Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

Anna O’Malley The Ecology of Community Medicine The approach to medicine and healing within our current medical system is falling short of achieving improved health outcomes, much less optimal vitality. A majority of chronic diseases, so costly to “manage” and “treat” medically, are preventable and often reversible by aligning our behaviors, our thoughts, our actions with that which heals. Delivering medical care while building community strengthens the social context within which behavior change happens. Join TNS Host Michael Lerner with Integrative Physician Anna O’Malley in a conversation about the ecology of community medicine and her work in the Art of Vitality program at the Regenerative Design Institute at Commonweal Garden and in West Marin.

TNS host Irwin Keller in conversation with Chas Nol in a spirited discussion titled "Radical Faeries - Unleashing the Sissy Boy."

~with Gail Needleman offering an introduction to the Gurdjieff music~ Join TNS Host Michael Lerner for a fourth conversation in a series with philosopher and author Jacob Needleman. They explore his “life-within-life” as both an engaged pupil of the Gurdjieff Work and also as a scholar and teacher confronting the great unanswerable questions of the heart.

Co-sponsored by the “Of One Soul” Campaign of the Interfaith Council of Sonoma County~ Join TNS Host Irwin Keller in a conversation with scholar, writer, and speaker Sumbul Ali-Karamali. Sumbul is a lawyer, scholar, and frequent spokesperson on matters of interest to Muslim Americans and Muslim women. Her books and columns have helped translate for mainstream Americans both the history of Islam and Muslim Americans’ everyday realities.

Peter Orner Not Alone Tonight at Least ~Co-presented by the Bolinas Library, The New School at Commonweal, and Point Reyes Books~ Join us for a reading and conversation with TNS Host Steve Heilig and writer Peter Orner. Peter teaches at the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers as well as at San Francisco State University, where he is currently chair of the Creative Writing Department. He is a member of the Bolinas Volunteer Fire Department. Peter Orner Chicago-born Peter Orner has lived in the San Francisco Bay area for sixteen years. He is the author of two novels (The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo, 2006, Love and Shame and Love, 2010) and two story collections (Esther Stories, 2001, and Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge, 2013), as well as the editor of two oral histories (Voice of Witness). Orner’s fiction and non-fiction has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, Granta, The Paris Review, McSweeney’s, The Southern Review, and many other publications. His stories have been anthologized in Best American Stories and twice received a Pushcart Prize. Orner has been awarded a the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a two-year Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship, as well as a Fulbright to Namibia. A new book of oral history set in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, co-edited with Evan Lyon, will be published in January, 2017. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

A Community Reading with Eric Karpeles ~Co-sponsored by Point Reyes Books~ Please join TNS host Eric Karpeles for another panoramic community event, a chorus of mixed individual voices reading from the pages of one of America’s most impassioned nature lovers.

Join us for a conversation with TNS Host Michael Lerner and film maker Lata Mani. The Poetics of Fragility (63 minutes) is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the texture, vitality, and aesthetics of fragility. Shot in the San Francisco Bay Area in September 2015 by co-directors Lata Mani and Nicolás Grandi, the film features internationally renowned scholar-activist Angela Davis, the acclaimed playwright and critic Cherrie Moraga, Nora Cortiñas, the inspiring founding member of Madres de Plaza de Mayo Linea Fundadora, actor-dancer Greg Manalo, feminist performance artists Thao P. Nguyen and Martha Rynberg, theater scholar Jisha Menon, healer Christopher Miles, creative writer Xochitl M. Perales and the young trombone talent, Jasim Perales. Find out more on their websites: www.thepoeticsoffragility.com http://latamani.com Lata Mani Lata is a feminist historian, cultural critic, contemplative writer, and filmmaker. She has published on a broad range of issues, from feminism and colonialism, to illness, spiritual philosophy, and contemporary politics. She is the author of The Integral Nature of Things: Critical Reflections on the Present (Routledge 2013), Interleaves: Ruminations on Illness and Spiritual Life (Yoda 2011), Sacred Secular: Contemplative Cultural Critique, (Routledge 2009) and Contentious Traditions: The Debate on Sati in Colonial India (University of California Press 1989).

Join TNS Host Irwin Keller in a conversation with musician, teacher, and activist Holly Near. Holly is an acclaimed songwriter, producer, and recording artist with more than 40 creative years and 30 recordings. Respected around the world for her music and activism, her joy and passion inspire people to join in her celebration of the human spirit. Holly Near Born in Ukiah, CA in 1949, Holly began singing in high school, including work with a local folk group. She built on her performing career with acting parts on Mod Squad and appeared in a number of guest roles in seminal 70s TV shows like Room 222 and The Partridge Family. In 1970, she was a cast member of the Broadway musical Hair. In 1971, she joined the Free The Army Tour, an anti-Vietnam War road show of music, comedy, and plays organized by antiwar activist Fred Gardner and actors Jane Fonda and Donald Sutherland. In 1972, Holly was one of the first women to create an independent record company, paving the way for women like Ani DiFranco and others. She has been recognized many times for her work for social change, including honors from the ACLU, the National Lawyers Guild, the National Organization for Women, and the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences–and she was named Ms. Magazine Woman of the Year and received the Legends of Women’s Music Award. Holly is a staunch advocate for LGBTQ rights. She teaches, presenting master classes in performance craft and songwriting to diverse audiences. Her most recent CD, “Peace Becomes You,” was released in 2012. photo credit: Irene Young

Listen to remarks from Commonweal Founder Michael Lerner, Chief Strategies Officer Oren Slozberg, and Cancer Help Program Medical Director Rachel Naomi Remen, MD, at the occasion of Commonweal's 40th anniversary luncheon.

During this 40th anniversary year for Commonweal, Michael Lerner, Commonweal Co-Founder, and Rachel Remen, MD, Medical Director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program, offer the fourth in a series of conversations about Commonweal’s story for The New School. In addition to being the Medical Director of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program for almost 30 years, Rachel directed the Institute for the Study of Health and Illness (ISHI) at Commonweal for 25 years. One of ISHI’s programs, the Healer’s Art, has reached almost 16,000 medical students at medical schools around the world. Rachel is the author of Kitchen Table Wisdom and My Grandfather’s Blessings, best sellers in many languages around the world. Rachel Naomi Remen, MD Rachel is a nationally recognized medical reformer and educator who considers the practice of medicine to be a spiritual path and a path of service. She is internationally acclaimed as one of the earliest pioneers in the Integrative Health movement, and among the first to practice and teach a medicine of the whole person. As a doctor with a 63-year personal history of Crohn’s disease, she brings the perspective of both physician and patient to her pioneering work and her approach to medical education. She is clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California San Francisco (UCSF) School of Medicine, clinical professor of community health at Wright State University Boonshoft School of Medicine, founder and director of the Remen Institute for the Study of Health and Illness at Wright State University, and cofounder of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program that was featured in the highly acclaimed Bill Moyers PBS series, Healing and the Mind. Her many groundbreaking curricula enable physicians and other health professionals worldwide to recognize their work as spirit in action, strengthen their calling to heal and renewing their commitment to compassionate service.