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The Word and Life team has chosen Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Wisdom Jesus –teaching the way of the heart as the transformer of human consciousness - to be the primary guidebook that will lead us on our pilgrimage through the Winter of 2023. This will be augmented by Richard Rohr’s book, The World, The Flesh, and the Devil, exploring the disorder, trauma, and evil that are arising around us in today’s world.
- Encountering The Wisdom Jesus
- The Nature of Sin and Evil
- Confronting Evil with a Transformed Consciousness
Reading the source books is an important aspect of our work together. So we hope that you’ll read with us and join our zoom community online on Thursday mornings for this 10-week spiritual adventure. Please purchase the two books for this series from your local bookstore or from your favorite online booksellers.
10 Thursdays: January 19th to March 23rd, 2023 via Zoom from 10:00 to 11:30 a.m. (Pacific Time)
$65.00 for the entire Series - Scholarships available...
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For our Winter 2023 Program:
Please complete the following two steps.
1. Make your check for $65 payable
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Word and Life
c/o Joseph Schneider
533 Tallant Road
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
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To request a full or partial scholarship, CLICK HERE.
| DATE | TOPIC AND CHAPTER(S) | SPEAKER |
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Session 1: |
“From Ego to Love -- Recognizing Jesus” |
Pat McClure & |
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Session 2: |
“What Did Jesus Actually Teach?” |
Heather Ruce |
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Session 3: |
“Metanoia and Self Emptying” |
Fr. Jim Clarke |
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Session 4: |
“Death Throes of a Deficient Mental Structure: |
Rebecca Parker |
| DATE | TOPIC AND CHAPTER(S) | SPEAKER |
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Session 5: |
“The Passion and Crucifixion” |
Matthew Wright |
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Session 6: |
“What About Evil?” |
Cynthia Bourgeault |
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Session 7: |
“Individual and Psychological Aspects of Evil” |
Harrison Taylor |
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Session 8 |
“Cultural/Social Evil: |
Buddy Parker |
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Session 9: |
“A Dialogue about Collective Evil: |
Rev. Steve Jacobson |
| DATE | TOPIC AND CHAPTER(S) | SPEAKER |
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Session 10 |
“Meeting the Shadow Side with |
Heather Ruce |
Don’t turn away.
Keep your gaze
on the bandaged place.
That’s where the light
enters in.
Rumi
Series Back Story
As we step across the threshold of the New Year, we find ourselves inhabiting a darkening world where “wrong comes up to face us everywhere”. Those are the words of English playwright, Christopher Isherwood, whose prophetic play in 195l* speaks equally to our own era. There seems to be no escape from the disordered reality around us. So, do we shake our heads and passively ignore what troubles us?
Or, might we, as people of Faith, bring the deeper practices and discoveries of the Wisdom teachings of Jesus to utilize the whole of our human intelligence in a heart-centered and embodied response that heals and balances the challenges of the moment?
Looking at a troubled 20th century, Isherwood proclaimed: “Thank God our time is now – never to leave us till we take the longest stride of soul men ever took”. Nearly a century later we recognize that we’re still caught in that same stride, feeling for a new wave of direction coming up under our feet. That ‘new wave’ has been described as an evolving state of consciousness that has been stirring along the edges of our dominant mindset for the last 2000 years and seems now to be emerging as humanity’s next collective step.
Last Fall, Word and Life explored one of its outliers, The Wisdom Way of Knowing, as one of the springs of renewal in Christianity today. This Winter we are building our 10-week series on that foundation, drawing on the remarkable insights of Cynthia Bourgeault’s The Wisdom Jesus as our primary source book. Richard Rohr’s vision in The World, The Flesh, and The Devil gives us clarity in defining the ‘wrongs that come up to face us everywhere’. Read together, we hope you’ll find them to be a useful foundation for newly understanding and responding to the currents of attitude and behavior that are churning and destabilizing our world.
We’ve assembled another stellar group of speakers who will speak to the many ways that the The Wisdom Jesus Encounters Our Disordered World. They have all consented to be video-taped and recorded, so you can watch and hear their presentation again within a week of their appearance with us – here on the website. Scroll down the sections and topics found on our series calendar to see why we’re excited about this Winter’s series.
A Sleep of Prisoners
Dark and cold we may be, but this
Is no winter now. The frozen misery
Of centuries breaks, cracks, begins to move;
The thunder is the thunder of the floes,
The thaw, the flood, the upstart Spring.
Thank God our time is now when wrong
Comes up to face us everywhere,
Never to leave us till we take
The longest stride of soul men ever took.
Affairs are now soul size.
The enterprise is exploration into God.
Where are you making for? It takes
So many thousand years to wake…
But will you wake, for pity’s sake?
Christopher Isherwood – English playwright
The Speakers in our Winter 2023 Series
January 19 Speaker -– Patricia McClure
Pat McClure calls herself “a field worker” (growing human capacities to their whole potential wherever we’re planted in everyday life). Her first field was Art – as painter, potter, teacher -- and Fulbright Scholar to New Zealand. Those fundamentals of creativity and design have continued to shape her life and subsequent work ever since.
