Who do you know who speaks at least 3 languages, has lived in several countries, performed between Renaissance Fairs year-round for 10 years, writes & sings profoundly deep & moving songs, and can play the harp & the 12-string guitar simultaneously? Ariane Lydon and no one else (to my knowlege)! Living in the Midwest for a couple decades now, Ariane brings a world of beautiful music to our land.

How do we spread the peace virus instead of perpetuating fear, hate, & injustice? Matthew Legge is author of Are We Done Fighting? Building Understanding in a World of Hate and Division, which gives us deep insights & practical skills for doing just that. Matthew has been the Peace Program Coordinator of the Canadian Friends Service Committee since 2012, and he has supported locally-led peace initiatives in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia.

In this month’s episode, Liam and Don take a look at Jesus’ teaching on the laborers in the vineyard through the larger story of Jesus engaging with the people. Liam explores the tendency to isolate Jesus’ teachings and parables from their story-based, literary contexts. 

Liam proposes that the author of Matthew’s gospel (like the authors of each gospel) intentionally connected the teachings with the events surrounding them. As an example, Liam considers the vineyard teaching in conversation with Jesus blessing the children (Matt 19) as he goes about the towns blessing people, tending the sick, feeding people, and teaching.

Don and Liam share some lively discussion about the implications of these teachings, especially when we consider the teachings in the context of the stories about how Jesus interacts with communities.

Listen to much of Nonviolence: An Interfaith Conversation, co-sponsored by the Norman Miller Center for Peace, Justice, and Public Understanding at St.

As the government affairs coordinator at the National Audubon Society in Washington, DC. Tykee James has a special role—organizing bird walks with members of Congress and congressional staff! Birding has been important to him ever since he started as a teen in Philadelphia.

Last year, after a racist incident against a Black birder in New York’s Central Park, Tykee James and fellow birders decided to create #BlackBirdersWeek. They had only hours to organize the event which included using social media to reveal a whole world of birding by people of color. During that week, the #BlackBirderWeek campaign had more than 600 million impressions on social media sites. It also generated national press coverages.

For about 10 years Richard Paul Thomas (or on FB) made music around Milwaukee, WI, as part of The Counts, The Polaras, Ron & The Continentals, The Gamblers, The Too Young to Know Anything about Pain & Suffering Singers, and also piles of great music as Susan & Richard Thomas.

The work of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC) is to develop & share the knowledge needed for effective civil resistance, and they are providing the info in more than 60 languages to freedom, justice, & democracy workers all around the world. Hardy Merriman has been President & CEO of ICNC since 2015, and working in the field since 2003. Drawing on the best research and the most promising experience, Hardy and the ICNC are providing the vital educational support to the rapidly growing nonviolent civil resistance movements working to transform the world.

Rolly Brown delivers quality, whether it's his 4x-a-week on-line Curve Flattening Concerts, his guitar instruction, his Bucks County Tai Chi, or his humane dog training info.

Rabbi Katy Allen co-founded Jewish Climate Action Network (JCAN) in 2013 as an urgent and visionary Jewish voice on the crisis of climate change. Growing up on a farm and having worked as a science teacher, she went on to Jewish studies and helped found the One Earth Collective, and leads Ma'yan Tikvah, a congregation in the Boston Suburb of Wayland, on spirituality and nature, which holds outdoor Shabbat services all year long - in Massachusetts. 

Many Spirit In Action listeners eat consciously, maybe natural foods, local foods, or organic foods. Maybe you grow a portion of your own foods, or buy from CSAs and local farms, but if you can't verify the quality of your food first-hand, you may depend on the official federal Organic certification for that assurance. Unfortunately, big business and big money will tend to dilute organic standards and practices, if we let them, so we need help from a public-interest private eye, and that's the role of Organic Eye, an organic industry watchdog, and Mark Kastel is one of its founders. Mark has been through the system, first working for some of the agribusiness giants, before having his eyes and mind opened to vital importance of organic foods and farming, for the consumers, plants, animals, & the planet.