Member Area | ServiceSpace

Nuggets From Carrie Newcomer's Call

Mar 21, 2020, 2 smiles Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Carrie Newcomer. Carrie Newcomer is a singer, songwriter, recording artist, author and educator. The Boston Globe described her as a “prairie mystic” and Rolling Stone wrote that she is one who “asks all the right questions.” Krista Tippett notes that Carrie is “best known for her story-songs that get at the raw and redemptive edges of human reality.” Newcomer is a committed Quaker who connects her songwriting with her faith and sense of social justice. She has produced 18 solo CDs, eight collaborative CDs, three DVD’s, and two LP’s. She has had an ongoing, long-term collaboration with Parker J. Palmer, with whom she has co-written several songs and performed a spoken word/music in live performance. Many of the themes in her work come from friendships with activists, authors and religious figures. In 2010, she was selected one of the 50 ... Read Full Story

Carrie Newcomer: Asking The Right Questions In Song

Mar 18, 2020 This week's Awakin Call guest: 'Carrie Newcomer: Asking The Right Questions In SongReflection questions: Our guest this week is a renowned folk singer and recording artist who seeks through her music to initiate conversations about life's deep questions without suggesting pat answers, and to "describe in language those things we experience that have no words." How do you remain open to asking questions about the formless and wordless, without seeking simple answers?

Nuggets From Lewis Hyde's Call

Jun 30, 2019, 6 smiles Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting Awakin Call with Lewis Hyde. Myth, imagination, art, the public domain, tricksters and the gifts of forgetting are just a few of the topics that interest acclaimed poet, writer and cultural thinker Lewis Hyde. Hyde has been writing for more than three decades, with high-profile awards along the way, including a MacArthur “genius grant” in 1991. David Foster Wallace called him “one of our true superstars of nonfiction.” Hyde’s fans — among them Zadie Smith, Michael Chabon and Jonathan Lethem — routinely use words like "transformative" and "life-altering" to describe his books, which they’ve been known to pass hand to hand like spiritual texts. In continuous publication since 1983, his book The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World has been praised as the most subtle, influential study of reciprocity since the French anthropologist Marcel Mauss’s 1924 essay of the same ... Read Full Story

Lewis Hyde: On Creativity, The Commons, And Forgetting

Jun 26, 2019 This week's Awakin Call guest: 'Lewis Hyde: On Creativity, The Commons, And ForgettingReflection questions: Our guest this week is a renowned writer whose latest work examines the value of forgetfulness, of letting go. What has been the value of forgetting in your life?

Rachael Flatt: An Olympian's Take On Mental Health &

Jun 19, 2019 This week's Awakin Call guest: 'Rachael Flatt: An Olympian's Take On Mental Health & SuccessReflection questions: Our guest this week had to find a new passion and identity, after she finished competing as an Olympian and world-class competitive athlete at a young age. “You have to grieve, and no one talks about that at all in the sport,” she says. “No one prepares you for that feeling.” Have you had to reformulate your identity, and what tools have assisted you in that journey?

Nuggets From Jeremy Lent's Call

May 20, 2019, 4 smiles Last Saturday, we had the privilege of hosting an Awakin Call with Jeremy Lent. And it was a special joy to have past Awakin guest Terry Patten expertly moderating the call! An author and nonprofit founder, Jeremy Lent investigates how humans' search for meaning throughout history has led to its current crisis of sustainability. His book The Patterning Instinct: A Cultural History of Humanity's Search for Meaning (2017) draws on nearly 10 years of personal research and was called by The Guardian as "the most profound and far-reaching book I've ever read.” Focusing on questions such as, Is it our true nature to be selfish and competitive, or empathic and community minded?, Lent is on a mission to discover how we can consciously forge our own structures of meaning. Lent's own structures that had given life meaning shattered after the death of his wife and collapse of his company. "But ... Read Full Story

Jeremy Lent: Patterning Instinct

May 15, 2019, 1 smiles This week's Awakin Call guest: 'Jeremy Lent: Patterning InstinctReflection questions: Have you faced a time where the structures in your life shattered that had given life meaning? How and on what foundation did you go about constructing new meaning?

Nuggets From James Fox's Call

Apr 28, 2019, 6 smiles This week's riveting Awakin Call was beautifully moderated by past Awakin Call guest and co-creator of Buddhas on Death Row, Maria Jain. We'll post the audio of the call soon, but for now we've posted our extended notes that will give you a flavor of the stories and insights. By way of brief intro to James Fox: he is the founder and director of the Prison Yoga Project, an organization dedicated to establishing yoga and mindfulness programs in prisons and rehabilitation centers worldwide. Since 2002, he has been teaching yoga and meditation to prisoners at San Quentin Prison as well as other California State prisons. His book, Yoga: A Path for Healing and Recovery (2010), has been requested by and sent free of charge to over 30,000 prisoners. He has trained more than 2,000 teachers and his program has been replicated in more than 350 jails, prisons and rehabilitation facilities in 28 ... Read Full Story

James Fox: Serving Prisoners & Transforming Criminal

Apr 24, 2019, 1 smiles This week's Awakin Call guest: 'James Fox: Serving Prisoners & Transforming Criminal JusticeReflection questions: Our guest this week says he likes to tell the guys at San Quentin, “You weren’t part of my 10-year vision, but you were an answer to my prayers.” His prayer was, “How can I be of service?” Can you recall a time when you paid attention, followed internal guidance and found a tremendous opportunity to serve?

Nuggets From Laura Van Dernoot Lipsky's Call

Apr 06, 2019, 6 smiles Today we had the privilege of hosting an Awakin Call with Laura van Dernoot Lipsky. Laura is the founder and director of the Trauma Stewardship Institute. Widely recognized as a pioneer in the field of trauma exposure, she is author of Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others and of The Age of Overwhelm. Laura found her calling at age 18, when she regularly spent nights volunteering in a homeless shelter. She went on to work with survivors of child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, acute trauma of all kinds, and natural disasters. A decade into her career, Laura experienced what can best be described as a near-psychotic break—which, she came to realize, resulted not necessarily from her own direct trauma, but from years of witnessing and being intimately involved in trauma while lacking insight into how to sustain herself amidst such conditions. The ... Read Full Story

About Me