Gibrán's Podcast

“Happiness Lies Within” This is the most important truth that my spiritual master bestowed upon me. Years later, Elizabeth Gilbert (stop! I can hear some of your eyerolls!) expounded on the same teaching by reminding us that we tend to treat happiness like the weather. Like something that comes and goes. Not like something we get to nurture and cultivate. Like a luminescent truth that radiates out from our core. If you’ve been with me long enough you know that I am a very positive guy who does not believe in toxic positivity. We are here to live life on life’s terms. And life’s terms include devastating loss. I aim to live face forward without flinching before life and all that it brings. But I still get to experience a source of happiness that lies deep within me. That is my very nature. That allows me the capacity to get through the hard parts. When I am doing healing work with others, I am prone to remind them that they are “self-luminous.” YOU are Self-Luminous. Self-Luminous Like the Sun The

How do we build the world we are longing for in the here and now? This is the question that orients the work of my friend, Sól Gonzalez. Sol is an intuitive coach who understands their work with others as the act of holding and mirroring. Their bio is included here at the end. But right now I want to tell you that I have learned and grown a lot through my relationship with Sól. While our friendship is fun, loving and personal. They also hold an archetypal energy. A way of being and sensing in the world that can feel quite different than how I go about the same effort. There is something rich and revelatory when I meet Sól at this juncture. You will appreciate this conversation. We cover lots of grounds. Some of Sól’s story. Their approach to coaching. Their commitment to justice and how they contend with the intensity of living in a world that includes horrors such as what is happening in Gaza. While remaining connected to the good, the true and the beautiful. Definitely let me know what you take from t

What can we do to surface the origins of our inequality? What can we do to dismantle the narratives and the policies that keep us divided? Is there a way for us to push for reparations so that we can actually heal our relationships and our democracy? These are important questions. And many of us have been grappling and experimenting to find an answer. It is not hard to see that we are headed in the opposite direction. Democracy is shaking. Separation and supremacist thought are on the rise. I recently reconnected with Nicole Carty. It was in the context of an effort to leverage arts and culture in ways that impact public policy. I was impressed by the rigor of Nicole's thought. She holds a commitment to a theory of change that is well articulated. Grounded in the lessons that have made for successful movements in our past. Today she helps to lead an organization called Project Truth, Reconciliation and Reparations. And what I find impressive is the project’s commitment to build mass movement. It seeks to

One of the drawbacks of my work is that my mom doesn’t know how to talk about it. She doesn’t get to brag about what her kid does. And she wants to! That’s because it’s not easy to talk about facilitation. How do you explain what facilitators do? Different facilitators do different things. You have to experience it. And when the stakes are high, you really have to trust someone’s reputation. This is why I’m so excited to share this beautiful conversation with my friend Alia Lahlou, who is a magnificent, well-respected facilitator. She is also a mediator, and does excellent work with organizations. She definitely has the gift for what we do. And she knows what it takes to do it. To do this work and do it well you must commit to working deeply on yourself. This will become evident as you listen to the conversation. I’m inviting you to listen to two facilitators talk shop. I’m calling this episode Love & Facilitation because facilitation is an act of love. But also because we spend the first part of the podc

I am two years away from 50. I find this to be a great thing. There is nothing quite as beautiful as the process of learning to live. It also means that I am subject to the same marvel and challenge that every generation must face. The young will come, and they will want something different and new. A tension arises that demands we stay in it. There is a wisdom that comes with experience, invaluable things that must be preserved, and there is a wisdom in letting go, and allowing what’s new to emerge. I have not always handled that tension well. And I often have to ask myself: am I taking a stand for what is true and what is good? Or am I that curmudgeon middle-aged man in resistance to the new? This is why I make it a point to make sure to interview some younger people on the podcast. And I am inevitably blown away. This conversation with Kate Morales moved me to the core. I can honestly tell you I grew from it. That I’m still integrating lessons learned from this beautiful talk between kindred souls. K

