In this episode Parker & Carrie explore how to hold and acknowledge the presence of evil and great goodness in our world. In this honest and open hearted conversation they visit two poems that encourage reflection and insights on this topic, holding the tension of the heaviness we sometimes feel and what we can do in our daily lives to maintain perspective and hope.

This month on The Growing Edge podcast. Parker and Carrie talk with Ariel Burger, author, teacher, and artist whose work integrates spirituality, the arts and strategies for social change.  An Orthodox-trained rabbi, Ariel received his Ph.D. in Jewish Studies and Conflict Resolution under Elie Wiesel. We explore topics from Ariel's book Witness: Lessons from Elie Wiesel's Classroom, his work as founding director and senior scholar of The Witness Institute, the nature of hope, navigating conflict, and the intersection of spirituality and art. It’s a conversation that stimulates reflection and inspires hope.

This month on The Growing Edge Podcast we will be revisiting our Feb 2021 conversation with John Paul Lederach, Professor Emeritus of International Peace Building, and internationally respected expert in conflict transformation. John Paul describes the stages that lead to violence in a society, as well as the ways people heal and create communal networks of change. In a time when we are all deeply concerned about the tragic violence happening The Ukraine, The Growing Edge is revisiting this Powerful conversation about how hope for a more peaceful world happens in daily and personal ways as well as through community, national and global efforts.

In this episode, Carrie & Parker welcome poet Lynn Ungar. In 2020 Her poem "Pandemic" went viral and introduce her insightful, spiritual, wry and sometimes political writing to a wider audience. We consider two different poems and discuss the role of the artist in public discourse.

In this episode Parker & Carrie discuss spirituality, justice and living authentically with author and theologian, Diana Butler Bass. Diana talks about her history as a person of faith, the challenges for woman in theological settings, her writing and work with "The Cottage" as an ongoing exploration what it means to live a life of revolutionary love.

In this episode Carrie & Parker welcome Author/Poet Barbara Kingsolver. Together they discuss the natural world, mortality, the promise of ambiguity, making, the writer's life, knitting and her new book of luminous poetry How To Fly (in Ten Thousands Easy Lessons.

This month on The Growing Edge podcast we revisit our December 2018 conversation with poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Naomi has received numerous honors for her work, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, and the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. She is currently the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate. In this conversation we read and discuss her luminous poem, “Shoulders” and explore the gift of being present to the small moments of our lives. We loved this conversation, and still treasure the life-giving ideas and stories that came up as we talked. Warmest Greetings of the season from The Growing Edge, and a lovely gift of wisdom from Naomi Shihab Nye!

This month on The Growing Edge podcast we revisit our December 2018 conversation with poet Naomi Shihab Nye. Naomi has received numerous honors for her work, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Book Critics Circle, and the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. She is currently the Poetry Foundation’s Young People’s Poet Laureate. In this conversation we read and discuss her luminous poem, “Shoulders” and explore the gift of being present to the small moments of our lives. We loved this conversation, and still treasure the life-giving ideas and stories that came up as we talked. Warmest Greetings of the season from The Growing Edge, and a lovely gift of wisdom from Naomi Shihab Nye!

In this episode Carrie and Parker discuss May Sarton's powerful poem, "The Angels & The Furies."   In this conversation we talk about the angels and furies of our nature.  In these times when many of us are wrestling with what to do with our furies in life giving ways, what does it mean to be "perfectly human but never perfect"?   How do we also incline our heads and notice where the graces of our lives appear and support our own better angels?  And finally, how do we balance the both/and of our lives.

In this episode Carrie and Parker continue their conversation about creativity and the undivided life, writing from the "margins", following a call to and beyond the growing edge, and the red threads that run through Parker's work over the past 50 years. This podcast also features one of Parker's poems, "The Poem I Would Have Writ."