For each Growing Edge Podcast episode, we offer a conversation starter that you can download from our website for use with a small group or for your own meditation or journaling. Here are some questions and probes for this podcast with Barbara Kingsolver
Read MoreFor each Growing Edge Podcast episode, we offer a conversation starter that you can download from our website for use with a small group or for your own meditation or journaling. Here are some questions and probes for this podcast with Naomi Shihab Nye.
Read MoreFor each Growing Edge Podcast episode, we offer a conversation starter that you can download from our website. You can use this with a small group or for your own meditation or journaling. This is our conversation starter for Episode 38. The Angels & The Furies
For each Growing Edge Podcast episode, we offer a conversation starter that you can download from our website. You can use this with a small group or for your own meditation or journaling. In this conversation starter explore creativity and the undivided life, writing from the margins and the red threads that run through Parker’s work over the past 50 years.
Read MoreIn this episode of our podcast, we explore the themes of Carrie’s new book and CD—both titled “Until Now”—as well as the creative process that all of us have access to in our own way. Think “creative parenting,” “creative teaching,” “creative gardening,” “creative leading,” etc.
Read MoreFor each episode we offer a conversation starter you can download at our website. You can use this with a small group or for your own meditation or journaling.
In this episode with Courtney Martin we explore powerful questions about what it means to live a moral and ethical life in racially divided times.
Some Approaches to this Month’s Questions
You may want to explore the podcast and Questions of the Month privately, via journaling and silent reflection. But please consider gathering online for an exploration with one or more family members or friends. If that idea appeals to you, look into using Zoom, Facetime, Skype or some other video platform or talk with each other in person when vaccinated or safely social distanced.
Read MoreIn this guide we consider our conversation with mediation teacher Sharon Salzberg, exploring the topics of suffering and the human condition, feeling what we feel and yet now getting stuck in that emotion. The importance of caring, balance and self compassion to avoid burn out. We discuss developing a flexibility of attention, even a light heartedness and the use of meditation and mindfulness to deepen our lives and sustain our work in the world.
Read MoreBecause Carrie was in the studio this month working on a new album, we decided not to record a new podcast for June. Instead, we are revisiting our 2019 interview with our dear friend, Mark Nepo, poet and author. In this interview we explored what it means to show up as our authentic self and how when we are in touch with our deepest human experiences we are in touch with our shared human experience.
Mark Nepo has moved and inspired readers and seekers all over the world with his #1 New York Times bestseller The Book of Awakening. Beloved as a poet, teacher, and storyteller, Mark has been called “one of the finest spiritual guides of our times”. To learn more about Mark Nepo click Here
This month’s conversation starter is inspired by our May, 2021 podcast, with Dr. Luther E. Smith Jr., Professor Emeritus at Candler Seminary, author, educator, pastor, mystic, and elder. In this episode we talk about how identity is shaped and expanded and how conversations about race could be more authentic and powerful. We also explore what it meant for him to follow a spiritual calling and the experiences that led him to his friendship and academic study of author and mystic, Howard Thurman.
Read MoreFor our April, 2021 podcast, we welcome singer songwriter, activist John McCutcheon, musician, activist and spiritual seeker. He has 41 albums to his credit, has received six Grammy Award nominations and worked for 40 years bringing together intelligent thoughtful songs, fearless commentary and music for social change. In this episode we talk about the power of music to connect and inspire, the dignity and value of each human being told in story and song, spiritual seeking and embracing the role of elder.
You may want to explore the podcast and Questions of the Month privately, through journaling and silent reflection. But we encourage you to consider gathering online for an exploration with one or more family members or friends. If that idea appeals to you, look into using Zoom, Facetime, Skype or some other video platform or talk with each other while practicing safe social distancing.
Read MoreIn this podcast, Parker, Carrie and John Paul Lederach discuss America's growing edge, the roots of violence and the ways societies come back from division and conflict. Here are a few questions for your own exploration, journaling, and (we hope) conversation with others. We encourage you to use the online Zoom format for dialogues with family and friends.
