Exploring Nature, Culture and Inner Life

Sister Miriam MacGillis Opening the Christian Mysteries to the New Cosmology ~Co-sponsored with Point Reyes Books~ In response to the global crisis, Sister Miriam MacGillis — and her community at their biodynamic Genesis Farm in New Jersey — focus on connections between the health of Earth and of human communities within particular bioregions. From the Genesis Farm website: Genesis Farm is rooted in a belief that the Universe, Earth, and all reality are permeated by the presence and power of that ultimate Holy Mystery that has been so deeply and richly expressed in the world’s spiritual traditions. Join us for a conversation between Sister Miriam MacGillis and Michael Lerner about the New Cosmology — talked about by Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme — and how she and the Genesis Farm bring these rich spiritual insights into the practical realm of agriculture, community, and care-taking the Earth. Sister Miriam Therese MacGillis Sister Miriam is a member of the Dominican Sisters of Caldwell, New Jersey. She lives and works at Genesis Farm, which she co-founded in 1980 with the sponsorship of her Dominican congregation. Miriam describes Genesis Farm as a learning center where people of good will are welcome to search for more authentic ways to live in harmony with the natural world and each other. The farm practices Biodynamic methods of agriculture, which are in tune with the natural rhythms of Earth. It was one of the early pioneers in converting to Community-Supported Agriculture, (CSA), a movement which has expanded across the country. Presently, nearly 300 families from the region are shareholders in its economic base. Miriam lectures extensively, and has conducted workshops in the US, Canada, Europe, Asia and the Pacific. In 2005, she was presented with the Thomas Berry Award by the Center for Respect for Life and the Environment, and in 2007 was named among the planet’s top 15 green religious leaders by Grist magazine. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Tribute to Elizabeth Bishop Presented by Eric Karpeles and Melissa Smith The embrace of Elizabeth Bishop’s modest but exacting body of work into the canon of English literature continues unimpeded. In her lifetime (1911-1979) she was admired and celebrated, acclaimed by fellow poet John Ashbery as “a writer’s writer’s writer,” but it is only since her death that her influence on the literary arts of her time has been fully recognized. A troubled life was marked by struggle and pain, while her inspirited poetry was painstakingly crafted by determination and integrity. Painter and writer Eric Karpeles presents this talk about Bishop as a celebration at the end of her centenary year, discussing her work, her life, and the world through which she moved. Integrated into Karpeles’s talk, actress Melissa Smith reads poems and excerpts from Bishop’s stories and letters. Eric Karpeles Commonweal Board Member Eric Karpeles is a painter, author of Paintings in Proust, and translator of Proust’s Overcoat. A graduate of Haverford College, Oxford University, and The New School, he lived in France in the 1970s, holding fellowships both at la Cité des Arts in Paris and the Camargo Foundation in Cassis. Karpeles writes about painting and the intersection of literature and visual aesthetics. Find out more about Eric on his website. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Richard T LeGates Chinese Cities: Their Amazing Rise and Possible Futures Since China’s “reform and opening up” beginning in the late 1970s, China has had double-digit gross domestic product (GDP) growth almost every year, including close to a 50% increase in GDP since the global economic crisis began in 2007. From an impoverished rural country where more than 80% of the population engaged in near-subsistence farming, half of China’s population now live in cities. What are the impacts of China’s urban transformation on the ground? What are China’s greatest urban planning accomplishments, failures, and challenges for the future? Join Michael Lerner for this discussion with Richard LeGates about China’s urbanization and China’s urban future. Richard T. LeGates Richard is a professor emeritus of Urban Studies and Planning at San Francisco State University and an authority or urbanization and city and regional planning. Earlier in 2012 he was a visiting professor of urban planning at Tongji University in Shanghai and Renmin University in Beijing and a Fulbright scholar at the Technical Institute of Bandung, Indonesia. