On the Nature of Healing: Healing Circles at Commonweal / Diana Lindsay and Host Michael Lerner

Storytelling for Thriving Communities: A Spiritual Biography / Jerry Millhon and Host Michael Lerner

Join host Michael Lerner for an exploration of Jerry Millhon's life and work—his life journey to founding Thriving Communities and the many other projects he helped found or nourish in a life dedicated to service.

Jerry Millhon

Jerry Millhon founded Thriving Communities as an initiative of the Whidbey Institute while he was the Institute’s Executive Director from 2010-2015. His skill in organizing and managing projects and mentoring leaders helped the Institute through a challenging time of transition. He launched Thriving Communities in 2011 to focus on connecting, filming, encouraging, and celebrating people within organizations who make their communities thrive because of their work. It is his hope that our stories will inspire others to start similar projects in their community. In a challenging world, there is an inordinate amount of good news! 

Host Michael Lerner

Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).

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The New School at Commonweal is a collaborative learning community offering conversations about nature, culture, and inner life---so that we can all find meaning, meet inspiring people, and explore the beauty and grief of our changing world. The New School at Commonweal . Please like/follow our Soundcloud channel for more great podcasts.

~Co-presented with Commonweal’s Collaborative for Health and the Environment and University of California San Francisco’s Science Action Network~

Scientific findings can inform stronger policies that protect public health — which sometimes negatively impacts profits of companies that produce health-harming chemicals and products.

Industry intimidation of researchers who explore the impact of exposure to chemicals and other substances on human health is a longstanding problem. When Dr. Herbert Needleman found his credibility under fire after publishing data linking children’s lead exposure to lower IQs in the early 1980s, he offered this advice to early career environmental health scientists:

“Do not avoid difficult areas of investigation. Take risks. If scientists exclusively choose the safe routes, avoid controversial research problems, and play only minor variations of someone else’s themes, they voluntarily turn themselves into technicians. Our craft will indeed be in peril.”

At a time when strong, independent science is more important than ever, corporations are ramping up attacks on scientists in the environmental health field. In this CHE Café conversation, Dr. Lisa Bero and Dr. Lariah Edwards will share their own stories of industry intimidation, and reflect on steps needed to protect researchers and maintain scientific integrity.

CHE Director Kristin Schafer will host the conversation.

Lisa Bero, PhD is a Chief Scientist at the Center for Bioethics and Humanities at Colorado University. She is a leader in evidence synthesis, meta-research and studying commercial determinants of health, focusing on tobacco control, pharmaceutical policy, and public health. She provides international leadership for multidisciplinary teams studying the quality, use and implementation of research for health and health policy. Dr. Bero has developed and validated qualitative and quantitative methods for assessing bias in the design, conduct and dissemination of research. She has pioneered the utilization of internal industry documents and transparency databases to understand corporate tactics and motives for influencing research evidence. She is internationally recognized for her work and serves on national and international guidelines committees such as US National Academies of Science Committees and the World Health Organization Essential Medicines.

Lariah Edwards, PhD is an Associate Research Scientist at the Department of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia University’s School of Mailman School of Public Health. She is also an alumna Fellow and current Assistant Director of Agents of Change in Environmental Justice. Dr. Edwards’ research focuses on understanding the health effects of and addressing exposure disparities to hormone-altering chemicals commonly found in consumer and personal care products. As part of this work, she collaborates with WE ACT for Environmental Justice on its campaign that seeks to educate consumers about the dangers of toxic beauty products. Dr. Edwards also draws on her experience in the areas of chemical policy and regulatory applications and science communication, as she feels addressing exposure disparities requires a multidisciplinary approach.

The subject tonight is Love

And for tomorrow night as well,

As a matter of fact

I know of no better topic

For us to discuss

Until we all

Die! - Hafiz

Crisis, war, injustice, and violence have a certain logic—and social change processes working to address these challenges carry a similar, reactionary logic. How can love help us to step out of the perceived reality of “what is possible” in building peace during conflict? Turning points in conflicts and crises are often mysterious, require acts of enormous creativity, and a willingness to risk. Social change is an artistic act, mobilizing love and prophetic imagination–and it requires us to step into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence.

