This heart-opening episode is guest-hosted by Peterson Toscano, Nicole Diroff & Ben Yosua-Davis of the BTS Center and is from their Climate Changed Podcast, This program is possible because of the sound and journalism mastery of Peterson Toscano. Today they are bringing one of the deepest reflections on what we need for a climate-changed world through the stories and guidance of Ray Buckley, author of books like Hard to Dance With the Devil On Your Back and Christmas Moccasins.
Flamy Grant and their music is amazing & fun & deep & did I mention wonderful? You see, Flamy is such an unexpected combination of usually adversarial things like a drag queen singing Christian songs. In fact, Flamy's album Bible Belt Baby even made it to #1 on the iTunes Christian & Gospel chart. And in 2023 Flamy was a winner of the Kerrville Folk Festival New Folk Competition. Flamy has performed as Matthew Blake & Girlboy in the past, and please remember to check out the video of What Did You Drag Me Into!
Alice Rothchild is many things: a woman, a Jew, a doctor, a feminist, a poet, and the author of 6 books, the latest being Inspired and Outraged: The Making of a Feminist Physician. Rising in the medical ranks when women were almost universally barred from the role of physician, she became a obstetrics-gynecology doc, including co-founding the non-profit Urban Woman and Child Health Inc. Alice transcends barriers, limits, and conventions, including having written this wide-ranging memoir and commentary-on-the-times book in poetic format.
Past/present religious/spiritual influences: Jewish, Non-affiliated
We welcome back Chuck Fager, a writer & activist with some 60 years of work, and we also welcome Emma Lapsansky-Werner, the co-author of Tell It Slant: Chuck Fager, A Prophetic Life of Adventure & Writing on Religion, War, and Justice, Love and Laughter. Chuck's journalism has been interwoven with his work with the civil rights movement, peace & justice actions, and as director of Quaker House, “A Place of Peace in a Military City”.
Many of us have been in pain about events in the Middle East for years, a pain that was horribly amplified by the massacre of Jews on October 7th, 2023, and the horrific and disproportional retribution that followed in Gaza by Israelis. Today's guest is Sandy Green, a Jewish Quaker, formerly a Zionist, who found she could not un-see the evils perpetrated by Israel on Palestinians, not just recently, but for decades. Late in her long life, Sandy has become a visible activist, facing painful consequences, but remaining steadfast to a fuller and wider love. This show includes a couple-minute clip from the 3/28/2024 QuakerSpeak.com interview with Sandy Green, anonymously at the time, and a reading by Sandy of her poem, Another Mother's Child.
Rich Morey grew up immersed in music and performed for years with the Chris Collat Band, yet he has only just begun to release his own music. The death of his mother and the pandemic ended up producing a chrysalis-like transition for Rich, the fruits of which today's listeners will witness. With an artist's hands on his guitar and a poet's tongue to create his lyrics, Rich will deepen and uplift at the same time. Find him in the DC area, playing solo, with Annette Wasilik, with Michael Occhionero, or in other configurations.
Jan Spencer is back today to guest-host today Spirit In Action with the 4th installment of his series Primer for Paradigm Shift, and this one is fun for the positive and practical examples of this kind of work actually taking place. While keeping his eye on the needed ways of seeing and thinking about the world in order to become sustainable and to leave our world-wrecking ways behind us, Jan shows us real folks making real change with real fun. Among the stories to be shared today are the case of a Portland, Oregon, candidate for city council, running on what is essentially a paradigm shift platform, another is an example of making change from within from the neighborhood association level, a third takes us to Iraq where widows have joined together to fill their tables with women power.
Guest-host Peterson Toscano of Citizens' Climate Radio is sitting in today for Spirit In Action, sharing climate info through a True Crime lens, in a series he's calling Hot Mess.
Three speeches from the October 19th meeting of the Fall Assembly of the Wisconsin Network for Peace and Justice. In our broadcast version we'll have only two of the three speakers, but the podcast version will have all three of them, sharing on a range of peace and justice topics. First up, only in the uncut version, is the inspirational and talented Elena Terry, member of the Ho-Chunk tribe, food sovereignty advocate and activist, and founder of WildBearies.
Some people just shine with heart and soul in their music, and Sigrid Christiansen is a perfect example. In the 5 years since I first interviewed Sigrid, she produced two new recordings, full of introspective and nature-spective music, leading us to know our coyote, fox, swans, geese, and tree neighbors much better and closer, From Detroit, Michigan, comes the blessings of arms-wide-open love and a pathway to a deep centeredness.
Past/present religious/spiritual influences: Atheist, Earth-based Spirituality
All featured music is written & performed by Sigrid Christiansen: