The New Dimensions Café

Joel Fotinos is a vice president at Penguin Random House Publishers and publisher of the Tarcher/Penguin imprint. He’s also a licensed minister with the Centers for Spiritual Living. He is the author and coauthor of several books including The Prayer Chest (Doubleday Religion 2007), Multiply Your Blessings (Hampton Roads 2012), A Little Daily Wisdom (Paraclete Press 2009), Think and Grow Rich Starter Kit (Napoleon Hill) (Tarcher 2014), The Think and Grow Rich Journey: Enhance and Enrich Your Path to Success (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013), My Life Contract: 90-Day Program for Prioritizing Goals, Staying on Track, Keeping Focused, and Getting Results (Weiser Books 2014)  Interview Date: 5/28/2015   Tags: Joel Fotinos, Personal Life Contract, contract, joy, goals, my life contract, commitment, excuses, consistency, Personal Transformation, Self Help. Writing, Philosophy

Father Matthew Fox, Ph.D. was a member of the Dominican order of the Catholic Church for 34 years. He was silenced for a year and later expelled from the Dominican order under the Papal Sees of John Paul II and Benedict the XVI. He then joined the Episcopal Church to work with young people and to create postmodern forms of ritual and worship known as The Cosmic Mass. He is the cofounder of the Order of The Sacred Earth and is an author of many books including Original Blessing (Tarcher 2000), Hildegard of Bingen: A Saint for Our Times (Nameste Publishing 2012), Letters to Pope Francis (CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform 2013), Meister Eckhart: A Mystic-Warrior for Our Times (New World Library 2014), Confessions: The Making of a Post-Denominational Priest (HarperSanFrancisco 2015), A Way to God: Thomas Merton's Creation Spirituality Journey (New World Library 2016), Order of the Sacred Earth: An Intergenerational Vision of Love and Action (coauthors Skylar Wilson, and Jennifer Listug) (Monkfish 2018), Sheer Joy: Conversations with Thomas Aquinas on Creation Spirituality (Ixia 2020), The Tao of Thomas Aquinas: Fierce Wisdom for Hard Times (iUniverse 2020), Julian of Norwich: Wisdom In A Time Of Pandemic And Beyond (iUniverse 2020) Interview Date: 7/2/2021   Tags: Matthew Fox, bubonic plague, flagellation, Middle Ages, Goodness, God is nature, dualism, trust, Divine Feminine, Saint Augustine, suffering, wisdom, original sin original goodness, Hildegard of Bingen, web of creation, species extinction, return to normal, common breakdown, new normal, immigration, mass migration, sacred Earth, warriorship for the Earth, compassion, joy, grief, suffering, Spirituality, Philosophy, Social Change/Politics, Women’s Studies, History, Ecology/Nature/Environment

Michael Meade is a renowned storyteller, author, scholar of mythology, and student of ritual in traditional cultures. He has scoured the world to bring to us meaningful folk tales that tap into ancestral sources of wisdom and acts as a guide to connect them to the stories we are living today. Meade is the founder of Mosaic Multicultural Foundation. He also offers regular Living Myths Podcasts and is the author of many books including: Why the World Doesn't End: Tales of Renewal in Times of Loss (GreenfirePress 2012), Fate and Destiny: The Two Agreements of the Soul (GreenFire Press 2012), The Genius Myth (GreenfirePress 2016), Awakening the Soul: A Deep Response to a Troubled World (GreenFire Press 2018), The Water of Life: Initiation and the Tempering of the Soul (GreenFire Press 2019)Interview Date: 6/17/2021      Tags: Michael Meade, rite of passage, 3 steps to initiation, ordeal, separation, renewal, community, Jed Diamond, polarization, bone memory, unfinished funerals, coming of age rituals, song, singing, Jill Purce, church steeples, spirit, pandemic, global suffering, Islamic call to prayer, plotline, our individual thread, storytelling, communitas, Social Change/ Politics, Mythology, Personal Transformation, community