Kalyanee Mam: In the last conversation in the series, meet Kalyanee Mam, a filmmaker who was born in Cambodia, escaped the Khmer Rouge, and has spent most of her life trying to understand the root cause of war, destruction, and displacement and how we can return home again. Her debut documentary feature, A River Changes Course, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival.

View Kalyanee’s film “Lost World” (an excerpt is featured in this podcast) at: https://emergencemagazine.org/feature/lost-world/

Kalyanee Mam

Born in Battambang, Cambodia, during the Khmer Rouge regime, which claimed the lives of over 2 million people, Kalyanee and her family were displaced from both their land and their home. Kalyanee has spent most of her life trying to understand the root cause of war, destruction, and displacement and how we can return home again. After returning to Cambodia and spending years living with families in the forests, on the Tonle Sap, and in the countryside, she understands how intimately connected their way of life is to the land, forests, and water and the neak ta or land and water spirits that protect them. Her debut documentary feature, A River Changes Course, won the World Cinema Grand Jury Prize for Documentary at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden Gate Award for Best Feature Documentary at the San Francisco International Film Festival. Her other works include the documentary shorts Lost World, Fight for Areng Valley, Between Earth & Sky, and Cries of Our Ancestors. She has also worked as a cinematographer and associate producer on the 2011 Oscar-winning documentary Inside Job. She is currently working on a new feature documentary, The Fire and the Bird’s Nest.

Serena Bian

Serena is pursuing a life that remains attentive to the tenderness of a snail’s soft body and reverent to the miracle of its spiraled shell. Working with U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Serena serves as a Special Advisor and brings a spiritual and systemic understanding to the public health crisis of loneliness and isolation. As a chaplain-in-training, Serena is pursuing questions of how we chaplain the end of extractive systems that isolate communities from themselves and one another. She is involved with multi-generational, multi-spiritual communities like the Nuns and Nones, devoted to courage, peacebuilding, and love. She participates on the Board of Commonweal and CoGenerate.

#newschoolcommonweal #commonweal #interfaith #peacebuilding #peace

Welcome, Wild Times: Conversation with Resilience Leaders in the Global South | Bienvenidos Tiempos turbulentos: conversaciones con líderes de resiliencia en el Sur Global

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These are wild times to be alive. From the local to the global, we are facing complex, interlocked crises. Yet, around the world people are responding in creative, dynamic, grounded ways to adapt and emerge. Omega Resilience Awards, a new program of Commonweal, was created to gather a community of people interested in resilient strategies. Join The New School co-host Michael Lerner in conversation with three of the co-creators of this dynamic global resilience community. In this session number three, Michael speaks with Anabella Museri and Sofia Nemenmann from Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas/Colectivo de Acción por la Justicia Ecosocial in Argentina.

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Estamos viviendo tiempos turbulentos. A nivel local y global, estamos enfrentando crisis complejas y entrelazadas. Sin embargo, hay personas alrededor del mundo que responden a ellas de forma creativa, dinámica, y con fundamentos que les permiten adaptarse y resurgir. Omega Resilience Awards es un nuevo programa de Commonweal que fue creado para congregar a una comunidad de personas interesadas en estrategias resilientes. Sé parte de estas conversaciones con el coanfitrión de The New School con tres de los cocreadores de esta comunidad dinámica de resiliencia global. En esta tercera edición, Michael tiene una charla con Anabella Museri y Sofia Nemenmann de la Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas.

