Fifty Years of Light

Dear Community,

In 1975, Michael Lerner was walking along Poplar Road in Bolinas when he saw sunlight breaking through the fog over the old RCA building. This experience inspired him to establish a center for healing ourselves and healing the earth. Now, 50 years later, we are celebrating that moment that gave rise to the community and institution we call Commonweal.

A half century is a long time. The world has changed in ways that would be impossible to foresee. Commonweal has also changed many times over the last five decades, though throughout the journey we have stayed loyal to the original vision of healing. At the heart of Commonweal is the Cancer Help Program, which has held more than 230 retreats on this land. Over the years, the work has expanded to include environmental health, arts, education, and resilience. Through our support of visionary program directors, we have nurtured many initiatives: the seminal work of Rachel Naomi Remen in bringing the soul back to medical education; Burr Heneman in creating new ocean policies; David Steinhardt in reforming the juvenile justice system; and today new programs that lead work in end-of-life, justice, leadership, integrative medicine, polycrisis, and land reform.

What has come into being—from the initial inspiration—is a nurturing organizational home that enables amazing programs and people to do amazing things. We will be celebrating this work throughout the year. We will also look forward, reimagining Commonweal for the next 50 years, building on the foundation created by those who came before us.

I hope you will join us as we celebrate our history, strengthen where we are today, and look toward the future. Through the Commonweal monthly newsletter, we will share what's happening here in Bolinas, in the virtual space, and in other locales: special exhibits in our gallery, new publications from our Co-Founder Michael Lerner, and a series of events at The New School.

This first quarter of 2026 we focus on Resilience in These Times, exploring what it means to have inner and community resilience in this time of upheaval and change. In the spring, we focus on the groundbreaking Health and Healing work done over these 50 years—both in environmental health and in integrative healing. Our summer quarter will be devoted to arts, creativity, and education and their importance in bringing leadership and resilience to our times. In the last quarter we will turn our gaze toward the future, reimagining what can be in a resilient, community-oriented, and healthy world.

This will be quite a journey, and we hope you will join us!

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With gratitude,

Oren Slozberg | Executive Director

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Top photo: Kyra Epstein

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