Saturday Workshops

Note: The percent (%) figures following workshop descriptions indicate the relative percentage of presentation, discussion, and experiential activity.

SATURDAY, MARCH 29, WORKSHOPS
3 HOURS (CHOOSE ONE AND ONE ALTERNATIVE)

S1. Discover the Queen and King, Lover, Magician, and Warrior Within

Experience practical ways to recognize four major archetypal energies—King and Queen, Lover, Magician, and Warrior—in you and in your directees. Explore spiritual practices that help you understand and regulate archetypes. Using the Neo-Jungian approach of Dr. Robert Moore, learn how in a mature spirituality the Warrior balances the Lover and how the wise Magus balances the Royal. 33%, 33%, 33%.

Rev. Dr. Lorolie Brown Andrews of Michigan, USA, is a spiritual director, presenter, and editor of Dr. Robert Moore’s books on Neo-Jungian psychology and spirituality.

S2. Lost and Found: The Practice of Wild Writing

Explore the meanings of wildness and how our capacities to know and inhabit wildness bring us to the Ground of Being. Discover the connection between the extinction of external wilderness and our loss of internal wilderness. Through the practice of wild writing, experience renewal of your inner wilderness and discover some practical tools for spiritual direction. 25%, 25%, 50%.

Marcia Black, PhD, is a spiritual director, psychologist, and writer who leads spiritual writing workshops in synagogues, health centers, and prisons. She has been published in Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction and lives in Massachusetts, USA.

S3. Your Soul’s Compass: What Is Spiritual Guidance?

Discover an essential spirituality distilled from two years of interviews with 27 sages. Beyond concept or dogma, simple, practical teachings emerged from these interviews with Quakers and Jews, Catholics and Episcopalians, Shamans and poets, philosophers and Sufis, Buddhists and Hindus. What are the attitudes and practices that align us with guidance? What blocks us? How does one discern guidance from ego, instinct, or social conditioning? What is the role of community? Are we evolving, and if so, toward what? 50%, 25%, 25%.

Joan Borysenko, PhD, and Gordon Dveirin, EdD, are co-founders of the Claritas Institute for Interspiritual Inquiry, Boulder, Colorado, USA, and authors of Saying Yes to Change: Essential Wisdom for Your Journey and Your Soul’s Compass: What Is Spiritual Guidance?

S4. Deepening Your Commitment to Interfaith Work

What are some of the strengths and struggles of interfaith issues in spiritual guidance? Led by a Jewish-Catholic team, we will explore helpful ideas for offering guidance to people from other religious traditions. We will deepen our commitment to engage in interfaith dialogue with the organizations and individuals we companion. 10%, 30%, 60%.

Cherie R. Brown, founder and executive director of the National Coalition Building Institute in Washington, DC, USA, an international leadership training organization, has worked on interfaith and inter-group issues for more than 30 years.

George J. Mazza is a civil rights attorney with the US Department of Justice in Washington, DC, USA. He has worked with interreligious organizations for more than 20 years.

S5. Age-ing to Sage-ing

As spiritual directors, are we doing our own sage-ing work? Are we prepared to sit with elders, assisting them in their spiritual growth? This interactive presentation based on the work of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi will address the vision of spiritual eldering, the tools for harvesting life, and the process of mentoring (seeding the future with wisdom). We will also explore the roles of elders as healers of family, community, and the earth. 33%, 34%, 33%.

Dr. Sandi Cohen is a psychotherapist, spiritual director, and adjunct faculty member of the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College in Pennsylvania, USA, who trains rabbis and rabbinical pastors in spiritual direction.

Catherine Coleman, RSM, is a spiritual director, Reiki practitioner, and mentor in a church ministry program in Pennsylvania, USA. She has served for many years as a pastoral minister to the elderly.

S6. Direct Intimate Presence: Collapsing Our Mind-Created Distances

What does it mean to be inside the reality we touch, to be directly present from the inside of our relationship with God, a spiritual companion, a group of people, or nature? Take part in experiential exercises designed to help us grow beyond the limiting subject-object dualism that so powerfully conditions us, and become more immediately present. We will look at spiritual direction and retreat leadership in natural settings as special contexts for the cultivation of direct presence. 33%, 33%, 33%. 