Anabella Museri has a bachelor’s degree in Political Science and a postgraduate degree in Sociology of Law. She has 15 years of experience working on research, advocacy and the promotion of human rights (HR) in the public sector and for local and international NGOs. She specialized in criminal justice and the prison system, and throughout her career she has also worked on environment, gender equality, healthcare and other issues related to the human rights agenda. She is dedicated to the development of projects, networks, and creative strategies to denounce human rights violations, generate empathy and promote social change. And she is also working as project manager on the intersection point of arts and HR, developing projects that seek to generate awareness on social issues. She enjoys accompanying projects and institutional processes with strategic and creative actions that promote social change, both within organizations and in the communities to which they belong.

Sofia Nemenmann is an ecofeminist activist who lives in Bariloche, Argentina. In 2013, together with a great friend, she co-founded Río Santa Cruz Sin Represas, a socio-environmental project that aims to stop the construction of two mega hydroelectric dams on the Santa Cruz River. Based on this project, she directed a documentary called “El último río de la patagonia” (The Last Free River of Patagonia). She is currently co-director of the Argentine Association of Environmental Lawyers and advisor for Argentina of the Global Greengrants Fund.

Join us for the first in a series of sacred music celebrations at Commonweal, presented in collaboration with long-time Commonweal friend Toby Symington. Held at the solstice and equinox, the concerts—and gatherings afterward—are designed to bring people together in a convivial setting around music which delights, inspires, and elevates the soul. The performing artists are highly accomplished musicians who are deeply in touch with the numinous dimension of reality. In this first concert of the series, join us for a piano concert from Maryliz Smith, including pieces of her own composition as well as other inspiring and sacred music.

From Maryliz:

“I have traveled the world as a performance artist, collaborating with remarkable individuals such as David Whyte, Brian Swimme, Matthew Fox and Joanna Macy, using music as a sacred art to create optimal conditions for diverse groups to more easily access collective intelligence using reflections, stories and music dedicated specifically for the gathering at hand. I have come out of a virtuosic, classical tradition as a concert organist with a signature sound that is a contemplative, post-minimalist style, often using the acoustic piano to draw listeners into the complex landscape of their emotions where ‘the mind has no defense.’”

Maryliz Smith

Coming out of a virtuosic, classical tradition as a concert organist, Maryliz’s signature sound is one of post-minimalism, using both acoustic and electroacoustic keyboards to draw listeners into a complexity of emotions. She is inspired by single moments that can change the trajectory of a life, a living system, a culture, and she translates these into musical language, a language she describes as her first.

Maryliz is also co-founder of Commonweal Cancer Help Programs' sister center, Callanish, a non-profit organization based in Vancouver, B.C. dedicated to creating space for people who have been irrevocably changed by cancer. She contributes her arts-based perspective, in company with a remarkable team, to provide a gentle catalyst for people to move as deeply as they wish into themselves to reconnect with the essentials of life.

#commonweal #sacredmusic #musicthatheals #healingmusic #solstice #summersolstice

Join Host Steve Heilig as we bring back author, actor, and local celebrity Peter Coyote to The New School. They talk about Peter’s recent books—Zen in the Vernacular: Things As It Is, and Tongue of A Crow—and ramble across many other topics.

Peter Coyote

Peter has written five books including the international bestseller Sleeping Where I Fall and_The Rainman’s Third Cure: An Irregular Education,_ which reached second on the Marin County bestseller list. His third book, entitled The Lone Ranger and Tonto Meet the Buddha, outlines a long-standing series of classes he runs using acting, improvisation and masks to induce temporary ego-free states and is based on Peter’s work as a Zen Buddhist student of more than 40 years. As an actor, he has performed for some of the world’s most distinguished filmmakers, including Barry Levinson, Roman Polanski, Pedro Almodovar, Steven Spielberg, Martin Ritt, Steven Soderberg, Sidney Pollack and Jean Paul Rappeneau. He was the co-host of the Academy Award show with Billy Crystal in 2020. He is a double Emmy-Award winning narrator of more than 160 documentary films, including Ken Burns acclaimed The Roosevelts, for which he received his second Emmy nomination in July 2015.

