1. family and parenting
2. children

IDEAS • POLITICS • RELATIONSHIPS • ART • WRITING • SPIRITUALITY • YOUTH
Center Post
The
A Journal of UU Rowe Center
Volume 26 No.2 • Spring/Summer 2015
SPECIAL SECTION
What’s God
Got to Do
With It?
Joanna Macy,
Mary Catherine Bateson,
Starhawk and others reflect
on their spiritual journeys
ALSO INSIDE THIS ISSUE
Charles Eisenstein
Fear of a Living Planet
Chris Martenson
The Great Unraveling
Ralph Nader
Letter to Environmentalists
Joyce and Barry Vissell
How to Love
Catherine Ann Jones
The Bliss of Not Knowing
AND MORE!
w w w. ro w e c e n t e r. o r g
page 2 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
page 3
IDEAS
roaching That
ill present “App
w
n
ei
st
en
is
E
w is PosCharles
Our Hearts Kno
ld
or
W
l
ifu
ut
ea
More B
r 17-20.
sible,” Septembe
CHARLES EISENSTEIN
FEAR of a LIVING PLANET
D
oes the concept of a
living planet uplift
and inspire you, or
is it a disturbing
example of woo-woo nonsense
that distracts us from practical,
science-based policies?
The scientifically-oriented
nuts-and-bolts environmental
activist will roll his or her eyes
upon hearing phrases like “The
planet is a living being.” From
there it is a short step to sentiments like, “Love will heal the
world,” “What we need most is
a shift in consciousness,” and
“Let’s get in touch with our indigenous soul.” What’s wrong
with such ideas? The skeptics
make a potent argument. Not
only are these ideas delusional,
they say, but to voice them is a
C HA R LE S E I S E N S T EI N has written several books, most recently
The More Beautiful World Our Hearts Know is Possible and Sacred Economics.
A speaker and writer focusing on themes of human culture and identity, he
has a degree in mathematics and philosophy from Yale, lived a decade in
Taiwan as a translator, and has been a college instructor, yoga teacher, and
construction worker. He currently writes and speaks full-time. He lives in
Pennsylvania with his wife and four children.
strategic error that opens environmentalism to accusations of
flakiness. By invoking unscientific concepts, by prattling on
about the “heart” or spirit or the
sacred, we will be dismissed as
naive, fuzzy-headed, irrational,
hysterical, over-emotional hippies. What we need, they say,
is more data, more logic, more
numbers, better arguments, and
more practical solutions framed
in language acceptable to policy-makers and the public.
I think that argument is
mistaken. By shying away
from the idea of a living planet,
we rob environmentalism of
its authentic motive force,
engender paralysis rather than
action, and implicitly endorse
the worldview that enables our
destruction of the planet.
The Psychology
of Contempt
To see that, let’s start by
observing that the objection to
“Earth is alive” isn’t primarily
a scientific objection. After
suzybecker.com
all, science can easily affirm
or deny Earth’s aliveness
depending on what definition
of life is being used. No, we
are dealing with an emotional
perception here, one that goes
beyond “alive” to affirm that
Earth is sentient, conscious,
even sacred. That is what upsets the critics. Furthermore,
the derisiveness of the criticism, encoded in words like
“hippie” or “flake,” also shows
that more than an intellectual difference of opinion is at
stake. Usually, derision comes
from insecurity or fear. “Judgment,” says Marshall Rosenberg, “is the tragic expression
of an unmet need.”
What are they afraid of?
(And I—the voice of the derisive critic lives in me as well.)
Could it be that the contempt
comes in part from a fear that
one is, oneself, “naive, irrational, and over-emotional?”
Could the target of the derision be the projection of an
insecurity lurking within? Is
there a part of ourselves that we
disown and project, in distorted
form, onto others—an innocent, trusting, childlike part?
The fear of being
emotional, irrational, or hysterical is very close to a fear of the
inner feminine; the exclusion
of the fuzzy, the ill-defined,
and the emotionally-perceived
dimensions of our activism in
favor of the linear, rational,
and evidence-based mirrors the
domination over, and marginalization of, the feminine from
our social choice-making. Part
of our resistance to the notion
of Earth as a living being could
be the patriarchal mind feeling
threatened by feminine ways
of knowing and choosing. But
that’s still pretty theoretical, so
let me share a little of my own
introspection.
