Would Knowing Make A Difference?

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Dear Friends:

This morning at 8 a.m., four of us from Commonweal went down to Agate Beach in Bolinas. We went to visit an extraordinary whale rib that had washed up with the tide. I estimate the rib is about twelve feet long and as thick as my thigh. Since it is only one side of the whale’s rib cage, the rib cage must have been over twenty-four feet wide.

Whole whales have washed ashore in Bolinas before during my 50 years here. Somehow this whale bone, picked clean by the elements, struck me with a special power.

I don’t know what happened to the whale. Did it die of old age? Was it chemical contaminants that weakened it? Or was it one of the growing number of casualties hit by the immense cargo ships that we see moving in and out of San Francisco Bay every day? Continue reading →

Changing Times

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Dear Friends:

This essay, or working paper, is my latest effort to explore how we may live as best we can in the global polycrisis that we have entered.  

I use the terms global polycrisis and polycrisis throughout this working paper. But I hold no special brief for these terms. I will discuss many other frames of reference as well. For simplicity’s sake, I have chosen a title that I believe almost everyone can relate to:  “Changing Times.”

Backstory

I have thought about the polycrisis for at least 50 of my 78 years. When I first imagined founding Commonweal in 1975, my vision was of a center dedicated to healing ourselves and healing the earth. In the early years, we held conferences on the prospects for better systems of planetary governance.  

We were active participants at the Earth Summit in Rio in 1992—which many saw as the last chance for a North-South agreement on a sustainable future. Likewise we have focused for 30 years at Commonweal on environmental health and justice.

In the early 2000s I wrote a series of articles on “The Biosocial Decline Hypothesis,” “Biopsychosocial Transformation,” and “The Age of Extinctions and the Emerging Environmental Health Movement.” They each addressed the emerging reality of the polycrisis through the lens of this new age of human driven extinctions. Continue reading →

Time to Slow Down

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Dear New School Friends:

No doubt you have noticed the world is in disarray.

No doubt COVID has affected your life.
No doubt the signs of war and climate change and political strife weigh upon you.

Tonight, as I reflected on what i might say to you, an inner voice came to me with this counsel—for me as well as for you.

That counsel was: slow down.

It may seem strange to offer such counsel in a world where most people are in a constant rush. I am as immeshed in unrelenting demands as any of you are.

Yet this voice is saying to me—this is perhaps the greatest wisdom that you and others need right now. Simply put: slow down. Continue reading →

Integrative Suggestions for COVID Prevention

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Dear TNS Friends:

Thanks to so many of you for supporting The New School this giving season. We are so grateful. If you didn’t get around to making a contribution, no worries! Just make your contribution here. Start the new year supporting our unique approach to living and learning in this brave new world.

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Are you tired of COVID? Most of us are. The hopeful view is that omicron signals the movement from pandemic to endemic. The hope is that COVID will keep getting lighter and easier to live with. That’s the hope. But, not so fast. We are tracking COVID on a little website called covidstrategies.org. It is unique on the web. We post on all sides of the pandemic. Our advisors differ vigorously but kindly with each other. We leave it to you to make up your mind.

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The main question I have is why mainstream medicine refuses to take integrative approaches to COVID prevention and amelioration seriously. We know obesity is a major risk factor for serious COVID. We know that being elderly, having cancer or diabetes, or being immune deficient greatly increases risk. While many people get mild case with omicron, some get severe cases. Continue reading →

Fall Letter: Stones and Souls

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Dear Commonweal Friends:

I hope this letter finds you well. You will soon see the Commonweal Year End Report. This is my personal letter to you.

I’ve organized the letter around seven topics:

  • What Oren Slozberg has brought to Commonweal.
  • The 212th Cancer Help Program returns—outdoors.
  • Sanctuary, our on-line Cancer Help Program, born in the pandemic, here to stay.
  • Healing Circles Global growing rapidly around the world.
  • The re-launch of Beyond Conventional Cancer Therapies as Cancer Choices.
  • The Change—Choosing resilience in the face of the polycrisis.
  • Picking a stone for our gravesite.

Continue reading →

Ask for a Miracle

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Dear New School Friends,

How do we live in this time? It is a question I ask myself again and again. For many, there is little choice. It is a time of such anguish for uncounted millions around the world.

But what of those of us who have a sufficiency? Food, a roof over our heads, a bed, a safe place. What of those of us whose primary suffering, other than the sorrows of our own personal lives, is grief at the fate of the earth?

How do we live?

There can be no single answer. Often our own private joys or sorrows are sufficient to displace our anguish over the Great Suffering. Continue reading →

Sources of Hope in the Face of COVID and the Polycrisis

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Dear New School Friends:

I hope this finds you well.
I’ve been thinking about sources of hope in the face of COVID and the polycrisis.

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COVID

COVID isn’t going away any time soon. In fact COVID will be with us for the foreseeable future.

I’ve started a little experimental website called CovidStrategies.org where we are tracking COVID in ways you won’t find elsewhere. First, we post and comment on key science and news developments. Second, we track repurposed drugs and integrative therapies for COVID prevention and treatment. Third, we situate COVID in the global polycrisis. Continue reading →

Work on the Side of Angels

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Dear New School Friends,

First of all, I want to thank all of you for staying with The New School through the past year of extraordinary turmoil. The pandemic, the politics, the disruption of our lives, and all the rest. I want you to know that The New School is alive, vibrant, and benefitting from the guidance of Kyra Epstein, my partner in all The New School’s work.

It’s been some time since I have written to you, although I have continued to record New School conversations (which you can find on our website). As some of you know, the past year has been an interesting one for me. I had a major surgery for an abdominal aortric aneurysm  at the end of July 2020. I went through seven months of steady recovery. Then I was told I could exercise. I did and immediately popped some hernias along the incision line. I was told I needed a second quite significant surgery to put mesh over the hernias. But a wise old vascular surgeon told me that, in his experience, people my age (77) who have a second significant surgery before the first is fully healed rarely regain their full energy. He said I would know when my first surgery was healed when the incision line turns white. I am still a good distance from white. Continue reading →

Spring Letter from Michael Lerner

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Dear Commonweal Friends:

I hope this finds each of you as well as you can be.

What a year this has been.

While the whole world wallowed in the anguish of the pandemic, the Forbes list of millionaires increased their net worth from $8 trillion to $13 trillion. There are now 2755 billionaires—up 493 from last year.

While the United States freed itself—and just barely—from the predations of an authentically pathological leader, more than 40% of the country remained in his thrall, following him blindly into a world of alternative facts and false narratives.

While the pandemic and its many sequelae occupied the headlines, the global polycrisis continues to unfold: two dozen global stressors—social, environmental, technological, and financial/economic—interacting with increasing unpredictability and force.

In the midst of it all, Commonweal continues to thrive. We are thriving because this is our time. The world wants and needs beacons of light like Commonweal. We’re here to serve. And we are stronger and more vital than ever before. Continue reading →

The Rainbow Sign: Resistance, Resilience & Restoration in the Global Polycrisis

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We founded Commonweal 44 years ago. Our vision was to support healing ourselves and healing the earth. We have worked toward that end ever since.

Healing differs from curing. A cure ends a disease. Healing is a movement toward wholeness. Healing can take place when we are recovering, or when we are living wounded, or even dying.

Our work with people with cancer now spans 34 years. It is all about healing while living wounded or dying. Now our healing circles work is moving around the world.

Our work on healing the earth began with regenerative agriculture in the Commonweal Garden. Continue reading →