Earlier this year, I invited you to join me in a set of dialogue sessions to help deepen my understanding of John Verveake’s work on ritual. Cecily Engelhart was one of the people that responded to the call. Our spots were already full, but something about Cecily’s email caught my attention. She was talking about grief and the way ritual was an essential part of her own dealings with loss. I knew I had to talk to her. The more healing work I do with others, the more clear it is to me that life will break each of our human hearts. We all experience loss, too many of us experience horror. Trauma grips our young heart, often at very young and tender ages. And we lack access to the language and, most importantly, to the tools and rituals to help us process grief and turn it into wisdom. Our capacity to heal, to experience post-traumatic growth, to become strong, wise and whole every time life breaks our heart, that too is an essential part of being human. It is the very process that makes us full grown hum

I’ve known Giovanna Negretti for at least two decades. She is one of those Puerto Rican women possessed with passion, focus, commitment, perseverance and a charisma for leadership that makes her unstoppable. I have witnessed her growth through many leadership roles. And I was thrilled to interview her as she stewards the Online Progressive Engagement Network, a community of organizations wielding digital campaigns for progressive change all over the world. I think of her work as an essential counter-weight to the global rise of authoritarianism. OPEN is an important container where rich country democracies and the democracies of the post-colonial world can exchange ideas and strategies for bringing people together in service of progressive change. About a decade ago, I had the privilege of facilitating the gathering that gave birth to OPEN. And now, my friend Giovanna serves as its Executive Director. Giovanna has also held a commitment to the cause of Puerto Rican Independence for as long as I have known

Would you rather have an ally or a friend? I’ve been taken by this paradigm shift of a question from the moment I heard Rinku talking about it. She says that an “ally” is too low of a bar, like taking something off the shelf and putting it back if you don’t like it. So what happens when we talk about friendship instead? What happens when we are in authentic relationships with the people we are building movements with? In my mind, EVERYTHING changes. We are playing an entirely different game. And it includes being more human, together. I am blessed to call Rinku a friend. I know you will appreciate this episode. I feel it is very much aligned with the work Tuesday and I have been doing to re-imagine the racial justice conversation. She is an Indian-American author, activist and political strategist. She was born in Kolkata and moved to New York when she was 5 years old. I met her 20 years ago when we both served on the Board of the Schott Foundation for Public Education. Today she serves as the execu

You can find remarkable people in every corner of this planet. Many of these people have something in common. There is a spirituality about them. They seem to be motivated by the call of something greater. They seem to live their lives in the context of a bigger story. A story that precedes them, and will go on after them. They are on a path of awakening to wisdom. I met Khadra Ali in 2014. I’ve always been struck by the light that radiates from her face. I have also been intrigued by how she keeps traditional, religious, ways of Islam and remains so open to so much that fits outside of her tradition. I have to brag and say that Khadra was part of the original, FIRST, cohort of the Evolutionary Leadership Workshop. It is an honor and a blessing to count her among our accomplished alumni. Khadra is doing amazing things. She works with the Youth and Innovation Team at the United Nations Population Fund, and she is based in Mogadishu. She is also dreaming up an organization called “Toos,” which means: Wake Up

We are among the richest, safest, most privileged humans to have ever walked the earth. We are also the loneliest and the most anxious. We are the most medicated and most depressed. We are also the only humans managing to steal from our descendants (that means our children, our grandchildren, and their children and grandchildren) at such a scale and such a pace that our species could die away. Are we doomed, or, is there a way to have an economy of abundance that nurtures well-being? This is where my friend Stephanie Gutierrez comes in. She is a member of the Oglala Sioux Tribe of South Dakota. And one of the founders of Seven Fires [LINK]. “Guided by the matriarchal belief that healing our relationships with ourselves and each other will restore much needed balance and reclaim our sovereignty as Indigenous peoples.” This is work that centers Indigenous people, but it is work that has the potential of helping to decolonize our collective imagination. It means shifting the notion of “economy” to reflect

