One Dharma Sangha and non-profit organization, Mindful Hearts (www.mindfulheartprograms.com) offer another evening at Trinity, of which I will be a presenter. For a full description, please go to their website or to Dr. Radhule Weininger’s website at http://radhuleweiningerphd.com. This is their third evening that is focusing on themes from Joanna Macy’s Work that Reconnects. Tonight’s main topic will be on Seeing with New Eyes and “how to face the challenges in our lives and in our world, with vision, intuition, and a deeper perspective….Practicing meditation, praying, listening to dreams, working with intuition, welcoming emergence and synchronicity, can shift our perspective…”
Dr.’s Michael Kearney and Radhule Weininger are the hosts and they have invited me to speak and share a song tonight along with Dr. Catherine Gautier and Wolf and Lisa Wahpepah.
I had the pleasure of presenting at the ASWM conference this past weekend. The theme of the conference was Scholarly Speculations: Animal, Earth, Person, Story. My presentation was entitled The Ivory and Mahogany of Embodiment and Remembrance and I included snippets from a beautiful story written by Joe Rohde in my framework of ecofeminism. Below is an image compliments of Joe (copyright Joe Rohde).
I will be on the panel of speakers tomorrow evening from 7 to 8:30pm for the Solidarity and Compassion Project and will also sing an original sacred song. The content below is copyrighted material directly from the One Dharma Sangha website posting, which is an organization led by Radhule Weininger and Michael Kearney. I am posting here to bring greater attention to this wonderful project. Here are their websites as well:
The following is directly quoted content of what they wrote:
Solidarity and Compassion ProjectTuesday, March 6, 2017, from 7 – 8:30 PM Trinity Episcopal Church, 1500 State Street, Santa Barbara By Donation
Finding a Peaceful Way of being with Pain
None of us like pain (anything that causes us mental or physical distress or discomfort). In fact, most of us will go to great lengths to avoid pain. But pain is not optional and is just as much part of life as feeling heat or cold. While pain can be destructive, and while it is natural to take our finger out of a flame, the great spiritual traditions teach us that pain can sometimes be a portal to healing. Sufi mystic Rumi writes, “Don’t turn your head. Keep looking at the bandaged place. That’s where the light enters you.” And so, it matters HOW we are with our pain.
This is the second of our four meetings dedicated to Joanna Macy’s “Work that Reconnects”. Joanna, now in her late 80’s and living in Berkeley, California, is a Buddhist Scholar and social and environmental activist. For over 40 years she has been offering programs that encourage and support those who feel the pain of our world, long to do what they can to make a difference but feel intimidated or overwhelmed by the challenge. The spiral of the work that reconnects has four points on it: the theme of last month’s meeting was Gratitude, in this session will be on Honoring Our Pain, which will be followed in the coming months by Seeing with New Eyes, and finally Going Forth.
Our three panelists will be Reverend Scott Classen, Juliet Rohde-Brown, and Michael Kearney. Join our guests and as we explore together creative and transformative ways of being with pain. Radhule Weininger will moderate the evening.
***
Rev. Scott Claassen, Vicar, and Chaplain of St. Michaels University Church in Isla Vista. Scott’s call to ministry brought him to Yale Divinity School, where he investigated the relationship between religion and ecology. Those studies led to a Carbon Sabbath in which Scott spent one year without flying or driving. During that time, he cycled over 11,500 miles around the country to engage Christian communities in dialogue about climate change. Juliet Rohde-Brown is a core faculty member and Chair of the Integrative Therapy and Healing Practices program, which is one of the Depth Psychology offerings for post-masters level students at Pacifica Graduate Institute.
Michael Kearney is a Palliative Care Physician with over 30 years experience and works with Palliative Care Consultants of Santa Barbara. His new book, “The Nest in The Stream: Lessons From Nature on Being with Pain,” offers a new spiritual model of self-care and resilience. Radhule Weininger, Ph.D., clinical psychologist, and teacher of Buddhist meditation and Buddhist psychology, is the founder and guiding teacher of the One Dharma Sangha as well as the resident teacher of mindfulness practice at the La Casa de Maria Retreat Center in Santa Barbara, California. She is mentored by Jack Kornfield in her teaching and by Joanna Macy in her interest in Engaged Buddhism. Radhule has a strong interest in the direct experience of the sacred and how this can inspire our service to others. Her book “Heartwork: The Path of Self-compassion“, with a forward by Jack Kornfield published by Shambala Publications.
Michael and Radhule spearheaded the new nonprofit Mindful Heart Projects for the purpose to provide educational programs in mindfulness, compassion and nature connection to enable us to care for ourselves, others and our world by transforming suffering, building resilience and deepening our capacity for serving and training others. Visit the website www.mindfulheartprograms.com for information on upcoming events and make your donation.
Other ongoing offerings of One Dharma Sangha are meditations:
Mondays at 7 PM at St. Michael’s Church In Isla Vista
“Solidarity & Compassion Project” at 7 PM at Trinity Episcopal Church
All other Tuesdays at 6 PM at the Natural History Museum in the MacVeagh House
Thursdays at 6 PM at The Sacred Space, Summerland
Once a month there will be once a Sunday Half-Day Retreat at Trinity Episcopal Church
For more information, visit Radhule’s website http://radhuleweiningerphd.com It contains an Events Calendarwhere you can find upcoming activities, who will be leading, as well as upcoming One Dharma Sanga gatherings and other useful information.
Please join us on Saturday, March 3rd, for an information day at Pacifica. I will be the featured speaker that day and the title of my talk is Under the Breadfruit Tree: You Already Know Why You’re Here!
Many of us recall that we were moved to ask some important questions about the meaning life while we were children. Often such questions emerged from the kinds of numinous experiences that occurred while interacting with nature. Embedded in these experiences is a seed that nurtures what may later be recognized as a calling to purposeful work in the world and to belonging to a community of individuals that honor implicit ways of knowing and what Jung has referred to as the mythopoeic imagination. The seed of calling may have escaped conscious awareness or may have been cultivated all along. Either way, when people arrive at Pacifica’s door, they are often drawn here because psyche nudges them into a fuller “remembrance” of “why” they came. In this talk, Juliet Rohde-Brown, Chair of the Depth Psychology: Integrative Therapy and Healing Practices specialization offers an example of one of her first important non-human relationships, that with a breadfruit tree on the island of Oahu. She does so as an invitation for attendee’s reflections on calling and on the integrative and restorative nature of responding in a way that is uniquely one’s own.
Here is the link for more details and registration:
Please join us online at 5:30pm on Thursday, November 16th to learn more about the Integrative Therapy and Healing Practices program at Pacifica Graduate Institute! It will be a really nice opportunity for you to get to us a bit, to ask questions or make comments, or simply to quietly be present.