January 19 Speaker -- Mary Ann Evans
"Mary Ann Evans is one of the wisest and most fully grounded and accomplished psychotherapeutic/wisdom counsellors in our network..." Cynthia Bourgeault
Mary Ann Evans, Ph.D, neuropsychologist, has a rich and varied career in the psychological and educational arenas spanning over 50 years and specializing in work with individuals who experience emotional, social, medical and learning challenges. She has presented her innovative work on brain plasticity and transformation extensively at conferences around the world and in the United States.
She has been a neuropsychologist in Santa Barbara since 1989, working at the Rehabilitation Institute and Behavioral Wellness, as well as in private practice. Her work in personal healing and transformation is embodied through her dedication to partnering with horses in her program “Horse Wisdom for the Soul”.
January 26 & March 23 Speaker -- Heather Ruce
Heather Ruce, M.A. is a wisdom spiritual director with a background as a therapist and training in a neurophysiology-based approach to nervous system resilience called ‘Organic Intelligence.’ She works with individuals as well as facilitating wisdom circles and retreats focused on learning and practicing the Wisdom Tradition in order to awaken and live out a path of conscious love.
February 2 Speaker -- Jim Clarke
With an extensive academic background in the fields of spirituality, adult education, counseling, ritual and depth psychology, Fr Jim Clarke currently serves as Coordinator of Spiritual Formation for the Permanent Diaconate Office for the Archdiocese of Los Angeles. He is a Senior Lecturer of Spiritual Theology at Loyola Marymount University and also an Associate Spiritual Director at the Cardinal Manning House of Prayer for Priests.
February 9 Speaker -- Rebecca Parker
Rebecca Parker (Atlanta) is the Executive Director of Mary & Martha’s Place (https://www.maryandmarthasplace.com/) in Atlanta, GA, a center for women’s spiritual formation and transformation. She first read Cynthia Bourgeault in 2003 and has studied with her since 2011. She helps facilitate Wisdom Schools in the southeast, and leads two Wisdom Way groups in Atlanta. She is ordained in the Presbyterian Church, U.S.A. Her husband Buddy can be sighted at Cynthia’s Wisdom Schools and the Maine Ingathering.
February 16 Speaker -- Matthew Wright
The Rev. Matthew Wright is an Episcopal priest, writer, and retreat leader working to renew the Christian Wisdom tradition in a wider interspiritual context. He serves as priest-in-charge at St. Gregory’s Episcopal Church in Woodstock, NY and is a teacher for Northeast Wisdom and The Contemplative Society. Matthew is also a decade-long student of the Mevlevi Sufi tradition under the guidance of Shaikh Kabir and Camille Helminski. He lives with his wife, Yanick, alongside the brothers of Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY.
February 23 Speaker -- Cynthia Bourgeault
Cynthia grew up in the rolling countryside just west of Philadelphia and experienced her first tastes of silence and mystical presence during the weekly Meeting for Worship at the Quaker school she attended. She went on to earn a Ph.D. in Medieval Studies, where she specialized in early music and liturgical drama: training that would prove to serve her well in her later work as a spiritual teacher. She studied at the Philadelphia Divinity School and was ordained a priest in the Episcopal Church in 1979.
March 2 Speaker -- Harrison Taylor
Harrison Taylor is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker with a graduate degree in Marriage and Family Therapy and is a clinical member of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy. He also has a founding membership in the Eating Disorder Coalition of TN.
Harrison has a very diverse private practice in Nashville, TN where he sees both men and women individually, couples, families, and children of all ages, including adolescents. He helps individuals find their authentic voice while dealing with a wide range of presenting problems as well as issues of faith. He leads an on-going experiential, psychodrama therapy group as part of his services.
March 9 Speaker -- Buddy Parker
Buddy Parker is a partner in Maloy Jenkins Parker, www.mjplawyers.com, a litigation firm specializing in investigations, trial and appeals of business crime and civil fraud matters, including forfeiture and confiscation litigation, primarily in Federal Court. Mr. Parker's experience includes hundreds of trials and investigations over his 47 year legal career, nineteen of which while he was a federal prosecutor first with the Department of Justice, Washington, DC, and later in the U.S. Attorney's Office in Atlanta.
March 16 Speaker -- Rabbi Steve Cohen
Rabbi Steve Cohen has served as the senior rabbi of Congregation B’nai B’rith since 2004, after nineteen years as the rabbi and Executive Director of the Hillel Foundation at UC Santa Barbara.
In his capacity as senior rabbi, Steve’s primary responsibilities include teaching adults and youth, guiding the development of the congregation’s educational, worship, social action and cultural programs, providing pastoral counseling for congregants in need, helping families move through the great passages of life (birth, coming of age, marriage and death) with love and meaning, and working closely with the volunteer leadership of the congregation to build a vibrant Jewish community.
March 16 Speaker -- Rev. Steve Jacobsen
Steve Jacobsen earned a BA in European History from UCSB, a Masters of Divinity from Princeton Seminary and a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from Seattle University. He served as a Presbyterian pastor for 30 years, with the last 16 in Goleta.
From 2008-2014 he was Executive Director at Hospice of Santa Barbara; from 2014 to May, 2018 he was Director at La Casa de Maria. He has published a book and 11 articles on the relationship of spirituality to various aspects of daily life, including secular work, leadership and digital technology.
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