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One of the things we have gotten wrong for too long has been our understanding of and, consequently, treatment of people with disabilities. Although it is not happening broadly enough or quickly enough, efforts to correct our understanding and our behavior are taking place. One of those efforts is The Penguin Project which is a nation-wide organization and effort to involve people with disabilities in musical theater. My guest for this episode is here to discuss her work with the project.

Lisa Heath Jinkins (Choreographer for Golden Isles Penguin Project in Brunswick, GA) began her career as a professional modern dancer in New York City in 1985. She had the opportunity to perform with many top choreographers and companies, including The Martha Graham Dance Company, and at some of the larger theatres in Manhattan: New York City Center and The Joyce Theater, to name two.

Lisa met and married Jim Jinkins in NY, and they have two children, Rose and Heath. During this time, Lisa had the opportunity to write 5 children’s books for The Disney Company, based on the animated series “PB&J Otter” created by Jim Jinkins. That led to co-creating “JoJo’s Circus” for The Disney Channel, and writing scripts for “Pinky Dinky Doo”, an animated television series created by Jim.

In 2010, the family moved to Brunswick, GA, where they continued to be involved in the arts, performing in various local productions on stage, and working behind the scenes, as well. In 2016 Lisa was asked to be the Choreographer for a new venture: Golden Isles Penguin Project.  The Penguin Project® is a musical theater production that casts children and young adults with disabilities in all roles. All sing, dance and act in the show. Those individuals (Artists) will get assistance from on-stage peers (Mentors). And after a one year break in 2023, Lisa has been asked to return to help with Meredith Wilson’s “The Music Man, Jr.!” She can’t wait!

To learn more about The Penguin Project and efforts like these go to the following links:

Golden Isles Penguin Project: https://goldenislesarts.org/programs/penguin-project/

The Penguin Project:  https://penguinproject.org/

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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This episode is a continuation of my series on palliative care and end of life issues. My guest is Dr. Aditi Sethi. Dr. Sethi is a hospice and palliative care physician, end-of-life doula, and musician. Featured in the forthcoming film The Last Ecstatic Days, Aditi is an emerging and important voice for shifting our culture’s understanding and approach to dying, death, and bereavement care. Dr. Sethi is the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Conscious Living and Dying which will formally launch in the near future. The mission of Center for Conscious Living and Dying is to create a community that embodies living a meaningful life through inner exploration and growth, service, and community-supported end-of-life care.

Aditi is here to share with us her journey into establishing and developing the Center and to help us understand more fully its vision and work.

To learn more, go to the website for the Center at ccld.community.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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The reason I feature storytelling as often as I do in this show is because of its capacity as an art form to build bridges between people and connect them, existentially and emotionally to experience the ‘world’ within the story, and thereby existentially and emotionally to experience the lives of others and The Other. Storytelling is a therapy and, as you know from my interviews with Meta Commerce and Mark Yaconelli, a medicine. And it can also be a joyful means of entertainment, fellowship, and communion. It is a way we make sense and meaning of our lives and realities.

This episode focuses again on the importance of storytelling in African American culture. My guest is Gloria Elder.

Gloria “Glo Glow” Elder has been telling stories for as long as she can remember. She enjoys writing and telling stories of her many adventures of growing up around her loving grandparents, who told her many family stories. If fact, Gloria credits her grandparents as the reason she developed a love for storytelling. 

When she became an Early Childhood Educator and Director, she told stories to children and adults in the day care center every Friday morning. Upon changing careers and missing the children at the day care center, she became a clown and created her act called, “The Magic of Clowning Around”. Her performances included, mime, singing, face painting and magic tricks.  

The themes of Gloria’s stories are family history, saving our planet and transforming our life.  She performs at birthday parties, in schools, hospitals, churches, cemeteries, and at festivals. She also loves telling African Folktales.