When I apprehend concepts
such as “Earth is alive,” or
“All things are sacred,” or
“The universe and everything
in it bears sentience, purpose,
and life,” there is always an
emotion involved; in no case
is my rejection or acceptance
the result of pure ratiocination.
Either I embrace them with a
feeling of eager, tender hope, or
I reject them with a feeling of
wariness, along the lines of “It
is too good to be true,” or “I’m
nobody’s fool.” Sometimes,
beyond wariness, I feel a hot
flash of anger, as if I had been
violated or betrayed. Why?
That wariness is deeply
connected to the contempt I’ve
described. The derision of the
cynic comes from a wound of
crushed idealism and betrayed
hopes. We received it on a
cultural level when the Age of
Aquarius morphed into the Age
of Reagan, and on an individual
level as well when our childish
perception of a living, personal
universe in which we are destined to grow into magnificent
creators gave way to an adulthood of deferred dreams and
lowered expectations. Anything
that exposes this wound will
trigger our protective instincts.
One such protection is cynicism, which rejects and derides
as foolish, naive, or irrational
anything that affirms the magic
and idealism of youth.
Our perceived worldview
has cut us off, often quite
brutally, from intimate
connection with the rest of life
and with the rest of matter. The
child hugs a tree and thinks
he feels the hug and imagines
the tree is his friend, only to
learn that no, I’m sorry, the
tree is just a bunch of woody
cells with no central nervous
system and therefore cannot
possibly have the qualities of
beingness that humans have.
The child imagines that just as
she looks out on the world, the
world looks back at her, only
to learn that no, I’m sorry, the
world consists of a jumble of
insensate stuff, a random melee
of subatomic particles, and that
intelligence and purpose reside
in human beings alone. Science
(as we have known it) renders
us alone in an alien universe.
At the same time, it crowns us
as its lords and masters, for if
sentience and purpose inhere
in us alone, there is nothing
stopping us from engineering
the world as we see fit. There is
no desire to listen for, no larger
process to participate in, no
consciousness to respect.
“The Earth isn’t really
alive” is part of that ideological
cutoff. Isn’t that the same
cutoff that enables us to despoil
the planet?
The wounded child
interjects, “But what if it is
true? What if the universe
really is just as science
describes?” What if, as the
biologist Jacques Monod put it,
we are alone in “an alien world.
A world that is deaf to man’s
music, just as indifferent to his
hopes as to his suffering or his
crimes”? Such is the wail of the
separate self. It is loneliness
and separation disguised as an
empirical question.
What Moves the
Environmentalist?
Most people reading this
probably consider themselves
to be environmentalists;
certainly most people think it
is important to create a society
that leaves a livable planet
to future generations. What
is it, exactly, that makes us
into environmentalists? If we
answer that, we might know
how to turn others into environmentalists as well, and to deepen the commitment of those
who already identify as such.
I don’t know about
you, but I didn’t become an
environmentalist because
someone made a rational
argument that convinced me
that the planet was in danger.
I became an environmentalist
out of love and pain: Love for
the world and its beauty and
the grief of seeing it destroyed.
It was only because I was
in touch with these feelings
that I had the ears to listen to
evidence and reason and the
eyes to see what is happening
to our world. I believe that this
love and this grief are latent in
every human being. When they
awaken, that person becomes
an environmentalist.
Now, I am not saying that
a rational, evidence-based
analysis of the situation
and possible solutions is
unimportant. It’s just that it will
be compelling only with the
animating spirit of reverence
for our planet, born of the felt
connection to the beauty and
pain around us.
Our present economic and
industrial systems can function
only to the extent that we
insulate ourselves from our
love and our pain. We insulate
ourselves geographically by
pushing the worst degradation
onto faraway places. We
insulate ourselves economically
by using money to avoid the
immediate consequences of
that degradation, pushing it
onto the world’s poor. We insulate ourselves perceptually by
learning not to see or recognize
the stress of the land and water
around us and by forgetting
what healthy forests, healthy
streams, and healthy skies look
like. And we insulate ourselves
ideologically by our trust in
technological fixes and justifications like, “Well, we need
fracking for energy independence, and besides it’s not that
bad,” or “After all, this forest
isn’t in an ecologically critical
area.”
