Ruah Swennerfelt has lots of experience in the Transition Town movement, locally, regionally, religiously, nationally, and internationally, and has now written of much of it in
Spirit in Action
Each week, Spirit In Action brings you stories of people living lives of fruitful service, of peace, community, compassion, creative action and progressive efforts. We will trace the spiritual roots that support and nourish them in their service. Above all, we will seek out Light, Love and Helping Hands, being shared between our many neighbors on this planet, hoping to inspire and encourage you to sink deep roots and produce sacred fruit in your own life.
Spirit In Action is an hour of interviews with those providing leadership in peace, justice and "good works", interspersed with relevant music. The theme music is "The Turning of the World" performed by Sara Thomsen (written by Ruth Pellham).
Radio-Length Episodes |
Full-Length Episodes |
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Podurama | Pandora | PodcastAddict | Spotify |
Brilliant Non-violence: The Albert Einstein Institution
Jamila Raqib is executive director of The Albert Einstein Institution, the brain-child of Gene Sharp, leading researcher in non-violent action & civilian-based defense. Jamila was a refugee from Afghanistan at age 4, with a keen and innate sense of the power of non-violence to preserve and obtain freedom and justice, at the least cost.
Peace Love Advocate Network
There are many ways to participate in world healing, among them by inspiring us to come together - even folks from the other side, and what better way to do that with song, humor, compassion, and Billy Jonas. Billy is a creative genius and musical pied piper, leading us where we need to go, and doing it by example, not lecture.
Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Jewish
All Featured Music is by Billy Jonas:
We Need A Bobby Kennedy
Bobby Kennedy started out aligned with conservative commie-chasing Joe McCarthy, but ended up an inspirational, hard-fighting liberal. Larry Tye scrutinizes the history and make a case that we need just such a transformed bridge-builder today. That and much more in Larry's book, Bobby Kennedy: The Making of a Liberal Icon.
Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Jewish
Gender Bending in the Bible
Peterson Toscano is an amazing and innovative thinker whose acting talent reaps revolutionary insights with his video, Transfigurations: Transgressing Gender in the Bible. With humor, drama, and insight, Peterson unearths a wide range of non-gender compliant people & passages hidden in plain sight in the Bible, for LGBTQI and Straight to see.
Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Catholic, Quaker
History that Matters: The Underground Railroad
Eric Foner is one of the preeminent US historians, particularly for the period of the 1800s involving slavery, the Civil War, & Reconstruction. His latest book is Gateway to Freedom: The Hidden History of the Underground Railroad, which follows The Fiery Trial: Abraham Lincoln & American Slavery.
Building the Agricultural City
Robert Wolf, author of Building the Agricultural City: A Handbook for Rural Renewal advocates a move away from globalization and toward regionalism. Robert is co-host today, completely in charge of the 2nd half of this program. Robert is also author of American Mosaic, and has a vision of government small enough to be responsive, but large enough to accommodate the diverse needs of a community.
How Corporations are Remaking America
One of the most informative & persuasive writers ever, Gordon Lafer is author of The One Percent Solution: How Corporations are Remaking America One State At A Time. Both empowering & maddening, the piercing exposé of the destruction of labor & the middle class by moneyed interests is essential to mounting an effective reply. Gordon Lafer is a political economist and Associate Professor at the Labor Education and Research Center of the University of Oregon in Eugene.
Story-teller, Advocate or Rebel
All ages, all personalities, all disciplines have their roles in world-healing. Peterson Toscano of Citizen's Climate Radio is host today, speaking with all kinds of folks, including an environmental engineer in the Caribbean, Dr.
Evil
Some things just beg to be called evil, and when we see them we cry out "Why?" Charlene Embrey Burns traces 1000's of years of answers to that question in
Christian Understandings of Evil: The Historical Trajectory, and talks of her grappling with evil in both personal and wider religious experience.
Past/current religious/spiritual influences:
Buddhism, Episcopalian, Meditation, UCC - United Church of Christ