Her first book titled, I Walked a Mile in Her Shoes: A Story of Unconditional Love, is a story about an adventure she had with her maternal grandmother. Gloria is a member of Kuumba Storytellers of Georgia and the National Association of Black Storytellers.

To buy a copy of Gloria’s book, contact her at gloriaelder@comcast.net.

To learn more about Kuumba Storytellers of Georgia go here:

kuumbastorytellers.org

To learn more about The National Association of Black Storytellers to here:

https://www.nabsinc.org/

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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There is an increasing awareness of a several things related to aging. One is the fact that modern medicine and health practices are making it possible for people to live longer so that more people are able to live to being senior adults and to do so for a long time. Another is that members of the Baby Boom generation are retiring. A third is that for many people the experience if aging is not a good experience. So, efforts are being made and practices developed to address the present circumstances related to aging. This episode will focus on the ideas, practices, and events connected with the concept of Sage-ing.

Sage-ing was developed by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Schalomi. The fruit of his experiences and efforts from addressing his own aging have produced many things, but the two in particular that are discussed in this episode are his book that he co-wrote with Ronald S. Miller titled From Age-ing to Sage-ing: A Revolutionary Approach to Growing Older, and the organization, Sage-ing International.

My guests to help us understand more fully this movement called Sage-ing are Jeanne Marsh and The Reverend David Blackmon.

After retiring from the corporate world in 2005, Jeanne received an MA from the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where she was first introduced to Sage-ing through Reb Zalman’s book, From Age-ing to Sage-ing . Jeanne brings twenty-seven years experience in corporate Human Resources and Management Training and Development. She currently serves as Coordinator for the Sage-ing Leader Certification Program. Jeanne is also certified to administer and consult using theMyers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator and facilitates “Connecting With Self” and Sage-ing workshops in the Asheville area as well as partnering with other Sage-ing Leaders throughout the country.

David Blackmon serves as a chaplain in health care facilities in Western North Carolina. David’s training includes masters degrees from Southwestern Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. David completed a year’s internship in clinical pastoral education in 1989 before beginning a 20-year stent at Mission Hospitals in Asheville, North Carolina. He served as Coordinating pastor for First Baptist Church of Asheville for a dozen years before entering semi-retirement in 2021. During a sabbatical, he completed the Spiritual Guidance Program at the Shalem Institute in 20014-2015. David rejoices in the sacred experiences and creative callings of people from all faiths and backgrounds and welcomes this diversity as a crucial resource in the growing community of sage-ing.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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This episode is a part of a continuing series to enable you to hear the spectrum of American Indian/Native American/Indigenous/First Nations voices, especially in their response to Christianity and its history in the United States.

If you are interested in this interview, you may also be interested in my interview with Dr. Tink Tinker, an Osage man, in Episode 8.

My guest for this episode is The Reverend Dr. Tim Ross. Tim is a close friend of mine. Until Covid, we were in a prayer/conversation group together for over a decade.

Tim is a pastor, teacher, cross-cultural worker, husband, dad of four grown children, and grandfather of five grandchildren. He is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation (West). He has served as minister of the Hopwood Christian Church in Elizabethton, TN since 1996. Prior to that, Tim and his family served with Christian Missionary Fellowship among the Maasai tribe in Kenya, Africa. Tim is an instructor at Emmanuel Christian Seminary, mentors ministers and missionaries, and is passionate about building relationships with folks of all cultures, with immigrants, prisoners, and folks who struggle to get by. He is a graduate of Milligan College and Emmanuel Christian Seminary.

Tim is here to share with us his experience as a Cherokee, a Christian, a minister, a missionary, and his beginning work with NAIITS (originally referred to as North American Institute for Indigenous Theological Studies).

You can learn more about NAIITS at naiits.com.