Jihan Gearon is an artist who is pouring her spirit into the sort of art that can change your life. She is a friend. We met when I used to facilitate the fellowship that developed the Young Climate Leaders Network. I think of her as a recovering activist. But that’s not exactly true. She can’t stop being an activist. She is just another one among the ranks of us who are looking for a better, kinder, and more sustainable way to make the world whole again. I titled this episode “Life Giver,” because that is who Jihan is, and what she does. She breathes life into the world. She reminds us that we can create anything. Here you’ll learn about how: at the age of thirty-five, Jihan was diagnosed with endometrial cancer. As part of her journey of healing, she turned to painting, creating bold, powerful works that featured the animals, people, and other beings that protected, motivated, and transformed her during her recovery. Her paintings bring her passions in life together, showcasing feminine energy, connections

If you grew up in 90’s you probably know what it meant to be “sweatin” somebody. It’s something like liking someone, and doing all sorts of things to make sure they know you like them. You are after them. And you might do a little too much to make sure they notice you. What if you were just as committed, just as passionate, willing to go just as far, when it comes to sweatin’ your truth? I imagine your body would move in all sorts of ways. I figure you would get in tune with others around you. I know you would not hide. You would let us see what you are finding, because you would know that we would find ourselves in it too. Here I’m sharing a beautiful interview with Maria Bauman, Artistic Director of MBDance. Her bio starts with the words: “Muscles. Beads of sweat. Exertion. Inversion. Carving out selfhood.” She is “a woman dancer, a person of color, a southern not-quite-belle who grew up poor, and a queer person.” Her “choreography for MBDance is based on physical and emotional power, desire for equit

Jawole Willa Jo Zollar is the founder of the legendary ensemble Urban Bush Women. She is also a winner of the MacArthur Genius Award. I met Jawole at a Creative Change Retreat, an intersection of artists and activists that used to be held at the Sundance Resort, in Provo, Utah. One of my favorite gatherings to facilitate. I was immediately moved by Jawole’s presence, and I could sense how she was tuning into a deeper energy in my facilitation. We started to get to know each other and quickly learned that not only do we share values and aspirations for a more embodied and generative approach to change. But we also share a powerful spiritual alignment. This allowed Jawole to trust me to do organizational development work with Urban Bush Women. An honor and an experience that I continue to relish. “Jawole is a choreographer and dance entrepreneur who has forged a style of dance-making and artistic leadership that tethers dance to cultural identity, civic engagement, community organizing, and imperatives of

I was born in Puerto Rico. One of the last “official” colonies on earth. I know something about the taste and smell of empire. Today all of humanity is still contending with the reverberations of 500 hundreds years of European imperialism. The indigenous people of the world have a lot to teach us about the genocidal impacts of colonization and about what it will take to decolonize ourselves. Because most of us, indigenous our not, remain colonized by a spell. A spell that tells us that to be human is to stand alone, to extract, consume and accumulate, to be afraid of each other and to confuse economic growth with the developmental growth of our very souls. Here is a conversation with Kassier Heartendorp. One among the Maori people that are successfully participating in the decolonization of New Zealand. Kassie is the Director of Action Station, an independent, crowdfunded, community campaigning organization in her native land. They speak of their mission as: “To tautoko (support) and whakamana (uplift

Last Fall (in 2022), my friend Jesse Hassinger, who works for The Odyssey Bookshop in South Hadley, Massachusetts, reached out to me with an exciting request. He asked if I would interview adrienne maree brown on the release of her new book, Fables and Spells: Collected and New Short Fiction and Poetry. Of course, I said yes! adrienne describes herself as someone who grows healing ideas in public through her writing, her music, and her podcasts. I think of her as one of those prophetic voices that are able to speak in an ancient mythopoetic language. The tongue that helps our souls find meaning as we return home to ourselves. We decided to launch Season 3 of the Podcast with an audio of this interview I did for The Odyssey Bookshop. It is a potent conversation that is not short on magic. I invite you to listen with an openness to be touched. Allow yourself to be brought into an ongoing decentralized conversation that wants to remember what we’ve lost. While moving forward here, in this evolution of conscio