To learn more about John Paul Leaderach click HERE
To check out his many wonderful books click HERE
Read MoreIn the January podcast, we reflect on 2020 and what we see ahead in 2021. Here are a few questions for your own exploration, journaling, and dialogue with others. For conversations with friends, we urge you to use the online Zoom format.
Read MoreIn this episode, Carrie and Parker have a conversation with Poet, Ross Gay, author of The Book of Delights & Be Holding. We talk about Ross's books, his thoughts about finding delight in his daily life and as a daily practice, joy as an act of resistance and the importance of connection to one another and to the natural world.
We hope you will download our Episode 28 Conversation Starter, gather with friends (safely in person or virtually) to discuss some of the thoughtful questions that this episode poses.
Read MoreIn our delayed November podcast—planned before the 2020 General Election, and recorded several days after it—Carrie and Parker discuss the outcome of that day and the four years that led up to it.
They talk about our current political divides, the many uncertainties of our challenging era (some real, some manufactured), and the role of hope and faithfulness in finding our way forward as “We the People.”
Read MoreThis conversation starter is based upon The Growing Edge Podcast Episode 26: From Heartland to White House & Back A Dialogue on Democracy with Preeta Bansal . In this episode we explore the Inner work of democracy and the common good. Preeta Bansal was Solicitor General of the State of New York, then as General Counsel in the Obama White House, where she played a major role in the Office of Management and Budget during the financial collapse of 2008. Preeta now finding expression in ServiceSpace, an ecosystem in which she is a global anchor and volunteer and which draws upon network science, the role of emerging technologies, and the work of inner transformation. For more about Preeta, her life and work her full biography is below.
We hope you will gather with friends (safely in person or virtually) to discuss some of the thoughtful questions that this episode poses.
Read MoreConversation Starter for the September Podcast
In this Growing Edge Podcast, we talk with author, educator, and activist Gregory Ellison II about his new book, Anchored in the Current, a collection of essays about the enduring influence of mystic, theologian, and civil rights activist Howard Thurman.
Read MoreAugust Questions of the Month
In this Growing Edge Podcast, we explore mortality, living with presence in the pandemic, the importance of creativity and collaboration—and we debut our new single, "The Music Will Play On” (lyrics by Parker, music by Carrie). Some focus questions to accompany the podcast:
(1) As we become aware of our horizon line, how do we want to live in the time given? What do we want to let go of, and what do we want to give ourselves to? (2) What kind of risks are we willing and able to take as we age, risks that we felt unable to take in our younger years? (3) What happens when we feel called to step out of our comfort zones and into something new, something that forces us into “beginner’s mind”? (4) How do you—or how would you like to—express your creativity, the instinct for new life in the face of death? If you have yet to step in that direction, how do you understand whatever is holding you back, and what might get you over that obstacle? (5) How do you understand “the curious promise of limited time” in your own life?
In this Conversation Starter we’ve suggested several questions for personal or community reflection based upon The Growing Edge Podcast Episode 23: “ A Ritual To Read Each Other.” By William Stafford. If the work Carrie and Parker describe in Episode 23 feels like your work, please take a listen and reflect on whatever arises for you. Better yet, reflect with some friends.
Read MoreConversation Starter for Episode 22: Revolutionary Love
In this Growing Edge Podcast, Parker and Carrie talk with author, attorney, filmmaker, and activist Valarie Kaur. In her new book, See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, Valarie invites us to a revised and renewed version of the historic nonviolent movement for social change.
Read MoreIn this Growing Edge Podcast, Parker and Carrie have an open-hearted conversation about maintaining hope in the time of COVID-19. Their topics include learning what it means “to garden in the dark;” Marge Percy’s powerful poem about gardening, “The Seven of Pentacles;” and the many layers of meaning that come up when we ask one another, "How are you?"
We encourage you to use Zoom, FaceTime, Skype, or some other video platform to bridge social distancing and engage in conversation. If you aren't familiar with Zoom, it’s a wonderful way to help groups to stay in conversation. It's free, and easy to learn. Check it out HERE, or ask any grade-schooler you know!
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