The Paths To Understanding Podcast

In last week’s edition of Challenge 2.0, we spoke with a documentary producer who explored the impact of our criminal justice system-not only on those imprisoned, but on their families and entire communities. We continue our exploration on the changes needed to keep prison from becoming a life sentence for entire generations, and also hear from  faith leaders who are seeking to end what they call the addiction to throwing away human lives and the gifts they carry. 

A prison sentence doesn’t impact just the person incarcerated…it affects entire families. This week we talk with a college professor and documentary producer who examines the impact of our justice system. She shares ideas on needed changes to keep prison from becoming a life sentence for entire generations, and how she’s enlisting others to make such changes reality. 

 

In last week’s edition of Challenge 2.0, we examined a program that allows men and women to pursue education while still in prison; a program that enables them to build a new life and stay out of prison. This week, we examine a program called Underground Ministries, in which faith communities adopt a prisoner to ease their transition to life beyond bars.  

Find out more at pathstounderstanding.org

 

‘They paid their debt to society’. That phrase is supposed to describe how someone convicted of a crime, and done their time, should be free to rebuild their life and that of their families. That’s not reality. But an imaginative program based in Seattle is aimed at transforming that situation. In this edition of Challenge 2.0; Emerging from the Prison Beyond Bars-The Prison Scholars program. 

Learn more about Paths to Understanding at https://www.PathsToUnderstanding.org
Join the Paths Network at https://www.PathsNetwork.org

In this episode of Wisdom from Our Neighborhood, Terry talk with Nina Fernando. Nina serves as the Executive Director of the Shoulder to Shoulder Campaign (S2S). S2S is an interfaith organization that works across the nation to counter anti-Mulsim bigotry. Terry asks Nina about the work they do, why the work is needed, and how people can participate in this important work in their own community.

Learn more about Paths to Understanding at https://www.PathsToUnderstanding.org

Join the Paths Network at https://www.PathsNetwork.org

 

http://chris-hoke.com/undergroundministries

 

Terry is joined by the executive director of Underground Ministries:

Since 2015 I’ve found a level of friendship, electric spiritual reflection, and heartbending stories in relationship with the incarcerated. The local county jail was just the first portal to the rabbit hole—into the underground of polite society, the streets, the supermax prisons, the cycle between the two that function like the circles of hell, or Hades today.

I am now the founding director of Underground Ministries. We want to pry open that underworld of our making, one relationship at a time. We are based in Skagit Valley, WA, but our models for churches and businesses to get in the game are resources of a wider movement. We want to make resurrection an ethic, a practice—for folks who thought they believed in it or not.

Learn more about Paths to Understanding at https://www.PathsToUnderstanding.org

Join the Paths Network at https://www.PathsNetwork.org

In last week’s edition of Challenge 2.0, we joined the two thousand mile journey of a totem pole created by the Lummi Nation House of Tears carvers. We also joined a discussion of what that journey represents and what it calls for-a change in our relationship to the environment, a restoration of ancient Salmon runs that sustained life in the Pacific Northwest for millenia. Welcome to this edition of Challenge 2.0-Spirit of the Waters, Part Two.

Learn more about Paths to Understanding at https://www.PathsToUnderstanding.org

Join the Paths Network at https://www.PathsNetwork.org

The Spirit of the Waters Totem Pole Journey in May stretched over seventeen days and more than two thousand miles. But the journey of this sixteen foot pole, created by the Lummi Nation House of Tears carvers, extends much farther in time. It reviews the relationship between humans and the environment that sustained a rich and sustainable culture for centuries in the Pacific Northwest, examines how abandoning that wisdom now threatens the lives and prosperity of this region and it calls us to reclaim that wisdom on our journey into the future. That’s the subject of this edition of Challenge 2.0, Spirit of the Waters.

 

Learn more about Paths to Understanding at https://www.PathsToUnderstanding.org
Join the Paths Network at https://www.PathsNetwork.org

In last week’s edition of Challenge 2.0, faith leaders from Judaism, Christianity and Islam looked at the environmental crisis and how it models a crisis within our lives-our faiths, our values. We continue and expand that conversation this week, looking at how solutions demand not only good science and careful application of technology…but also digging deeper into what we value and believe.

Learn more about Paths to Understanding at https://www.PathsToUnderstanding.org
Join the Paths Network at https://www.PathsNetwork.org

Last year brought the hottest month ever recorded on this planet, the longest drought ever recorded over the western United States and record rainfall and flooding over the eastern United States. Climate researchers agree it is a crisis demanding careful science and application of technology…but there’s an increasing sense that it also is a crisis of values and faith…that to successfully confront the challenges of the world we live in we must first confront the challenges of the world that lives in each of us. That’s the subject of this edition of Challenge 2.0.