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2012 Conversations at The New School at Commonweal
Donald Abrams, MD, and Clint Werner
Marijuana: Is It Medicine Yet? (Feb 3, 2012)
Brother David Steindl-Rast in conversation with Michael Lerner
An Apostle of Gratefulness (Feb 4, 2012)
Stephen Parker, PhD
Jung, Art, and Healing
(Feb 19, 2012)
Irene Borger
Ten Thousand Joys and Ten Thousand Sorrows: A Conversation and A Little Time to Write Co-presented with the Institute for Art and Healing (March 11, 2012)
Emilie Conrad in Conversation with Sharon Weil
Moving Medicine: Continuum, Movement, and Enlivening Health (March 14, 2012)
Paul Hawken
An Uprising: The Global Crisis and Our Response (March 25, 2012)
Pauline Tesler
Integrative Law: A Healing Approach for Resolving Divorce and Other Conflicts (April 4, 2012)
Memorial Tribute to Adrienne Rich
with Eric Karpeles (April 22)
Terry Tempest Williams
When Women Were Birds: A Reading (May 6, 2012)
Soprano Christine Brandes and Pianist/Composer Eric Moe
An Afternoon of Classical Music (May 13, 2012)
Friday, February 3, 2012
10am-12:30pm
Donald Abrams, MD, and Clint Werner
Marijuana: Is it Medicine Yet?
Cannabis for Pain and Palliative Care
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts. Watch the video below [coming soon.]
Please join us for a science-based talk and conversation with Donald Abrams and Clint Werner on the medicinal uses of this ancient herbal remedy.
Donald Abrams, MD, is one of the world's foremost experts on the medicinal uses of marijuana, especially for cancer. He is professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco, and chief of hematology/oncology at San Francisco General Hospital. He provides integrative oncology consultations at the UCSF Osher Center for Integrative Medicine.
Clint Werner is author of Marijuana: Gateway to Health: How Cannabis Protects Us from Cancer and Alzheimer's Disease, which Andrew Weil, M.D., says "should be required reading for all medical professionals, elected officials, and everyone interested in health and wellness." He has worked in preventive health for more than 25 years.
February 4, 2012
Brother David Steindl-Rast in conversation with Michael Lerner
An Apostle of Gratefulness
Download the audio files: part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4 or subscribe to our podcasts. Watch the video below [coming soon.] Also see the June 27, 2012, event, which is a continuation of this spiritual biography.
Brother David Steindl-Rast is an 86-year-old Benedictine monk who many consider the successor to Thomas Merton at the intersection of Christianity and Buddhism. More than that, Brother David has developed a "common sense spirituality" that touches the heart of all the great spiritual traditions. He is an apostle of the spirit of gratefulness, described on his remarkable website. He says his favorite name for God is "Surprise," because "Surprise" is the only name that does not limit the Nameless One. In this interview, Michael Lerner hosts Brother David for a 5-hour conversation that focuses on his "spiritual biography."
David Steindl-Rast was born July 12, 1926, in Vienna, Austria, where he studied art, anthropology, and psychology, receiving an MA from the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts and a PhD from the University of Vienna. In 1952 he followed his family who had emigrated to the United States. In 1953 he joined a newly founded Benedictine community in Elmira, NY, Mount Saviour Monastery, of which he is now a senior member. In 1958/59 Brother David was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Cornell University, where he also became the first Roman Catholic to hold the Thorpe Lectureship, following Bishop J.D.R. Robinson and Paul Tillich.
After twelve years of monastic training and studies in philosophy and theology, Brother David was sent by his abbot to participate in Buddhist-Christian dialogue, for which he received Vatican approval in 1967. His Zen teachers were Hakkuun Yasutani Roshi, Soen Nakagawa Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, and Eido Shimano Roshi. He co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies in 1968 and received the 1975 Martin Buber Award for his achievements in building bridges between religious traditions.
Together with Thomas Merton, Brother David helped launch a renewal of religious life. From 1970 on, he became a leading figure in the House of Prayer movement, which affected some 200,000 members of religious orders in the United States and Canada.
Brother David has brought spiritual depth into the lives of countless people whom he touches through his lectures, his workshops, and his writings. He has contributed to a wide range of books and periodicals from the Encyclopedia Americana and The New Catholic Encyclopedia, to the New Age Journal and Parabola Magazine.His books have been translated into many languages.Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer and A Listening Heart have been reprinted and anthologized for more than two decades. Brother David co-authored Belonging to the Universe (winner of the 1992 American Book Award), a dialogue on new paradigm thinking in science and theology with physicist, Fritjof Capra. His dialogue with Buddhists produced The Ground We Share: Buddhist and Christian Practice, co-authored with Robert Aitken Roshi. His most recent books are The Music of Silence, co-written with Sharon Lebell, and Words of Common Sense.