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Rupert Sheldrake, PhD Science Set Free: Ten Paths to New Discovery Join Michael Lerner for a discussion with Dr. Rupert Sheldrake about his life, his views, and his new book: Science Set Free — Ten Paths to New Discovery. In his book, Rupert discusses his views on the ways science is being constricted by assumptions that have, over the years, hardened into dogmas. Such dogmas are not only limiting, but dangerous for the future of humanity. According to these principles, all of reality is material or physical; the world is a machine, made up of inanimate matter; nature is purposeless; consciousness is nothing but the physical activity of the brain; free will is an illusion; God exists only as an idea in human minds, imprisoned within our skulls. In the skeptical spirit of true science, Sheldrake turns the ten fundamental dogmas of materialism into questions, and suggests how all of them open up new possibilities for discovery. Rupert Sheldrake, PhD Rupert is a biologist and author and a former research fellow of the Royal Society. He studied natural sciences and biochemistry at Cambridge University and philosophy and history of science at Harvard University. He is a fellow of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, near San Francisco. He has appeared in many TV programs in Britain and overseas, and was one of the participants in a TV series called A Glorious Accident, shown on PBS channels throughout the United States. In addition to Science Set Free, his books include The Sense of Being Stared At and Other Aspects of the Extended Mind (2003), Trialogues at the Edge of the West (1992), republished as Chaos, Creativity and Cosmic Consciousness (2001, with Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna), and The Physics of Angels: Exploring the Realm Where Science and Spirit Meet (1996, written with Matthew Fox). Find out more on his website. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Stephanie Sugars What Do I Have to Offer before I Leave My Body? In this podcast, long-time alumna of the Commonweal Cancer Help Program Stephanie Sugars talks with Michael Lerner about her journey with illness, treatments, and healing–and the insights that come from living on the “edge of life.” Stephanie Sugars Stephanie is a human being, a friend to life and death, and a passionate participant in the natural and human worlds. She’s lived with a serious genetic illness for more than 50 years (Peutz-Jeghers syndrome) and with metastatic breast cancer for more than 20 years. Her healing quest led her to Commonweal’s Cancer Help Program in 1992, 2009, and 2012. She seeks to be of use to the world. She explores the intersection of the personal and universal on her blog. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Francis Weller, MFT Entering the Healing Ground: Grief, Ritual, and the Soul of the World Join Michael Lerner in conversation with author and soul activist Francis Weller, about his work with people living with cancer, and his studies and experience with the grief rituals and ceremonies of indigenous cultures. Carried privately, sorrow lingers in the soul, slowly pulling us below the surface of life and into the terrain of death. Learning to hold sorrow and loss close to our hearts is a deep spiritual practice, a fierce and unflinching acknowledgement of the way of the world. This spiritual practice is a tempering of the soul, a gradual deepening that moves us closer to the earth, into an intimacy with our surroundings where we lean into those we love. In his recent book, Entering the Healing Ground, Francis reveals the hidden vitality in grief, uncovered when the heart welcomes the sorrows of our life and those of the world. Francis Weller, MFT Francis has been working with the emotional, creative, and spiritual life of men and women for thirty years. He is a community builder, writer, teacher, and psychotherapist in Northern California. He draws from an extensive background in depth psychology, mythology, group work, and indigenous traditions. His work embodies his love of soul, the arts, ritual and his devotion to bringing these into living and sustainable community. His writings have appeared in anthologies and magazines such as Sacred Fire. He has taught at many colleges and universities throughout the Bay Area including New College, the Sophia Center, and Sonoma State University. He is the founder/director of WisdomBridge and is currently completing his second book, A Trail on the Ground: Tracking the Ways of Our Indigenous Soul. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Walter and Aggie Murch The Bird that Swallowed its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte ~Co-presented by KWMR and Point Reyes Books~ Join us for a reading and conversation between Walter and Aggie Murch about Walter’s recently published book, The Bird that Swallowed its Cage: The Selected Writings of Curzio Malaparte. Walter Murch Working within the growing Bay Area film community, Murch settled his family in West Marin in 1972. Since that time Murch has been honored by both British and American Motion Picture Academies, winning BAFTA and Oscar awards and nominations for The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, The English Patient, Julia, and Cold Mountain. Murch wrote In the Blink of an Eye (2001), which has been translated into ten languages. The Bird that