Mystic and theologian, Howard Thurman (1899-1981) cherished silence and stillness. He found in quietness an opportunity to commune with the Eternal that he believed lies deep within the heart. He shares these insights in his book, Meditations of the Heart. The conversations in the book, When the Heart Speaks, Listen-Discovering Inner Wisdom (Lerita Coleman Brown) illustrate how our hearts overflow with divine guidance. With both books, there is an invitation to engage in deep inner listening and each points to a heart that is always available for solace and guidance. This session will be punctuated with recorded meditations, silence, discussion, and guided moments of active imagination designed to tap the mystical heart and its wealth of spiritual wisdom.

While the world so often sees the contemplative life as an excuse to do “nothing,” the contemplator most often sees this way of being as a path to feel everything. This solidarity of suffering that the contemplative often gets in touch with is rarely reached in our days of chaos and discourse. In this session we’ll explore what it means to be a contemplative activist and how to host a contemplative practice in a world which constantly demands action.

In this unique workshop, you’ll connect with others as an exploration of God and the divine. Whereas most spiritual practices are a retreat into solitary prayer or meditation, relating has us look for God by putting attention on relationships…on each other and the spaces between us.

Virtual Reality has frequently been labeled as “the ultimate empathy machine”. The Wild Goose Virtual Cinema provides an opportunity to virtually experience stories in immersive environments that take us out of our comfort zone and into worlds that show us another way of looking at things. Sign up for a spot and take a deep dive into some extraordinary experiences.

“I get the why for the social justice work we need to do. The question is really the how.”

If that’s a statement you find yourself making, you may enjoy this session which is focused on how to solve social issues in your community or city (not why you need to do so). So many of us have started an initiative or program to address a problem in our city, county, or community, only to see the problem reappear after it was solved. Or solving the problem created 3 more like a weird game of “whack-a-mole.” Or the very intervention or solution you tried actually made the problem worse.

Many of us thought introduction of design thinking or human-centered design into community and international development might be the magic touch or “silver bullet” that would help us reduce and eliminate all of our social problems, but that did not happen. The problem is that design thinking is great at specific problems with profit-making potential but not sufficient for interconnected systems of relationships and forces like you might find in a social community or city in areas like health, education, etc.

If you want to know how to choose and implement the most effective and useful intervention to solve a social ill in your community, you need a systems thinking approach. We will introduce you to a robust systems practice. You’ll learn how you can gain clarity about a particular system, map it, and then through analysis determine the highest-impact leverage points in the system in order to act strategically and unlock positive change within the system. This will allow you to address the actual underlying, root, systemic causes of the problems you are facing. Then once you have performed some intervention you will continue to adapt and learn, remapping the system as it changes in response to your actions as well as the actions of everyone in the system.

Even (social) justice needs to be strategic. With a proper mapping of the system, it can definitely can be.

Turmoil can knock you off your spiritual path. Losses. Disappointments. Coming out. Breaking up.

You’ve been there. You know what we’re talking about. We call it “Hitting The Wall Of WTF?!”

What you do at The Wall determines your future spiritual health. You can break through The Wall, increasingly finding joy and peace. You can also retreat to your old ways of thinking and being, starting the path all over again. And again.

Join School For Seekers’ Elane O’Rourke and Benton Stokes to learn the inevitable six steps of the spiritual journey, how the cycle of turmoil and triumph works, and what you can do when you hit The Wall Of WTF?!

A chance to wrestle with disability, being sidelined and the process of creating a new space for (our) disabled bodies in the Story called life. A chance to talk about the good, the bad and the awesome, share tips and tricks, encourage each other and hopefully leave with a new perspective on our place in the Story whether we are temporarily able-bodied or feeling the impact of disability in our daily lives.

Using (1)the Breath, (2)Touch, (3)Sound, (4)Silence, (5)Simple movement, and (6)Stillness, we will explore these processes and body-prayers which offer ways of healing and maintaining the health of our bodies, minds and spirits. We’ll look at how doing simple sound and chant, Taize-style, along with simple movements, together, can also nurture and enhance our sense of community. Included will be selected sacred phrases from the Aramaic Jesus teachings as offered by my mentor and spiritual guide, Dr. Neil Douglas-Klotz, author of PRAYERS OF THE COSMOS, and Ancient Middle Eastern language and spirituality scholar. This will be primarily experiential.

Is it true that politics and religion can never mix at the dinner table?

While it’s true that our individual views on immigration or climate change, our experiences of metal Illness, infertility, infidelity or our frustration about our uncle who voted for Trump might keep us quiet to the real stuff of life over a meal, it doesn’t always have to be this way.

Come explore practices that can both keep you grounded in your own truth and emotional safety and open up new pathways for authentic sharing and empathy. You’ll leave this session with new confidence for how to bring your whole self courageously into difficult conversations and know when walking away is truly necessary.