Spirit in Action

Steve McIntosh is author of Evolution's Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins , an insightful & carefully reasoned study of the big WHY driving creation. With a worldview peering beyond the beliefs & practices of traditionalists, modernists, & post-modernists, Steve leads us to an outlook which promises dramatic improvement, inner & outer, for o...

Stan Cox is author of Any Way You Slice It: The Past, Present, and Future of Rationing and a Senior Research Scientist and coordinator of research for the The Land Institute . With an eye to a just & sustainable future, Stan explores our history with rationing and the possibilities for an equitable future of necessary constraints. Stan Cox is also author of Losing Our Cool  

Paul Gilk co-edited the book, A Whole Which Is Greater: Why the Wisconsin Uprising Failed , looking at the range of societal values, politics, & spiritual issues which have determined Wisconsin's course, including the failure to prevent Gov. Scott Walker's radical shift in the state. Paul lives without electricity, close to the earth, & is the author of at least 6 books, all typed on his m...

War tax resistance, immigration, Middle East, intentional community, books & plays, public office, divestment - Bill & Genie Durland have been called & led to address these concerns and many more. With the Center on Law & Pacifism, Pendle Hill, Christian Peacemaker Teams, the Virginia House of Delegates, and elsewhere, Bill & Genie have walked a faithful life of witness. Order...

Bob Graf spent 7 years as a Jesuit scholastic student, was part of the Milwaukee 14 , a 1968 action to destroy draft records during the Vietnam War, and recently he got arrested as a result of his protests of ROTC training at Marquette U

When building relationship with Earth, the best advice may be "don't just do something, sit there!", and 3 participants of a weeklong workshop did something like that, sharing their process, experience, and fruits in this program. eric maya joy, Mary Jo Klingel, and Mary Conrow Coelho speak of roots & fruits of a Quaker Earthcare Witness (QEW) experiment.

Laura Melvin retired after 10 years as a Florida circuit court judge, and the spirit of one of the young girls whose death came through Laura's courtroom required her to write Public Secrets & Justice: A Journal of a Circuit Court Judge . Laura stayed on the bench as long as she could and left when the pain & contradictions were no longer tolerable. What is the role of an open-hearted, con...

Jeremy Gragert tackles the climate/environment crisis at home by working on the ways we travel, including his activism with the Chippewa Valley Transit Alliance , Eau Claire Climate Action Now , and the Bicycle Federation of Wisconsin (WisconsinBikeFed.org) .

Mel White is an eloquent, incisive, and compassionate voice exposing the lies of the Christian Right. This is something he knows from the inside, having ghost-written "autobiographies" for Pat Robertson, Jerry Falwell, and others, before he accepted his homosexualtity as a gift from God, rather than a sin to be obliterated.

Dan Terry did things that are unbelievable in many Western eyes - being welcomed among diverse peoples of Afghanistan, including some among the Taliban. After a life of aid, friendship, and living on the edge in the region, Dan was killed in 2010, and his story and stories are captured in Making Friends Among the Taliban: A Peacemaker's Journey in Afghanistan , written by Jonathan P. Larson .

K. M Rukshan (Ruki) Fernando is chair of Rights Now , a collective of human rights defenders in Sri Lanka, monitoring & documenting human rights violations of the ethnic conflict in Sri Lanka. Ruki received the Justice & Peace Award from the Bishop Tji Hak Soon Foundation in Korea in 2009, and he works as a columnist on firsthand human rights, justice and peace issues for online citizen jo...

Madeline Schaefer hosts a variety of segments about AFSC 's work concerning sustainable agriculture, water rights, divestment in illegal Palestinian occupation, immigrants, and her own investigation of intentional communities for change.

Jacob George, a 3-tour Afghan vet, has just released Soldier's Heart, part of his recovery from the Moral Injury of war. Self-described as "a peace seekin, bicyclin, ramblin hobo from the hills of Arkansas", Jacob has biked across much of the South in the past 3 years, spreading peace and healing.

The Holistic Life Foundation does the amazing work of transforming lives & spirits in inner city Baltimore. The basic tools are yoga & mindfulness taught and modeled by 3 men in the hood. Ali Smith, Atman Smith & Andres Gonzales founded HLF fresh out of college in 2001, working with kids, at-risk people, the mentally ill, and everyone else, providing a model for changed and redirected...

Sri Lanka has been blessed by many decades of healing work under the leadership of A.T. Ariyaratne and his son, Dr. Vinya S. Ariyaratne. The organization they have led, Sarvodaya , is the largest non-governmental organization in Sri Lanka, having worked with people in 15,000 villages, combining mind, heart and spirit for the peace, health, and well-being of all citizens.

David Massengill paints a griping and moving picture of the USA through his music - of race, immigrants, adoption, and much more. Instead of speechifying about politics, David brings change by involving listeners in real stories that move our hearts, all the more powerful because of his Tennessee vernacular and accent.

Jerry Lausted is on the board of The Save the Hills Alliance, was an Ag teacher for 18 years, and has been involved in frac sand mining concerns since 2006.

Jennifer Kavanagh is an author, organizer, and spiritual activist. She's worked on and written about diverse topics including micro-credit finance, simplicity, and her recent book, The World is our Cloister: A Guide to the Modern Religious Life . Based in England, her work on the struggling East Side of London and in developing nations around the globe, has tied her spiritual center in transformat...

Sandy Bishop & Rhea Miller were the 2012 Lopez Spirit Award winners for many of their works, including very notably their work with the Lopez Community Land Trust which nurtures the island in myriad ways, like producing net-zero-energy housing developments and the Seed Library . Rhea hosts a home church, drawing on, and continuing beyond, her training in Episcopal seminary.

The KXL Pipeline Truthforce and their 3/24/13 Educational Forum & Concert in Norman Oklahoma will bring together great speakers plus music by Buffy Sainte-Marie and Indigenous .

James W. Douglass is author of a number of books including Gandhi & the Unspeakable: His Final Experiment With Truth. He's cofounder of the Ground Zero Center for Nonviolent Action in Washington State and Mary's House, a Catholic Worker house in Burmingham, Alabama.

Steve Horn photographed throughout the former Yugoslavia in 1970, not returning with his camera until 2003, after the war in Bosnia. He documented the before and after of war and was able to take back to the people a slice of their pre-war past nearly lost. With his book, Pictures Without Borders - Bosnia Revisited , Steve teaches us to know our global neighbors. Raised in a Jewish family, Steve i...

Marjorie Heins is the author of Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom, and the Anti-Communist Purge , examining the roots of free speech by teachers as a special concern of the US constitution, and the lessons we can learn from the way these rights were compromised badly during the McCarthy Era. Through decades of work as a civil rights lawyer, Marjorie carries a passion an...

Joe Wenke has just released You Got To Be Kidding: A Cultural Arsonist’s Literal Reading of the Bible , and with humor and sometimes sarcasm, he brings new, unjaded eyes to the writings of the Bible. He aims to disarm those who would use the Bible for oppression and domination and is seriously focused on making you laugh on the way to the unshackling. Joe has been a corporate speech writer, a stan...

Marie Friedmann Marquardt is co-author of Living Illegal - The Human Face of Unauthorized Immigration , a book that combines head & heart to look at the realities around this political whipping boy of an issue. Marie is currently scholar-in-residence at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta, Georgia.