Swallowed its Cage (2012) is Murch’s selected translation of work by the Italian poet and novelist Curzio Malaparte (1899-1956). Between films, he pursues interests in the science of human perception, cosmology and the history of science. Muriel (Aggie) Murch Aggie graduated as a nurse in England in 1964 and obtained a BSN from San Francisco State in 1991. In 1965 she married Walter Scott Murch and from 1972 raised their four children on Blackberry Farm in Bolinas. She is a founder of of KWMR(FM) radio in West Marin, and author of Journey in the Middle of the Road, One Woman’s Journey through a Mid-Life Education. Muriel continues to write stories and poetry while working as an independent radio producer for KWMR. When not traveling with Walter, Aggie runs the small organic Blackberry Farm, which remains the Murch home Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Bob Holman Sing This One Back to Me: The Spoken Word Bob Holman studied poetry at Columbia University in the 1970s (where he now teaches), but considers his “major poetry schooling” to be his time on the Lower East Side in New York with Allen Ginsberg, John Giorno, Anne Waldman, Miguel Piñero, Hettie Jones, Ed Sanders, Amiri Baraka, Ted Berrigan, Alice Notley, Pedro Pietri, David Henderson, Steve Cannon, and many others. Join Michael Lerner in a conversation about Bob Holman’s life, history with the Beat Poets, his activism, and the oral tradition of spoken word or “slam” poetry. Bob Holman As a promoter of poetry in many media, Bob has spent the last four decades working variously as an author, editor, publisher, performer, emcee of live events, director of theatrical productions, producer of films and television programs, record label executive, university professor, poet’s house proprietor, and archivist. Bob is the founder and proprietor of the Bowery Poetry Club in New York City, which opened to the public in September 2002. Holman’s most recent work has been devoted to bringing attention to Endangered Languages — he is the host of Language Matters!, a PBS documentary shot in Wales, Hawaii, and Australia, that airs in late 2013. His most recent collection, Sing This One Back to Me, was released by Coffee House Press in May 2013. Find out more about Bob on his website. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Julie McIntyre Wild Earth, Wild Plants, Wild Woman Join us for a conversation with Julie McIntyre and The New School’s Kyra Epstein exploring Julie’s life as an herbalist treating Lyme disease with a successful herbal protocol, an Earth ceremonialist, and the author of a new book: Sex and the Intelligence of the Heart; Nature, Intimacy and Sexual Energy. Julie McIntyre Julie is an Earth ceremonialist and metis of Norwegian and Mohawk/Blackfeet decent. Julie recently directed a state ceremonial program for Native men in prison and also works with young women with ceremonial rites of transition into womanhood. She has a private holistic health practice working with herbal medicine and chronic illness–she is the leading practicing expert using the herbal lyme protocol developed by her partner, Stephen Harrod Buhner. In her practice, she also works with sacred plant medicine, spiritual mentoring, ecological reclamation of the soul, becoming authentic, and sexuality. You can see more of her and her work on her website. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.

Tu-2 and Angela Oh Insight: Seeing the Inner Self Join us for a preview of the show “108 Bodhisattvas,” as well as a conversation with artist Tu-2 (Tu Ying-ming) and meditation teacher and lawyer Angela E. Oh. The full body of work, 108 Bodhisattvas, will be premiered in fall of 2013 at a workshop and show in Commonweal Gallery. Tu Ying-ming (Tu-2) Tu-2 is a visual fine artist who focuses on painting, photography, and documentary films. His current body of work began to emerge around six years ago: a series of spiritual portraits in silver pencil on blue paper that reveal the interior qualities of their subjects. Depicted in chiaroscuro (a light-dark technique with ancient roots)—but using a silver pencil to draw only the light—the images seem to be floating from darkness to light, mostly in a state of serenity. Learn more about Tu-2 on his website. Angela E. Oh Angela is the former executive director of the Western Justice Center Foundation, a nonprofit organization that advances peaceful resolution of conflict. She has worked as an attorney, public lecturer, and teacher of Zen meditation. In 1992, Oh gained national prominence as a spokesperson and mediating force for the Asian American community during the Los Angeles riots. Thereafter, she was appointed by President Bill Clinton as one of seven Advisory Board members to the President’s Initiative on Race, which was charged with engaging the nation in a dialogue on race relations in the United States of America. Oh is also an ordained priest, Zen Buddhist—Rinzai Sect. Find out more about The New School at tns.commonweal.org.