At present, Brother David serves a worldwide Network for Grateful Living, through www.gratefulness.org, an interactive website with several thousand participants daily from more than 240 countries.
Sunday, February 19, 2012
2-3 pm (followed by a gallery opening 3-5pm)
Stephen Parker, PhD
Jung, Art, and Healing
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
I have been struggling with this never-ending wound for more than a year, and still it haunts me by the hour.
A heart attack is also a deeply isolating event. Others act as if their lives will go on forever, but how can I participate in this charade, knowing deeply and irrevocably that any moment could be my last one? I identify much more with people who have terminal illness than with those who are caught up in the illusions and routines of everyday life.
In hopes of reducing this isolation and finding a way through this purgatory, I thought I would try to post a daily blog about the experience.
I am fascinated and struck by the story of Chiron, that mythical Centaur who had a permanent wound in his knee that would not heal. In Puget's painting, Achilles is being dragged by his rationality, his head, and it looks like there isn't much he can do about it.
Not particularly wanting to be hunted, I have to somehow find out just where this heart attack is leading me.
With these words written in his blog, Dr. Parker begins an exploration – in words and paintings – of the dreams and meanings around his 2005 soul-changing heart attack.
In The New School conversation with Michael Lerner February 19, Dr. Parker talks about this journey and presents the opening of his show at Commonweal Gallery. His talk will be followed by a gallery reception from 3-5pm.
Dr. Stephen Parker is has lived in Fairbanks, Alaska, since 1980, consulting in many of the Alaskan communities as a psychologist and as an expert witness in all of the superior courts of Alaska. In 2005, he experienced a severe heart attack, changing the focus of his life. He now works extensively with people with chronic illness and life-threatening conditions. Stephen is a graduate of Stanford University and the California School of Professional Psychology – San Diego.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
2-4 pm
Irene Borger
Ten Thousand Joys and Ten Thousand Sorrows: On Creativity
A Conversation and A Little Time to Write
Co-presented with the Institute for Art and Healing
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts. Attention Listeners: You may want to do some writing while you listen along with the participants of this event. If so, have a pen and some paper handy and use the pause or start/stop buttons of your audio player to pause the audio while you reflect and write.
The sources of our writing life – the range of joys and sorrows – are close at hand: What we have seen, heard, smelled, touched and been touched by, what we remember, how we have befriended our life experiences through words.
Whether we are dealing with illness, creating something from scratch, or just going about our business in the wild world, we are always swimming in the stream of the unknown. Transformed through the eyes of curiosity, uncertainty becomes vitality, and the core of our creative life.
Irene will talk with Jaune Evans, director of Commonweal's Institute of Arts and Healing, about her life as a writer, master teacher, and muse. Those who attend will also have the opportunity to write (briefly) with Irene, working with simple exercises that invite discovery, playfulness, and, no less important, a bit of exhalation. No prior experience or talent is required. Please bring pen and paper.
Writer and teacher Irene Borger leads workshops in Los Angeles, the Bay Area, and in Washington, D.C., at Smith Center for Healing and the Arts. Since 1990 she has developed a special offering of her work, grounded in not-knowing and witnessing, to art makers, and people living under conditions of extremity. The founder of the Writing Program at AIDS Project Los Angeles, the country's second-largest AIDS service agency, and artist-in-residence there for ten years, Irene is the editor of From a Burning House: The AIDS Project Los Angeles Writers Workshop Collection, published by Washington Square Press/Pocket Books. The audiotape version was nominated for a Grammy in the Spoken Word category, and the workshop profiled on the MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour.
Irene's writing has appeared in many publications including The Los Angeles Times, Vogue, O, Architectural Digest, and on The Wall Street Journal arts page. Irene is also director of the Alpert Award in the Arts, where she oversees the giving of five annual $75,000 grants to outstanding artists working nationally in dance, film/video, music, theatre, and the visual arts. Her conversations with 19 of these artists are the subject of the book, The Force of Curiosity. She is the writer and curator for a prize-winning website. A Bennington College graduate, with an M.A. in dance ethnology from UCLA, Irene is also a former member of the dance history faculty at University of California, Riverside. A longtime meditation student, she is working on a book on listening.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Emile Conrad in Conversation with Sharon Weil
Moving Medicine: Continuum, Movement, and Enlivening Health
Download the audio file or subscribe to our podcasts.
Visionary somatics pioneer, Emilie Conrad, shares with us the "medicine" of movement, from the cellular to the global, as it relates to health, thriving and the limitless possibilities of what it means to be human. In this lively conversation, she discusses the work of Continuum as a way to uncover our birthright as part of an ongoing evolutionary process that began millions of years ago, and extends past what can be imagined today. Her life-long investigation into how the fluids of the body resonate with the fluids of the planet and the cosmos contributes vast new ideas and innovative approaches to what is needed for humans to flourish, and therefore what is needed to in order to heal at the deepest levels. Through sound and movements we see in all Nature—undulation, spiral and pulse—the fluids in tissues of the body become activated, more permeable and mutable, to soften form and release the compression that limits the system.
