“The idea of bringing heaven to earth for me, is not metaphoric. It's not a story. And I believe -- from my own experience -- that you can actually connect to the Transcendent as a power and it can be embodied within us.” -- Richard Flyer

Greetings and welcome to what we hope will be a truly NEW New Year!

Front and Center launches a new year of podcasts with a conversation with Richard Flyer, whose life work has been all about lifting us off the old battlefield of what he calls “the culture of separation” and onto a new playing field that he calls “Symbiotic Culture”.

In the wake of an out-of-this-world life changing experience at the age of 12, Richard dedicated his life and work to bringing about “heaven on earth”.

Huh? Heaven on earth?

As Richard explains in this eye-opening interview, this is no pie-in-the-sky ideal, but a feet-on-the-ground real deal – reality tested by his work building a local living economy network that transformed Reno, Nevada, and the work of his mentor Dr. Ariyaratne via the Sarvodaya movement in Sri Lanka.

A biologist by training, Richard says, “Symbiosis occurs in nature when organisms come together for mutual benefit over a period of time.” Symbiotic Culture, he explains, is a society where mutually-beneficial interactions are the norm, happening at every scale – from individual to family to community to nation to world. “It’s a kind of ‘fractal empowerment’ that can happen simultaneously in communities around the world.”

And – the “secret sauce” is a Sacred Source that he calls an “ancient blueprint” -- universal principles like the Golden Rule at the foundation of every spiritual, religious, and secular ethical system. It harkens back to Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount and expresses itself through Gandhi’s “village awakening movement”, and Dr. Ariyaratne’s Buddhist-based Sarvodaya movement – a network of 5,000 villages in Sri Lanka dedicated to bringing this ancient blueprint to daily life.

Influenced by Dr. Ari, Richard was able to bring the Reno, Nevada community together above and beyond tribes and silos, around a “common purpose to connect the good.”

The good news is, what Martin Luther King Jr., has called “beloved community” has been created in the real world, in ordinary communities involving ordinary people – using the extraordinary power of what he calls “multi-siloed, distributed networks.” That is, instead of creating one more organization to address a problem – like hunger or homelessness – this network becomes the “scaffolding” that allows already-existing organizations to be more effective and more efficient.

Richard’s work now is to weave together the “threads” of siloed networks, to build a parallel society from the grassroots up, as our current “culture of separation” falters.  

Please join us for an enlightening “Newer Year” conversation that will help us bring about a “newer world order” of intentional mutual benefit.

Watch here on YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uEmb2kie0yE&t=190s

To find out more about Richard Flyer’s book, please go here: https://richardflyer.substack.com/

About “Courage” Our Front and Center Theme Song

When I heard “Courage” performed live by Luke Anderson with Aea Luz and Jakob Pek at a gathering this past fall, I immediately recognized it as our theme song for Front and Center. ~Steve

Courage, courage, courage like a lion

Strength of the heart, strength of the spirit to rely on

To truly lift ourselves above the political battlefields so we can populate and animate the new cooperative playing fields requires strength of heart, and strength of spirit. It takes courage to rise above tribal beliefs, to venture beyond the familiar habits of separation to see the bigger picture. And our courage will encourage others to do the same.

You can find out more about Luke Anderson’s music here:

http://www.danceawake.com/