Steve Heilig

Steve is director of Public Health and Education for the San Francisco Medical Society and the Collaborative for Health and Environment at Commonweal, co-editor of the Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, and a clinical ethicist at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. He is also a trained hospice worker and former volunteer and director of the Zen Hospice Project. A longtime book critic for the San Francisco Chronicle and other publications, he has authored more than 400 pieces on a wide range of medical, public health, ecological, literary, and other topics.

#petercoyote #coyote #commonweal #newschoolcommonweal #conversationsthatmatter #tongueofacrow #poetry #zen #buddhism

Manisha Gupta and Host Michael Lerner

These are wild times to be alive. From the local to the global, we are facing complex, interlocked crises. Yet, around the world people are responding in creative, dynamic, grounded ways to adapt and emerge. Omega Resilience Awards, a new program of Commonweal, was created to gather a community of people interested in resilient strategies. Collectively, we strengthen generative connections and share narratives of resilience. What will emerge? What will coalesce?

Join The New School co-host Michael Lerner in conversation with three of the co-creators of this dynamic global resilience community. In this session number two, Michael speaks with Manisha Gupta from StartUp! in India. In June, join us for conversation with Anabella Museri and Sofia Nemenmann from Asociación Argentina de Abogados/as Ambientalistas/Colectivo de Acción por la Justicia Ecosocial in Argentina. Find recordings from our first conversation with Nnimmo Bassey from Health of Mother Earth Foundation in Nigeria on our website and all our media sites.

Manisha Gupta

Manisha was a journalist before she joined the social entrepreneurship sector. For 27 years, she has worked to build the ecosystem of social entrepreneurship in India. Manisha worked with Ashoka: Innovators for the Public for nine years as the India Country Representative and International Director for Ashoka’s youth programs. In 2009, she founded Start Up! – an incubator, impact accelerator and leadership springboard for social entrepreneurs. Under her leadership, Start Up! has seeded and scaled more than 100 social ventures across 17 states. It has trained 500+ early-stage social and cultural entrepreneurs to build high-impact change models. Manisha has co-authored two books, 1098-Childline Calling and Opening Doors: Ten Years of Ford Foundation’s International Fellowships in India. She is a passionate believer of creating deep impact through collaborations with communities on the ground.

Michael Lerner

Michael is the president and co-founder of Commonweal. His principal work at Commonweal is with the Cancer Help Program, CancerChoices.org, the Omega Resilience Projects, the Collaborative on Health and the Environment, and The New School at Commonweal. He was the recipient of a MacArthur Prize Fellowship for contributions to public health in 1983 and is author of Choices in Healing: Integrating the Best of Conventional and Complementary Therapies (MIT Press).

#commonweal #omega #resilience #ashoka #collaborativeimpact

The subject tonight is Love

And for tomorrow night as well,

As a matter of fact

I know of no better topic

For us to discuss

Until we all

Die! - Hafiz

Crisis, war, injustice, and violence have a certain logic—and social change processes working to address these challenges carry a similar, reactionary logic. How can love help us to step out of the perceived reality of “what is possible” in building peace during conflict? Turning points in conflicts and crises are often mysterious, require acts of enormous creativity, and a willingness to risk. Social change is an artistic act, mobilizing love and prophetic imagination–and it requires us to step into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence.

In this series, join Host Serena Bian in speaking with three people who bear witness to the best and worst of humanity, holding a courageous moral imagination. Working and witnessing the front lines of injustice, war, climate change, these peacebuilders, mystics, storytellers hold space for the miraculous to emerge, refusing to be bound by a perceived reality of “what is possible.”

