Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

Noted author, editor and futurist Stephan A. Schwartz in conversation with Michael Lerner.

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner and Commonweal Integrative Law Institute’s Pauline Tesler for a conversation with Dr. Fred Luskin about his work on the powers of forgiveness. The conversation will explore the intersection of Fred’s work with Commonweal’s many healing programs and with the Integrative Law Institute’s work on conflict resolution in legal disputes involving important human relationships. Dr. Luskin’s forgiveness work has been applied in veteran’s hospitals and churches to help in resolving legal disputes, with cancer patients as psycho education, and in psychotherapy. Dr. Luskin’s work has been made into a PBS pledge drive video called Forgive for Good. He has been interviewed many hundreds of times in world-wide media, including the New York Times, O Magazine, Today Show, Los Angeles Times, Time Magazine, Huffington Post, and CBS Morning News.

Hanmin Liu and Jennifer Mei of Wildflowers Institute in conversation with Commonweal president and TNS host, Michael Lerner.

Historian and author Adam Hochschild wrote King Leopold's Ghost, To End All Wars, and Bury the Chains. He was a civil rights worker in Mississippi in 1964, a co-founder of Mother Jones, and a writer and editor for Ramparts. This conversation had a slide presentation given during the first approximately 45 minutes. A PDF of that presentation is available at the following link so that listeners may generally follow along: http://tns.commonweal.org/new-school/audiofiles/podcast/Adam_Hochschild_Spain_slides.pdf

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for a conversation with composer, educator, and internationally recognized consultant on learning, Aaron Stern. Aaron founded the Academy for the Love of Learning, an innovative non-profit educational institution based in Santa Fe, New Mexico. The Academy has led to community-based programs including Teacher Renewal, El Otro Lado in the Schools, multi-generational programs such as Lifesongs, and a city-wide mentorship program called Inspire. Aaron conceived the Academy with musician Leonard Bernstein, and continues to serve as its educational leader and president. Aaron Stern founded the Academy for the Love of Learning, which was conceived with musician Leonard Bernstein, as a “think and do tank” to develop, practice, and foster research on its transformative learning methods, which are designed to activate the natural love of learning in people of all ages. Aaron also conceived and co-founded Ventana, an organization that aims to transform the workplace by supporting a reconnection with and enlivening of ethical values, an alignment of values with practices, and the cultivation of capacities for transformative learning within or across organizational contexts. Aaron is a fellow of the Mind & Life Institute and is currently a member of its Board of Trustees. Stern has served on the boards of various educational and social benefit institutions and currently serves on the boards of trustees of two major philanthropic foundations.

Benjamin P. Marcus is the Religious Literacy Specialist with the Religious Freedom Center of the Newseum Institute, where he examines the intersection of education, religious literacy, and identity formation in the United States. Join Commonweal Executive Director Oren Slozberg in conversation with Ben on the subject of religious studies in the educational system. Benjamin P. Marcus has developed religious literacy programs for public schools, universities, U.S. government organizations, and private foundations, and he has delivered presentations on religion at universities and nonprofits in the U.S. and abroad. He is a contributing author in the forthcoming Oxford Handbook on Religion and American Education, where he writes about the importance of religious literacy education. In 2016, Marcus was awarded a grant from the Germanacos Foundation to write lesson plans about religion for public secondary schools and to convene a regional conference on religious literacy pedagogies with teachers, administrators, subject matter experts, and professional consultants. He earned an MTS at Harvard Divinity School and studied religion at the University of Cambridge and Brown University, where he graduated magna cum laude.

Fall of 2017 has seen radical changes in the physical and psychic landscape of Northern California. The fires that began late Sunday night, October 8th, quickly engulfed homes and dreams, woodlands, and security. Many of us awoke in the middle of the night to the acrid smell of smoke, sensing that something was wrong. Only later, with the dawn light, were we able to see the extent of this disturbing truth. Everyone has been affected, whether we lost a loved one, a home, a beloved pet, our place of employment, a trail that we cherished, or simply our sense of faith in the ordinary assurances of daily life. We are living in a collective field of sorrows that will take a long time to metabolize. Join TNS Host Irwin Keller and Francis Weller in sharing thoughts to help us tend our soul during traumatic times. Through poetry, song, simple ritual and our mutual vulnerability, we will create a sudden village to hold what we cannot hold alone. Francis Weller, MFT, is a psychotherapist, writer and soul activist. He is a master of synthesizing diverse streams of thought from psychology, anthropology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures and poetic traditions. Author of The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, and The Threshold Between Loss and Revelation, (with Rashani Réa) he has introduced the healing work of ritual to thousands of people. He founded and directs WisdomBridge, an organization that offers educational programs that seek to integrate the wisdom from indigenous cultures with the insights and knowledge gathered from western poetic, psychological and spiritual traditions. His work was featured in The Sun magazine (October 2015) and the Utne Reader (Fall 2016). Francis is currently on staff at Commonweal Cancer Help Program, co-leading their week-long retreats with Michael Lerner. He is currently completing his third book, A Trail on the Ground: Living a Soulful Life and Why It Matters.

Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for another conversation with physician, artist, and author Michael Samuels, one of the foremost experts in body, mind, spirit medicine today. Michael Samuels, MD, is a physician, artist, guided imagery specialist, and author. His best selling books The Well Body Book and the Well Pregnancy Book were amongst the first books in self help and holistic medicine. As a physician, he has worked with guided imagery and patients with life threatening illness for more than 25 years. His book Seeing With the Mind’s Eye was the first book on guided imagery and is the classic in the field. As director of Art As A Healing Force, an organization which networks artists and healers, he is a leading expert on art and healing and creativity and healing. Michael attended Brown University where he studied Yoga and shamanism under Kees Bolle, Carlos Castanada’s teacher. He then went to New York University College of Medicine and became a research immunogeneticist studying how white blood cells make antibodies. After his residency, he was in the Public Health Service as a physician on the Hopi and Navaho reservation and has gone on to be a healer in many capacities.

David Best and his crews built the first Burning Man Temple in 2000, which marked the beginning of a new and profound ritual for the tens of thousands of participants who attend Burning Man each year. After days of writing prayers on the structures, of affixing offerings from one’s life such as pictures, paintings, or of leaving the ashes of loved ones, the Temple are burned on Sunday nights. David has done other major temple projects in Derry/Londonderry in Northern Ireland, London's Burning festival, San Francisco, Detroit, and elsewhere. In this presentation and discussion with The New School Host Steve Heilig, David will talk about his efforts and inspirations, with visual images of this striking and even awe-inspiring work.

Michael Lerner in conversation with Dr. Erlene Chiang