She discusses how closed systems of repetitive movement and thought, the imprint of birth trauma, as well as "tribal consciousness," are inhibitors to the thriving of the whole being. Emilie concludes with the exciting, positive vision that we are on the precipice of extraordinary change as we are called to meet the challenges of the complex times we live in.
Emilie Conrad is a compassionate rebel against the cultural forces that engender lifeless, patterned thinking and movement. She pioneered Continuum more than 45 years ago, and has made a profound impact on the entire field of Somatics. Emilie began as a dancer, and weaves her artistry into all her explorations of what is it to be a body. Emilie continues to evolve Continuum as a way for people to slow down and access the subtle energy that is the source of all creativity and healing. She is considered a visionary, and her work is incorporated by an International audience of professionals from fields such as Rolfing, Zero Balancing, Hellerwork, Osteopathy, Physical Therapy, Dance, CranioSacral, Psychoneuroimmunology, and Physical Fitness. Emilie has been a featured teacher, lecturer, and keynoter at major universities and centers across the USA and Canada, including: Esalen Institute, Kripalu Institute, Omega Institute NY, UCLA, USC, U of Arizona, Rolf Institute, and the Lee Strasberg Institute.
Sharon Weil is an award winning screenwriter, producer and director. She is also a long time student and teacher of Continuum. Sharon and Emilie have been in a 22 year, ongoing collaboration of putting the vastness of Continuum into words.
Sunday, March 25
Paul Hawken
An Uprising: The Global Crisis and Our Response
2-4 pm, following a fundraising brunch 11am-1pm
Co-presented with Point Reyes Books
Download the audio file of his comments at the brunch and his talk at the main afternoon event, or subscribe to our podcasts. Watch the video of the event below.
Paul is a truly visionary thought and action leader. He is among the great contributors to the global effort to re-imagine our place in nature and how we may live balanced and creative lives together. In this talk, Paul will discuss the interlocking global environmental, financial, and human crises we face and the ways we can respond.
Paul Hawken is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, journalist, and author who has dedicated his life to sustainability and changing the relationship between business and the environment. He is author of seven books including The Next Economy, The Ecology of Commerce, and Blessed Unrest.
Wednesday, April 4
11 am-1 pm
Pauline Tesler
Integrative Law: A Healing Approach for Resolving Divorce and Other Conflicts
Download the audio file [coming soon] or subscribe to our podcasts.
A divorce is the fate of about half of all marriages, and is the reason most Americans will encounter the legal system. In addition to the inherent stresses of divorce, many families experience serious and avoidable collateral damage as a consequence of handling complex and personal family systems breakdown in a court system designed to resolve automobile accidents and breaches of contract. Nearly every family, business, and community institution is harmed by outdated ways of providing legal help for people experiencing conflict.
Pauline Tesler, author of two groundbreaking books on the new and revolutionary Collaborative Divorce method that is changing the practice of family law worldwide, joins Michael Lerner to explain Collaborative Law and other dramatic transformations taking place in the legal profession. Pauline will explain how integrative lawyers working in interdisciplinary teams can help people discover deep and durable solutions for legal issues that arise from deeper, more pervasive breaches of trust within human relationships and systems.
Pauline H. Tesler is director of Commonweal's new Integrative Law Institute, a specialist in family law certified by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization since 1984, and a fellow of the American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. After conducting a vigorous litigation and appellate practice for 20 years, in the mid-1990s she became a pioneer in extending the practice of Collaborative Law and interdisciplinary team Collaborative Divorce worldwide. For her groundbreaking work as a collaborative lawyer, Pauline was recipient of the first "Lawyer as Problem Solver" award from the American Bar Association in 2002. Pauline and a small group of colleagues co-founded the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals (IACP) and its journal, The Collaborative Review, in the late 1990s. Pauline is author of the critically acclaimed practice manual for lawyers, Collaborative Law: Achieving Effective Resolution in Divorce Without Litigation (published in 2001 by the American Bar Association) and Collaborative Divorce: The Revolutionary New Way to Restructure Your Family, Resolve Legal Issues, and Move On With Your Life. You can find more information and some excerpts on her website.
S
unday, April 22
2-4pm
A Memorial Tribute to Adrienne Rich
Download the audio file [coming soon] or subscribe to our podcasts.
Adrienne Rich, who died at her home in Santa Cruz on March 27th, was a writer and thinker of enormous stature. Her first book of poetry was singled out by W. H. Auden for the Yale Younger Poets series in 1951 and Rich continued publishing books of poems in every subsequent decade. As the years went by, she consistently refined her poetic voice while casting an ever-widening net for perspectives to express her sense of the world in which she lived. She used her awareness of herself as a woman—full of passion and compassion, gentleness, rage—as a framework to understand the inequities of modern life. She was articulate and forthcoming about the various struggles in which she found herself and so many others engaged. Unabashed in her critical thinking, she possessed a unique and oracular voice in American poetry.
