Premiering at 2:00 p.m. ET Thursday, July 21, 2022.

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Belvie Rooks is an essayist, educator, and social justice activist whose pioneering work weaves social justice and healing with environmental restoration and community-building. She and her beloved husband Dedan, of blessed memory, co-founded Growing a Global Heart as a platform to help seed and support the intersectionality of their work and vision. Belvie’s most recent book, I Give You the Springtime of My Blushing Heart, co-authored with her husband, poet Dedan Gills, was a posthumously published exploration of their journey of love and activism. She and Dedan are also featured contributors to The Power of Love: A Transformed Heart Changes the World, along with other visionaries that include, Huston Smith, Betty Eadie, H.H. the 17th Karmapa, and the Council of the Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers. As a writer and essayist her work is featured or referenced in numerous books and anthologies, including Global Chorus: 365 Voices on the Future of the Planet; My Soul is a Witness: African American Women's Spirituality; Ecological and Social Healing: Multi-Cultural Women's Voices; and Crisis Contemplation: Healing the Wounded Village. She is also a featured contributor to "The Cosmic We," an important new podcast series by Reverend Dr. Barbara Holmes, as well as to Fr. Richard Rohr’s Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC). Belvie's understanding of and commitment to human and civil rights was shaped early in her life by her meeting with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr, and by her work as one of the first of two women on the National Steering Committee of the African Liberation Support Committee during the anti-apartheid era. Having served as an election monitor during the transition to majority rule in South Africa and attending Nelson Mandela's historic inauguration, she subsequently became a founding faculty member of SUNY Old Westbury's College of Social Justice. Later serving on the faculty of Holy Names University's Sophia Center for Culture and Spirituality, which was inspired by the work and vision of Thomas Berry, she also served as Guest Faculty for Naropa University's Environmental Studies/Environmental Leadership Program. Creator of Hey Listen Up!, a groundbreaking urban eco-literacy project inspired by Brian Swimme and Thomas Berry's The Universe Story, Belvie's work and vision is featured as part of the award-winning Educational Series, Journey of the Universe (JOTU). Creator of ConverZations That Matter, featuring numerous thought leaders and luminaries from around the, Belvie is currently developing ConverZations That Matter Now! featuring a new generation of visionary activists, which represents a continuation of the inter-generational wisdom circles and dialogues that she and Dedan inspired as Co-Founders of Growing a Global Heart.

About Chautauqua Institution: Chautauqua Institution is a community on the shores of Chautauqua Lake in southwestern New York state that comes alive each summer with a unique mix of fine and performing arts, lectures, interfaith worship and programs, and recreational activities. As a community, we celebrate, encourage and study the arts and treat them as integral to all of learning, and we convene the critical conversations of the day to advance understanding through civil dialogue. CHQ Assembly is the online expression of Chautauqua Institution's mission.