On this podcast I interview my dear friend Pamela Standing. Pamela is a fountain of wisdom. She is a source of that sort of heartfelt joy and laughter that is embodied by people who hold a deep understanding of what it means to walk well upon this earth. Pamela is a citizen of Cherokee Nation. I met her when I was facilitating a Rural Economy Fellowship of what was then called the “Business Alliance for Local Living Economies.” She is a grassroots organizer who has immersed herself in rural tribal community wealth building. She endeavors to close the disparity gap through cooperative work and collaboration. Her work is about forming partnerships and alliances that ultimately result in the sharing of resources. Pamela serves as the Executive Director of the Minnesota Indigenuos Business Alliance (MNIBA). In this episode we talk about forgiveness and healing. About our ancestors, and about wealth vs. prosperity. Give a listen and let me know what you think. Saludos, Gibrán

How do you make art for our time? How do you engage your creative life force to meet this moment? A time in which systems are collapsing and a new world wants to be born. The life of Favianna Rodriguez is an answer to these questions. She is a renowned interdisciplinary artist, a cultural organizer and a social justice activist. But most importantly, she is one of my dearest friends. It is hard to wrap your head around the breadth and depth of her work. She leads the Center for Cultural Power. And she describes her art as a visual manifestation of her lived experience, and the inspiring journey of her healing. We cover some ground in this episode. We talk about her creative process. And of what it means for her to be shifting mediums for her art. We talk about abortion, healing, pychedelics and ancestral practice.

We live in a punitive culture. The United States incarcerates more of its people than any country in the world. Turn to twitter at any point of the day and you see cancel culture in full display. What makes us think we can throw people away? We are wired for connection. We need structures of belonging. This is how we signal a culture of safety and well being. Punitive culture makes us anxious. It makes us afraid. It makes us feel alone. What happens when you take a stand for restorative justice? What if we take back our architecture, our institutional space, to foster love and forgiveness instead? Meet my friend Deanna Van Buren. The founder and executive director of Designing Justice + Designing Spaces. She is an artist running an architecture and real estate development firm that works to end mass incarceration. Can you imagine? This is a conversation full of heart and insight. Deanna is not just an architect and an artist. She is a committed spiritual adept with a passionate commitment to the p

There is so much exciting talk about emergence these days! How do you apply this thinking to something like the Church? How can you make room for the new when a tradition is 2000 years old? Rev. Mariama White-Hammond is finding out. She is a founder of New Roots AME Church, an Emergent Church in Boston’s Dorchester neighborhood. Where I live! Reverend Mariama says that Emergent Churches believe God is doing something new in this moment. And that it is our job to move with spirit and make ourselves available for God to emerge. In this podcast episode we dive into spirituality and emergence. We talk about accountability. And about what we can do to heal the deep divide in our Country. Rev. Mariama is and has been a passionate advocate for ecological & social justice. For youth engagement and Spirit based organizing. She is engaging the faith community, and particularly the Black church on climate change and ecological justice issues. Mariama is also becoming a farmer. For more details, check out the full

How do you influence popular culture in ways that elevate Black humanity? How do you build the skill, power and wealth of Black creatives? The podcast is baaack!!!! And here I’m introducing you to my friend and colleague Melinda Weekes, founder and CEO of Beautiful Ventures. She is a minister, facilitator, consultant and visionary social change architect. This is a joyful conversation ranging from theology to the business of culture. You will be moved by Melinda’s heart and brilliance. Find out more about Melinda and our other podcasts on the website www.gibranrivera.com