The Rev. Tilden Edwards, PhD, is the founder and senior fellow of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, Maryland, USA. Author of seven books on the spiritual life, including two on spiritual direction, he is an international presenter on contemplative spiritual life and leadership.

Ann Dean, director of the Shalem Institute’s extension program “Leading Contemplative Prayer Groups and Retreats,” is a spiritual director and leader in the ecumenical Church of the Savior, including the Dayspring Retreat Mission Group, Maryland, USA.

S7. Working with the Body in Spiritual Direction

Take part in an introduction to body-oriented practices for use in spiritual direction. Explore the hara, or belly center, and practice centering while maintaining center under pressure. We will work with ki, or vital energy, a universal spiritual principle, and practice Aikido’s geometry of relationship using triangle (focus), circle (blending), and square (stable boundaries). 25%, 15%, 60%.

Robert Frager, PhD, a seventh-degree black belt in Aikido and a Sufi sheikh (spiritual guide), is founding president and director of the Spiritual Guidance program at Institute of Transpersonal Psychology, California, USA.

S8. Spirituality at Work

Few would disagree that work is more than money and ambition. But where does spirituality come into the workplace? How do we deal with setbacks at work? Is the spirit active in large corporations as well as in church-based organizations? Should we encourage those who come for spiritual direction to explore work-related issues? Come along to share insights and seek answers together. 50%, 25%, 25%.

Greg Heylin earned a living in the Irish civil service and works as a spiritual director. He wrote a book on work and spirituality and believes the spirit is in the workplace.

Margaret Benefiel, PhD, offers spiritual direction for workplaces. Author of Soul at Work, she teaches at Andover-Newton Theological School in Massachusetts, USA, and the Milltown Institute in Ireland.

S9. Art Journaling and Contemplative Presence

Use a combination of art journaling, meditation, and gentle stretching movement to probe life-points and lines—the visual and verbal doorways into the grace of the present moment. Discover a prayerful tool for shifting into the spirit of a spiritual direction session or any contemplative situation. 30%, 30%, 40%.

Marianne Hieb, RSM, MFA, ATR, DMin, directs Lourdes Wellness Spirituality Program in New Jersey, USA. She is a retreat and spiritual director, author of Inner Journeying through Art-Journaling, studio artist, art therapist, and art-journaler.

Helen Owens, OSF, RN, MSN, DMin, is vice president of Mission and Community Health Improvement, Lourdes Health System, New Jersey, USA. She is a holistic nurse and contributor to Nurses Handbook of Alternative and Complementary Therapies.

S10. Being Present for Inner Healing

In the interior world, we may encounter traumatic memories, intimations of the future, and surprising moments of divine inspiration. We will explore the potential for inner healing using a model of consciousness from transpersonal psychology and illumined by the prayer process described by Teresa of Avila in The Interior Castle. 33%, 33%, 33%.

Dwight H. Judy, PhD, associate professor of spiritual formation at Garrett-Evangelical Theological Seminary in Illinois, USA, offers courses in spiritual direction for certification in spiritual formation in the United Methodist Church.

S11. Becoming a Compassionate Presence

Compassion for self and others is an integral aspect of spiritual guidance. We’ll learn theories and concepts of compassion from various disciplines including psychology, science, spirituality, theology, and sociology. Then we’ll incorporate these processes in two presentations to inspire and develop compassionate presence as well as creative ways to pray compassionately for self and others. 50%, 30%, 20%.

Joyce Rupp, OSM, writer, conference speaker, and spiritual director for 25 years, describes herself as a spiritual midwife and resides in Iowa, USA.

S12. The Male Spiritual Journey: Transforming Wounds to Wisdom

Wounding and grief often present obstacles in the male spiritual quest. Together we will examine the nature of men’s spiritual journeys and ways men typically deal with hurt and loss. Drawing from Judaism, Christianity, Buddhism, and traditional rites of initiation, we will explore strategies to help guide men through loss into greater wisdom. 33%, 33%, 33%.

Karl Ruttan, PhD, an Episcopal priest from West Virginia, USA, and dean of the Anglican Academy in Ohio, USA, is a spiritual director who teaches spiritual formation and leads men’s retreats.

Jim Neppl, corporate spiritual director and consultant from Minnesota, USA, leads workshops and retreats on fulfillment and healthy work cultures.