Elixir Issue 5

Lauren Artress is a licensed marriage and family therapist and an Episcopal priest at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. As the founder of Veriditas - The World Wide Labyrinth Project - she lectures and leads workshops internationally on Walking as a Sacred Path, including the annual labyrinth walk in Chartres. Lauren is the author of several books including Walking A Sacred Path, Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Practice, and The Sacred Path Companion. www.veriditas.net and www.LaurenArtress.com

Kathy Hearn is the Community Spiritual Leader of United Church of Religious Science and a Council member of the Association for Global New Thought (AGNT). She was a presenter at the 2004 Parliament of World Religions in Barcelona and travels the world inspiring people with the Global Heart Vision. Recently Kathy participated as AGNT's representative during the Abraham Path Initiative in the Near East. www.agnt.org

Barbara E. Fields is Executive Director of the Association for Global New Thought and a co-founder of the Gandhi King Season for Nonviolence. She has served as the director for many projects including the 1993 Parliament of World Religions, the Synthesis Dialogues with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, and the International Buddhist-Christian Theological Encounter. Barbara has directed humanitarian projects in Africa, Sri Lanka, and South America and she is a director in the Abrahamic Path Initiative. www.agnt.org

Jim Garrison is the co-founder and President of both Wisdom University and the State of the World Forum (Gorbachev Foundation). He holds the Chair of Wisdom Studies at the graduate university of the Philosophical Research Society. Jim has an MA in Religion from Harvard Divinity School and a doctorate in Theological Philosophy from Cambridge University. Among his publications, his most well-known are Civilization and the Transformation of Power, and America as Empire. www.wisdomuniversity.org

Robert Kelly is a director of the Writing Program at Bard College. For twenty-five years he has studied the philosophy and practices of Vajrayana Buddhism under the guidance of Kalu Rinpoche and Norlha Rinpoche. Robert's recent books of poetry include May Day, Sainte Terre, Threads, and Lapis. His novel The Book from the Sky is forthcoming and he recently completed Fire Exit, his most ambitious and longest writing project in many years.

David Spangler is an author, teacher, and the former co-director of the Findhorn Foundation Community in northern Scotland from 1970 to 1973. Today David directs his Lorian Association, a non-profit spiritual educational foundation involved with developing and teaching a spiritual practice called "incarnational spirituality." His most recent book is Manifestation: Creating the Life You Love. Information about David's work can be found at www.Lorian.org.

William Irwin Thompson is the founder of the Lindisfarne Association. His best-selling book, At the Edge of History, was nominated for the National Book Award in 1972. He received the Oslo International Poetry Festival Award in 1986 for his science fiction novel Islands Out of Time. William has published numerous books as a cultural historian and as a philosopher of science. Among his more recent are Worlds Interpenetrating and Apart: Collected Poems, 1959-1996 and Self and Society.

Naila Tiwana is a student of Sufism and belongs to the Chishti-Inayati lineage. Currently residing in Pakistan, Naila leads the spiritual center of the Sufi Order International in Lahore. Her interests include the re-interpretation of the Qur'an's teachings in a universalistic light and developing a deeper understanding of the Feminine as a necessary step in humanity's final evolution to restore balance to gender-biases.

Peter Lamborn Wilson is an author, translator, and poet who has taught at Naropa University's Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics and hosted the talk-show The Moorish Orthodox Radio Crusade on WBAI-FM in New York. Many of his works, including several on Islamic mysticism, are published by Autonomedia and City Lights. His most recent book, Green Hermeticism, is a collection of essays co-written with Christopher Bamford and Kevin Townley.

Federico Mayor Zaragoza is the founder of the Foundation for a Culture of Peace in Madrid. Through this organization he is pursuing the goals he established for UNESCO as its Director General (1987-1999) to promote a worldwide transition from a culture of violence to a culture of peace. The UNESCO Culture of Peace Programme which he established promotes education for peace, protection of human rights and democracy, overcoming isolation and poverty, defense of cultural diversity and intercultural dialogue, and conflict prevention. Professor Mayor is a biochemist and served in the Spanish government and the European Parliament before joining the UN. He has also published books of poetry and essays, notably The World Ahead: Our Future in the Making.