Adrienne was hobbled by pain from rheumatoid arthritis for her entire adult life, dying aged 82. She persevered and remained true to vows of integrity and beauty despite her slowly disintegrating capabilities, living the end of her life as elegantly and meaningfully as if it were a poem she was crafting. Her last volume was entitled, Tonight No Poetry Will Serve. Please join us in an informal memorial to Rich's singular accomplishment and her implacable tenacity. Bring some poems along and share them with us.
...I have been standing all my life in the
direct path of a battery of signals
the most accurately transmitted most
untranslateable language in the universe
I am a galactic cloud so deep so invo-
luted that a light wave could take 15
years to travel through me And has
taken I am an instrument in the shape
of a woman trying to translate pulsations
into images for the relief of the body
and the reconstruction of the mind.
—Adrienne Rich, from "Planetarium," 1971
Sunday, May 6
2-4pm
Terry Tempest Williams
When Women Were Birds: A Reading
Download the audio file [coming soon] or subscribe to our podcasts.
Terry Tempest Williams has been called "a citizen writer," a writer who speaks and speaks out eloquently on behalf of an ethical stance toward life. A naturalist and fierce advocate for freedom of speech, she has consistently shown us how environmental issues are social issues that ultimately become matters of justice. "So here is my question," she asks, "what might a different kind of power look like, feel like, and can power be redistributed equitably even beyond our own species?"
Williams, like her writing, cannot be categorized. She has testified before Congress on women's health issues, been a guest at the White House, camped in the remote regions of Utah and Alaska wildernesses, and worked as "a barefoot artist" in Rwanda.
Known for her impassioned and lyrical prose, Terry Tempest Williams is the author of the environmental literature classic, Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place; An Unspoken Hunger: Stories from the Field; Desert Quartet; Leap; Red: Patience and Passion in the Desert; and The Open Space of Democracy. Her book Finding Beauty in a Broken World, was published in 2008 by Pantheon Books. At this event, she'll be reading from her most recent book, When Women Were Birds. She is a columnist for the magazine The Progressive.
In 2006, Williams received the Robert Marshall Award from The Wilderness Society, their highest honor given to an American citizen. She also received the Distinguished Achievement Award from the Western American Literature Association and the Wallace Stegner Award given by The Center for the American West. She is the recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship and a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship in creative nonfiction. In 2009, Terry Tempest Williams was featured in Ken Burns' PBS series on the national parks (see video clip, below).
Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Orion Magazine, and numerous anthologies worldwide as a crucial voice for ecological consciousness and social change.
Sunday, May 13
2-4pm
Soprano Christine Brandes and Pianist/Composer Eric Moe
Download the audio file [coming soon] or subscribe to our podcasts. See the video showing how the grand piano got up the stairs and into the Commonweal Gallery for this recital.
The New School at Commonweal is very pleased to announce a rare opportunity to experience live classical music in our community. Soprano Christine Brandes and pianist/composer Eric Moe join forces and offer us a recital of rich music-making.
Two contemporary song cycles by Eric Moe (one set to poems by American poet May Swenson, the other to poems from Rainer Maria Rilke's Sonnets to Orpheus cycle) will flank Joseph Haydn's thrilling cantata for soprano and piano, Arianna a Naxos, which Haydn himself was known to sing, a test of any singer's dramatic mettle. May Swenson (1919-1989) was an American poet of rare lyric and dramatic gifts, repeatedly drawn to love and eros as subject, while the Prague-born Rilke (1875-1926) wrestles in these poems with questions of music and our human existence.
Christine Brandes has sung around the world. Her repertoire, ranging from 17th century music to contemporary works, will be perfectly showcased in this program. With a crystalline, dramatic voice, full of life and longing, Brandes will be coming to Commonweal fresh from having sung Despina in Jonathan Miller's production of Cosi fan tutte with the Washington National Opera. She has sung at New York City Opera, with the LA Philharmonic and as part of the Mark Morris Dance Company, has been conducted by Pierre Boulez and Esa-Pekka Salonen, has fashioned fresh interpretations of numerous classic heroines and has also forged strong characters in new operas. She has an impressive discography of recordings.
Eric Moe is active both as a pianist and keyboard player. As a composer, Moe's music is rhythmically rich and varied, propulsive at times, and his style has been called "maximal minimalism" and "music of winning exuberance." The New York Times recently described his compositions as "subversive" in their fusion of classical forms and pop culture; a disc of compositions entitled "Kicking and Screaming" gives us an idea of his animated, irreverent enthusiasm.