Events in the serves

Monday, April 29 | Deepa Patel

Weds, May 29 | Aljosie Aldrich Harding

Tues, June 25 | Kalyanee Mam

Aljosie Aldrich Harding

Reared in segregated North Carolina, Aljosie began learning, teaching, and building social justice skills along with organizing in the 1960s as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Lome, Togo, West Africa. She has been a servant-leader at the Institute of the Black World (Atlanta), a think tank and advocacy organization, and the Learning House (Atlanta) an independent Afrocentric freedom school. She has worked in community organizing in several southern and northern cities and in empowerment building with women’s circles, organizations, and colleges. With her co-worker, partner, and late husband, Vincent Harding, she built intergenerational relationships with social justice and peace organizations across the United States and abroad. Her organizational links have included the Bruderhof, Soka Gakkai International, Young Adult Quakers, the Dorothy Cotton Institute, the Walter Rodney Symposium and Foundation, Tewa Women United, Kid Cultivators, and the Yale-National University of Singapore. As a spiritual guide (director) she shares healing justice practices in all her organizational work.

Serena Bian

Serena is pursuing a life that remains attentive to the tenderness of a snail’s soft body and reverent to the miracle of its spiraled shell. Working with U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Serena serves as a Special Advisor and brings a spiritual and systemic understanding to the public health crisis of loneliness and isolation. As a chaplain-in-training, Serena is pursuing questions of how we chaplain the end of extractive systems that isolate communities from themselves and one another. She is involved with multi-generational, multi-spiritual communities like the Nuns and Nones, devoted to courage, peacebuilding, and love. She participates on the Board of Commonweal and CoGenerate.

#newschoolcommonweal #commonweal #interfaith #peacebuilding #peace

The subject tonight is Love

And for tomorrow night as well,

As a matter of fact

I know of no better topic

For us to discuss

Until we all

Die! - Hafiz

Crisis, war, injustice, and violence have a certain logic—and social change processes working to address these challenges carry a similar, reactionary logic. How can love help us to step out of the perceived reality of “what is possible” in building peace during conflict? Turning points in conflicts and crises are often mysterious, require acts of enormous creativity, and a willingness to risk. Social change is an artistic act, mobilizing love and prophetic imagination–and it requires us to step into the mystery of the unknown that lies beyond the far too familiar landscape of violence.

In this series, join Host Serena Bian in speaking with three people who bear witness to the best and worst of humanity, holding a courageous moral imagination. Working and witnessing the front lines of injustice, war, climate change, these peacebuilders, mystics, storytellers hold space for the miraculous to emerge, refusing to be bound by a perceived reality of “what is possible.”

Weds, May 29 10am Pacific Time | Aljosie Aldrich Harding

Tues, June 25, 10am Pacific Time | Kalyanee Mam

Deepa Patel

Deepa is a facilitator with a specialism in interdisciplinary collaboration and a passion for the arts, social justice, conversation, and living a contemplative life. She was born in Kenya to Indian parents and lives in England. This experience has shaped both her professional and personal life. Deepa has worked as a youth worker, in the field of cultural diversity, as a Live Music producer, and in music education with the BBC. Her current work is with The London College of Fashion, UNHCR, and the University of Sheffield in refugee camps in Jordan and Africa and with the Fetzer Institute on two projects, one on creating sacred space in the virtual world and the other on their shared spiritual heritage project. Deepa is a guide and teacher in the Inayatiyya (a Sufi lineage) and co-chair of the Inayatiyya International Board. She is also the chair of the Tamasha Theatre Company, an advisor to the Loss Foundation, a cancer and COVID bereavement support service, and to the Charis Foundation for New Monasticism and Interspirituality on their interfaith dialogue projects.

Serena Bian

Serena is pursuing a life that remains attentive to the tenderness of a snail’s soft body and reverent to the miracle of its spiraled shell. Working with U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, Serena serves as a Special Advisor and brings a spiritual and systemic understanding to the public health crisis of loneliness and isolation. As a chaplain-in-training, Serena is pursuing questions of how we chaplain the end of extractive systems that isolate communities from themselves and one another. She is involved with multi-generational, multi-spiritual communities like the Nuns and Nones, devoted to courage, peacebuilding, and love. She participates on the Board of Commonweal and CoGenerate.

#newschoolcommonweal #commonweal #interfaith #peacebuilding #peace #