Sy Montgomery is a naturalist, documentary scriptwriter and author of many books, which often include stories of her encounters with animals. During research for her books, films, and articles, Sy Montgomery has been chased by an angry silver back gorilla in Zaire and bitten by a vampire bat in Costa Rica. She worked in a pit of 18,000 snakes in Manitoba and handled a wild tarantula in French Guiana. She holds an honorary doctorate from the University System of New Hampshire. Her many books have garnered numerous awards, and include The Curious Naturalist: Nature’s Everyday Mysteries (Down East Books 1991), Search for the Golden Moon Bear: Science and Adventure in Pursuit of a New Species (Chelsea Green Publishing 2009), The Good, Good Pig: The Extraordinary Life of Christopher Hogwood (Ballantine Books 2007), Birdology: Adventures with a Pack of Hens, a Peck of Pigeons, Cantankerous Crows, Fierce Falcons, Hip Hop Parrots, Baby Hummingbirds, and One Murderously Big Living Dinosaur (Atria Books 2011), The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration Into the Wonder of Consciousness. (Atria Books 2015), How to Be a Good Creature: A Memoir in Thirteen Animals (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2018), Becoming a Good Creature (a children’s book) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2020), Condor Comeback (Scientists in the Field Series) (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt 2020), The Hummingbirds’ Gift: Wonder, Beauty, and Renewal on Wings (Atria Books 2021)Interview Date: 6/4/2021     Tags: Montgomery, hummingbirds, pollinators, Brenda Sherburn LaBelle, grass lawns, milkweed, monarch butterflies, Animals, Ecology/Nature/Environment

Regina Louise is a teacher and coach on advocacy work. Her memoir was featured in a Lifetime movie, I Am Somebody’s Child. She’s a Hoffman Process teacher. She is the author of two memoirs: Somebody’s Someone: A Memoir (Agate Bolden 2008) and Someone Has Led This Child To Believe: A Memoir  (Agate Bolden 2018), as well as Permission Granted: Kick-Ass Strategies to Bootstrap Your Way to Unconditional Self-Love (New World Library 2021)Interview Date: 7/19/2021     Tags: Regina Louise, mothering yourself, inner critic, letter of recommendation, character reference, dignity, false modesty, intimacy, journal writing, emotional signature, self-love, unworthiness, primal wound, Personal Transformation

Patrice Vecchione is a poet, author, and artist. She teaches creative writing retreats, and collage and poetry workshops. She has also worked with children, leading classes in poetry and the imagination in elementary, middle, and high schools. She is the author of several books including Writing and the Spiritual Life: Finding Your Voice by Looking Within (McGraw Hill 2001) and Step Into Nature: Nurturing Imagination and Spirit in Everyday Life (Beyond Words Publishing 2015)Interview Date: 5/12/2015    Tags: Patrice Vecchione, backpacking, nature, woods, starlight, owl, trees, holding mass in nature, the natural world, Ecology/Nature/Environment, Personal Transformation, Spirituality

Barbara Marx Hubbard, Ph.D (1929-2019) shares with us ways we can be conscious evolutionaries. She was a visionary futurist and evolutionary educator. She was the cofounder and chair of the board of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution and was a guide and teacher for The Shift Network's Agents of Conscious Evolution training. She was the author of : Birth 2012 and Beyond: Humanity's Great Shift to the Age of Conscious Evolution (Shift Books 2012)Interview Date: 6/29/2012  Tags: Barbara Marx Hubbard, Conscious evolution, Philosophy

Laura Basha, Ph.D. holds a combined doctorate in clinical and organizational psychology. She’s an international consultant in leadership development and a personal coach. And she is a fine artist whose paintings reside in many private collections. She is the author of The Inward Outlook (Xlibris 2014)Interview Date: 4/9/2015   Tags: Laura Basha, creating your response to your experience, choice point, victim, creating our experience, creating our reality, value system, your personal purpose, silence, a quiet mind, Muir Woods, Philosophy, Personal Transformation

Bodhipaksa was born Graeme Stephen in Scotland and currently lives and teaches in New Hampshire. He is a Buddhist teacher and author who has been practicing within the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order since 1982 and has been a member of this order since 1993. Bodhipaksa runs the online meditation center, Wildmind, to increase awareness of the positive effects of meditation. His published works include The Wisdom of the Breath (CD) (Sounds True 2009), Wildmind (Windhorse 2010) and Living As a River: Finding Fearlessness in the Face of Change (Sounds True 2010)Interview Date: 10/22/2010  Tags: Bodhipaksa, retreats, mindfulness, happiness, consciousness, Spirituality, Buddhism, Science, Meditation

Priscilla Stuckey is a writer, book editor, scholar, and Earth-advocate. She teaches humanities at Prescott College and holds a Ph.D. in religious studies and feminist theory from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. She is the author of Kissed by a Fox: And Other Stories of Friendship in Nature (Counterpoint 2012) Interview Date: 1/21/2013   Tags: Priscilla Stuckey, Ph.D., Fox, wild animals, reading trees, natural world, biodegradable, plastic, trash, techno-nutrients, eating close to home, zero waste, Peralta Creek, gratitude, Ecology/Nature/Environment, Community