For a year and a half or so, I’ve been an advisor to a new and exciting project, the US Department of Arts and Culture, which is demonstrating the public cultural presence we need in this country by performing it. Watch Deputy Secretary Norman Beckett explain it in a video clip. My role is Chief …
In my keynote for Staging Sustainability 2014, I was asked to define “sustainability.” “The implicit meaning of the term refers to its opposite,” I told the group. “We fear having damaged ecosystems so much that life on Earth will soon be unsustainable, so sustainability names our search for whatever can heal that damage and allow …
I spent a chunk of last week in a very cold and snowy Toronto at Staging Sustainability 2014, a conference with the subtitle “People. Planet. Profit. Performance.” It was masterminded by Ian Garrett of the Center for Sustainable Practice in The Arts, who teaches at York University. The University was one of an impressive array …
I feel my artworks, to a great degree, they are desires that will never be fulfilled. But that doesn’t impact on what we do manage to do. Just as I feel that the great part of the demand for freedom lies in fighting for it, and not just in it being a goal. I feel …
Many think that changes and reforms can take place in a short time. I believe that we always need time to lay the foundations for real, effective change. And this is the time of discernment. Sometimes discernment instead urges us to do precisely what you had at first thought you would do later. Pope Francis, …
I’ve been traveling lately, talking with people about creating a culture of possiiblity in their own arenas—organizations, communities, companies, movements, and beyond. The idea that animates this work is very simple: we are suffering greatly from the conventional understanding that has suppressed essential ingredients of our species’ astounding capability; we need to bring our whole …
I’m always talking up the power of art and culture to change worlds. Today, I’m going to let the poster child for the paranoid style in American politics make the case for me as he swoons with fear in the face of an art and social change project I’m involved in, one that is barely …
The day will come when you will trust you more than you do now, and you will trust me more than you do now. We can trust each other. I do believe, I really believe…that we can all become better than we are. I know we can. But the price is enormous and people are …
Silence, as every meditator knows, confers the opportunity to notice what matters most. This past week, I’ve been noticing our ideas about age and thinking about an important event approaching fast: On November 3, The Shalom Center (where I have the honor of serving as president) will honor Rabbi Arthur Waskow and Gloria Steinem with …
This silly little story keeps popping into my head. It must have been at the height of the Sixties—1968, maybe. My aunt was reminiscing about the past. Reaching for a story to impress me with the sacrifices of the Great Depression, she said that she’d walked to work all week to save carfare so she …