Steve Farrell hosts this program and introduces James O'Dea, the award-winning author of, Cultivating Peace. James is lead faculty for the Shift Network's acclaimed Global Peace Ambassador Training. He has conducted frontline social healing dialogues around the world for many years. He is the former president of the Institute of Noetic Sciences, the Washington Office Director of Amnesty International, and CEO of the Seva Foundation. He is a member of the Evolutionary Leaders group and is on several advisory boards such as the Peace Alliance and Kosmos Journal. His latest book, The Conscious Activist, became available in December of 2014.

James says, “There's that greater order of divinity that can literally speak to us through the blades of grass. All of the poets, the mystics, show us how when we attune, when we start to commune inside nature as a part of it, it wakes up with healing messages. The word "healing" has at its root in wholeness. And so, nature in itself is also a paradigm of wholeness, of winter and summer, of seasonal change, of deep diversity, and it shows you the absolutely exquisite diversity that is held into oneness. That oneness is not a collapse of identity into sameness... it's always unique, diverse -- every bird, every tree.”

In that conversation with nature, when we get into it in terms of that wounding, nature is so forgiving in some ways. When we cease our polluting activity, when we cease our invasive superiority, "holier than thou" attitude to other forms of life, they come back. They restore. They heal. It may take a long time, but there's that sense that whatever the level of wounding that we experience, nature reminds us that we can heal and this is a time of great potential healing on the planet… the deeper power of love can unfold in very mysterious ways revealing our connection to each other.

I think it reminds me of my whole journey when I worked in social healing dialogues with former Nazis and holocaust survivors, with Palestinians and Israelis, with Hutus and Tutsis, with Catholics and Protestants that, I've done for so many years over the world. They rediscover and reconnect with each other, the unity. When people have been through conflict and deep separation, when they avow their human connection to each other, it tells us that we're in the depth story. We're in the real story. We're connecting with essence here.”

This moving dialog is a wonderfully inspirational journey into truths that, when understood and enacted, are greatly transformational. Don’t miss this heartfelt revelation from one of the most remarkable peacemakers of our time.