facebook

In this episode, we share a conversation with our friend Heatherlyn about music, the importance of sharing your own story, and what it means for a community to sing their soul song. Find out what Heatherlyn is up to at HeatherlynMusic.com.

It seems one of the most challenging things we could do is to give up good things. To even take the time to know which things are best sometimes feels like yet another thing to do. In the middle of the world rushing past us, we continue to grapple with the questions of ‘Who am I?’ and ‘What am I here for?’ yet with less and less space to discover our answers. In this episode, we explore the ideas of presence, and slowing down, in order to be a bit more available to who we are and what we do at our best.

Sometimes we can feel limited in our church communities – like certain things might not be ‘appropriate’ to ask or think. But the reality is that at our best we get the chance to ask questions, share stories, and learn from each other. We believe we are created to be curious, and to encounter new ideas, new concepts, new insights and understandings.

In this episode, Peter Rollins joins us to talk about parables, his book The Divine Magician, and some of the new ideas he is exploring in his work. Peter is a provocative writer, philosopher, storyteller and public speaker who has gained an international reputation for overturning traditional notions of religion and challenging us to consider different ways of thinking about our world and faith.

News of the presidential race is everywhere. And in the midst of this national conversation, faith continues to play an important role – everything between the way a candidate’s faith might subtly influence their political perspective, to candidates who wear it on their sleeve to a point that seems insincere or dishonest.

In this episode, Tim Penny joins us to talk a bit about the intersection of religion and politics. Tim served in the Minnesota State Senate from 1976-1982, and served 6 terms in the US House of Representatives from 1982-1994. He currently serves as the President and CEO of Southern Minnesota Initiative Foundation where key interests include early childhood and entrepreneur development. Tim is also a senior fellow at the University of Minnesota’s Humphrey Institute.

There are plenty of things that make us angry, even outraged. Some of the things that make us feel this way are important and others we should just let pass by, but somehow our reaction is often reversed. What does it take for us to channel this outrage better? How do we begin to set a different tone?

Watch Stephen Colbert interview Bill O’Reilley on The Late Show, February 9, 2016.

Further reading:
Why Am I So Angry? from WebMD
The Psychology of Outrage in the Political World from Psychology Today
Parker Molloy’s 5 things the media does to manufacture outrage at Medium.com
7 Ways to Engage Your Customer’s Reptilian Brain at NeuroScienceMarketing.com

In November we welcomed Heatherlyn and Jason to the Sandbox stage. While they were here we talked with them about pursuing dreams, challenging current cultural narratives, and the idea of sacred economics and the gift economy. Heatherlyn also shares some of her music with us in this episode.

For more about Heatherlyn and Jason visit heatherlynmusic.com

Further reading:
‘Sacred Economics’ by Charles Eisenstein

What if we actually started at the beginning of the story? Sometimes the church seems to be saying the things that seem exactly opposite of the way that Jesus lived and the things he taught, and opposite of what many Christians seem to intuitively understand about who God is. It seems like somewhere we’ve maybe gotten the story a bit backwards.