Other resources related to our conversation:

Cherokee Nation

Eastern Band of Cherokee Nation United Keetoowah Band

The Cherokees and Christianity, 1794-1870: Essays on Acculturation and Cultural Persistence, by William G. McLoughlin

Journeying into Cherokee: Help and Encouragement for Learning the Cherokee Language, by Mary Rae and Ed Fields

Rescuing the Gospel from the Cowboys: A Native American Expression of the Jesus Way, by Richard Twiss

Native American Contextual Ministry: Making the Transition, by Casey Church (author), Ray Martell (editor), Sue Martell (editor)

Monuments to Absence: Cherokee Removal and the Contest over Southern Memory, by Andrew Denson

First Nations Version: An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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My guest for this episode is the Reverend Dr. Jonathan C. Augustine. But that is the name that appears on his books. In his personal relationships, Dr. Augustine goes by Jay.

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My guest for this episode is Jim Jinkins. Jim is a progressive Christian who is an American animator, cartoonist, and children’s book author. He is most notably known for his animated character, Doug. Jim is here to tell us the story of his career and work in creating and producing children’s educational animation series and writing children’s books and to talk about how he has integrated his work and his faith.

You can learn more about Jim from his Wikipedia page:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Jinkins

His IMDB page:

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0423132/bio/?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm

Searching him on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/s?k=jim+jinkins&crid=QA49K336B5O9&sprefix=jim+jenkins%2Caps%2C116&ref=nb_sb_noss_1

Doing a Google search:

https://www.google.com/search?gs_ssp=eJzj4tTP1TcwTc8uLDNg9OLOysxVyMrMy87MKwYAWrUH2Q&q=jim+jinkins&oq=jim+jinkins&aqs=chrome.1.0i355i512j46i512j0i512l3j69i60j69i61l2.11399j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

And his Doug Fandom page:

https://doug.fandom.com/wiki/Doug_Wiki

The two music clips used during this interview come from Doug theme music and are used with Jim’s permission.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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My guest for this episode is Robin Russell Gaiser. Robin is a Certified Music Practitioner who, for over sixteen years, offered live acoustic bedside music to the critically and chronically ill, elderly, and dying in hospitals, hospices, rehabs, and nursing and private homes. She gives us in-depth insight into her experiences in her wonderful book, Musical Morphine: Transforming Pain One Note at a Time which won a Best American Book award in 2017 and was the subject of a TEDx Talk in 2018.

As a Christian, Robin has understood her work as a ministry and has been shaped and guided by Hildegard of Bingen’s insight that “All music is an adornment of God. Sound is our true abode…all things are formed in sound.”

Robin is also the author of Open for Lunch which was the subject of an hour-long National Public Radio (NPR) interview.

You can learn more about Robin, her books, and interviews at her website:

robingaiser.com

Robin is here to help us understand the nature of the work of a Certified Music Practitioner, and to share with us some of how it is done.

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.

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My guest for this episode is Mark Yaconelli.

Mark Yaconelli is a writer, retreat leader, community builder, spiritual director, storycatcher, husband, and father. He is the founder and executive director of The Hearth. Previously, he co-founded and served as program director for the Center for Engaged Compassion where he helped develop a unique set of practices and training programs for assisting individuals, organizations, and communities in cultivating compassion.

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In this episode my guest, Adam Tice, share with us two of his hymns and talks with us about his work.

Adam was named a Lovelace Scholar by the Hymn Society of the United States and Canada. He served as a member of the Society’s executive committee from 2007 to 2010. He was Associate Pastor of Hyattsville (Maryland) Mennonite Church from 2007 to 2012. Adam now lives with his family in Goshen, Indiana. He is text editor for the 2020 Mennonite hymnal, Voices Together. In early 2020 he joined GIA as Editor for Congregational Song. Adam also leads workshops in writing congregational song, currents in congregational song and a cappella congregational song.

You can learn more about Adam and contact him at:

giamusic.com/store/artists/adam-tice

The intro and outro music for this episode is from a clip of a song called ‘Father Let Your Kingdom Come’ which is found on The Porter’s Gate Worship Project Work Songs album and is used by permission by The Porter’s Gate Worship Project.