Show Notes
In this episode of The Sacred, Elizabeth Oldfield is joined by Jo Colman - great-great-great grandchild of the founder of Colman’s Mustard and now Chief Mint Officer of the family business, Summerdown - to explore a radically different story about generational wealth, power, business and belonging. Jo reflects on growing up with deep security and love, how that shaped his sense of responsibility, and why privilege doesn’t have to turn inward into status-seeking, but can instead become a platform for risk, generosity and service. Together, they talk about: • How power and privilege can be redirected outward rather than hoarded • Why Jo once rejected signet rings and why he now wears one • Building ethical, regenerative businesses that add value instead of extracting it • Adoption, family-making, and the real cost of inclusion • How to build families, institutions and communities that can truly hold human complexityThis is a conversation about the kind of wealth that doesn’t shrink the soul. -- 🎙️ Follow The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast 📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/ 💡 Produced by the @thinktanktheos www.theosthinktank.co.uk/ 👉 Check out Summerdown: https://summerdown.com/?srsltid=AfmBOorjZKbSVC3rIhS42z-aqIhQWmr_CuCGtz24hUSKbzOuu8Lh_H-w -- Chapters 00:00 Intro 01:07 What is Sacred to You? Jo Colman answers 03:02 Staying Present in Parenting 05:49 Hope vs. Optimism: Embracing Life’s Paradoxes 12:14 Wealth as Formation: Privilege and Responsibility 15:14 Building a Regenerative, Ethical Business 31:26 Creativity, Purpose, and Social Responsibility 32:22 Our Adoption Journey 35:33 Training and Preparation for Adoptive Parenting 37:44 Parenting Adopted Children: Real Challenges 39:57 Trauma, Healing, and the Power of Love 45:31 Bureaucracy and the Adoption Process 47:35 Understanding the Stories of Biological Families 50:09 Adoption as Plan B: A Broader Perspective 51:53 Small-A Anarchism and Community Engagement 55:31 Listening, Assumptions, and Understanding Adoption 58:02 Slowing down in parenting
Keywords: Jo Colman, Colman Mustard, Summerdown Mint, generational wealth, inheritance, privilege for good, ethical entrepreneurship, conscious capitalism, regenerative business, sustainable business, business with purpose, using wealth responsibly, family beyond blood, adoption stories, adoptive parenting, building family, radical generosity, love as action, belonging, human complexity, non-anxious presence, prophetic imagination, spiritual formation, formation through faith, stewardship of privilege, power and responsibility, ethical leadership, business for impact, social impact business, purposeful life, vocation and calling, family-making as vocation, living ethically, hope versus optimism, accompaniment, relational leadership, intentional parenting, high-needs adoption, inclusive families, inclusive communities, societal change, moral courage, compassionate leadership, human flourishing, social responsibility, giving back, life of service, risk for good, cultivating resilience, forming community, transformative love, radical hospitality
More from The Sacred
What happens when the AI tools we used to make life easier started to change the way we think? Journalist and author Jamie Bartlett joins Elizabeth Oldfield for a live recording to explore what AI reveals about human nature, why we keep using tools we’re worried about, and what we risk losing when we let machines do our thinking for us. We talk about: • How using AI has affected Jamie’s own writing and thinking • Why language models can be so good at flattering us and exploiting our own biases • What it means to remain thoughtful and human in an age of increasingly capable machines • How we can learn to ask better questions - not just of AI, but of ourselves Jamie Bartlett is a journalist and author whose work explores the social and political consequences of technology. His books include How to Talk to AI, The People vs. Tech and Radicals. Thank you to everyone who joined us in the room and to those who sent us their thoughts on AI ahead of the evening. 🎙️ Listen to The Sacred: linktr.ee/sacredpodcast 📖 Follow Elizabeth Oldfield: www.elizabetholdfield.com/ 💡 The Sacred is produced by Theos Think Tank in partnership with Comment Magazine, and with support from The Jerusalem Trust and Open Society Foundations 👉 Read Jamie's latest book, How to Talk to AI: https://www.penguin.co.uk/books/475950/how-to-talk-to-ai-by-bartlett-jamie/9780753561980 👇 Our guests and listeners to our podcast come from all kinds of perspectives and what draws us together is a desire to be self-aware about our own values and curious about other peoples. Comment your reflections below, we read them all. Copyright: "Make You Mine - Instrumental" by Brooke Annibale Licensed by The Musicbed LLC"Beyond the Veil (feat. Khamir Music)" by Simon Wester Licensed by The Musicbed LLC
What Does It Take to Create a Shared Home in a Divided City? In Jerusalem, two women from opposite sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide, Riman Barakat and Karen Brunwasser, have spent more than a decade building FeelBeit, a shared arts and cultural space where Israeli and Palestinian artists and communities are invited to ‘feel at home’ together. In this moving conversation, recorded live at Aspen Ideas Festival, we explore what it takes to build trust across a profound divide—and what happens when that trust is tested by violence, grief and fear. We also cover: Friendship and why relationships can be a form of peacebuilding What happened at FeelBeit after October 7 and in the years since The power of art to hold grief, anger, joy and hope at the same time Why “compassion over righteous indignation” and “self-love and self-critique” might be some of the hardest—and most necessary—practices for our societies
Can you really vote your way to a good society - or does it have to be built house by house, street by street?
What does it mean to prepare to die—and then discover that you need to prepare to live again? In this conversation, poet Christian Wiman reflects on faith, poetry, love, mortality, and his experience of living for more than 20 years with cancer. He talks about his turbulent childhood, how poetry transformed his anger into something creative, and why he believes poems can open us to something beyond ourselves. The conversation also explores: Wiman’s journey from economics to poetry What a poem actually is—and why sound can matter more than meaning Attention and his idea of “productive inattention” Faith, suffering, and writers including Simone Weil and Etty Hillesum
What are we losing by spending so much of our lives behind screens? COVID-19 brought the whole world online, and as a podcast we kind of stayed there. This season, we made a commitment to only recording in person, mostly at Elizabeth’s community house in south London. As a result, we sensed a big shift in our connection with guests and we thought we’d take an opportunity to reflect on a few things that we’d forgotten along the way: Being in-person is key to meeting people as real humans and creating non-transactional relationships Something shifts when we eat snacks together and see each other’s homes Screens and the ease of our digital lives mean we spend less time in our bodies. It’s much more convenient — but what’s the hidden cost? We shrink when were alone, and we trust others less