Our third visit with musician/poet/artist extraordinaire, Carrie Newcomer, during her visit to the 2015 FGC gathering at Western Carolina University. Along with the release of her 15th album, A Permeable Life, Carrie released her first book, of poetry, by the same name. Carrie's gentle spirit and her deep and persistent passions combine with her music to make world-changing songs.
Anti-war activists and military folks are predisposed to see each other as "the enemy", but even mainstream or conservative folks can have a very difficult time truly welcoming home vets. Zachary Moon is very concerned about treating vets as real people, not political or theological pawns in some game. Relatively few Quakers serve in the military, even as chaplains, as Zachary does, and too few know how to really support our troops when they return home, so he has helped pioneer a way forward. Zachary is a life-long Quaker and author of Coming Home: Ministry That Matters with Veterans and Military Families
Greg Elliott is helping the American Friends Service Committee to launch a program, innovated by Unitarian-Universalists, and adapted to Quakers to help avoid the burn-out & lack of results which result from un-centered, though well-motivated, activism. With an approach that ties together spirit & action, using worship, story-telling, & deepening relationships, we are helped to remember the ways in which we can be faithful to our work of world-healing, without giving in to a exhausting and unfocused treadmill.
For decades there has been a political war about abortion where the only acceptable answers were pro-choice or pro-life. Aspen Baker, founder of Exhale & author of Pro-Voice: How to Keep Listening When The World Wants a Fight, has been advocating for empathic listening to women who've had abortions as a new path to peace in the abortion wars.
Featured Music:
Sit With Me - by Holly Near
The tables are turned in today's program, as Spirit In Action's regular host, Mark Helpsmeet, is himself interviewed by Robert Park of WIDE-LP, Madison, Wisconsin. Topics addressed are the roots of Mark's broadcasts and activism, the mechanics of building a syndicated community radio based program, and the goals and future of creation of spirit-focused shows aimed at improving the world.
Featured Music:
I Heard An Owl - Carrie Newcomer
Not In My Name - John McCutcheon
A glimpse into the horror of one piece of the genocide that took place in Turkey in the early 1900's, The Great Fire, by Lou Ureneck, conveys the dark side and a few strands of silver lining amidst the disaster. With issues like American interests in oil & tobacco, folks interested in self-promotion, pay-back and deeply engrained religious prejudice, there are many lessons for today, including the role of little-known and unexpected people making compassionate, valiant, and even successful efforts to care for those in suffering.
Chris Vallillo's music is roots music. Occasionally it's on themes of things like the music of Abraham Lincoln's time, the poetry of Carl Sandburg, and the music of Stephen Foster, but there are also songs of his own place and time. Chris' music is stunningly rendered on his stable-full of guitars, and other instruments. Located in Macomb, Illinois, Chris sends his song from the heartland to the heart.
Blair Hull has founded 2 venues to feature outstanding music, first the Stained Glass Coffee House in Deerfield, Illinois, running 2006-2014, and the Lighted Window Concert series in Campbell, California. A musician herself, Blair became a UCC pastor and currently serves in Campbell.
A visit with a student participant of, the UW-EC staff founder of, and a Selma, AL, presenter of the Civil Rights Pilgrimage.
With a masters in poetry and feet planted faithfully in West Philly, Sterling Duns caught the hip-hop passion and has been churning out music with Hardwork Movement for years, and recently as part of a duo, City Love.