The most potent form of
ideological insulation, though,
is the belief that the world isn’t
really in pain, that nothing
worse is happening than the
manipulation of matter by
machines, and that therefore
as long as we can engineer
some substitute for “ecosystem
services,” there need be no
limit to what we do to nature.
Absent any inherent purpose or
intelligence, the Earth is here
for us to use. Look around this
planet. See the results of that
ideology writ large.
The Love of Life
The idea that our planet is
alive, and further, that every
mountain, river, lake and
forest is a living being, even
a sentient, purposive, sacred
being, is therefore not a soppy
emotional distraction from
the environmental problems
at hand; to the contrary, it
disposes us to feel more, to
care more, and to do more.
No longer can we hide from
our grief and love behind the
ideology that the world is
just a pile of stuff to be used
instrumentally for our own
ends. True, that ideology
is perfectly consistent with
cutting carbon emissions,
and consistent as well with
any environmental argument
that invokes our survival
as the primary basis for
policymaking. A lot of
environmental activism
depends on appeals to survival
anxiety. “We have to change
our ways, or else!” Appealing
to fear and selfish interest, in
general, is a natural tactic for
anyone coming from a belief
that the planet has no intrinsic
value, no value beyond its
utility. What other reason to
preserve it is there, when it has
no intrinsic value?
It should be no surprise
that this tactic has failed.
When environmentalists cite
the potential economic losses
from climate change, they
implicitly endorse economic
gain and loss as a basis for environmental decision-making.
Doubtless they are imagining
that they must “speak the language” of the power elite, who
supposedly don’t understand
anything but money, but this
strategy backfires when, as is
the norm, financial self-interest
and ecological sustainability
are opposed. Similarly, calls to
preserve the rainforests because
of the value of the medicines
that may one day be derived
from its species imply that, if
only we can invent synthetic
alternatives to whatever the
forest might bear, we needn’t
preserve the rainforest after all.
Even appealing to the wellbeing of one’s grandchildren
harbors a similar trap: If that is
your first concern, then what
about environmental issues that
only affect people in far-away
lands, or that don’t tangibly
harm any human being at all?
The clubbing of baby seals, the
extinction of the river dolphin,
the deafening of whales with
sonar… it is hard to construct a
compelling argument that any
of these threaten the measurable well-being of future generations. Are we then to sacrifice
these beings of little utility?
Besides, did anyone
ever become a committed
environmentalist because of
all the money we’ll save?
Because of all the benefits
we’ll receive? I am willing to
bet that even the survival of
the species or the wellbeing
of your grandchildren isn’t
the real motive for your
environmentalism. You are not
an environmentalist because
you are afraid of what will
happen if you don’t act. You are
an environmentalist because
you love our planet. To call
others into environmentalism,
we should therefore appeal
to the same love in them. It is
not only ineffectual but also
insulting to offer someone a
venal reason to act ecologically
when we ourselves are doing it
for love.
Nonetheless, environmental
campaigning relies heavily
on scare tactics. Fear might
stimulate a few gestures of
activism, but it does not sustain
long-term commitment. It
strengthens the habits of selfprotection, but what we need
is to strengthen the habits of
service.
Why then do so many of us
name “fear that we won’t have
a livable planet” as the motive
for our activism? I think it is to
make that activism acceptable
within the ideological framework I have described that
takes an instrumentalist view of
the planet. When we embrace
what I believe is the true motive—love for this Earth—we
veer close to the territory that
the cynic derides. What is it to
make “rational” choices, after
all? Is it ever really rational to
choose from love? In particular,
is it rational to love something
that isn’t even alive?
But the truth is, we love the
Earth for what it is, not merely
for what it provides.
This article is adapted from
one that appeared originally in
Kosmos magazine.
page 4 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
POLITICS
C H R I S M A RT E N S O N
The Approaching
P
that limit has been reached. Pretending
otherwise is a game we’ll leave for the
entrenched defenders of the status quo.
Who’s Next?
The economic and financial crises
are not going to strike everywhere at
once, or in equal amounts. Some places
will be struck first and hardest, with the
only predictable pattern being that the
weaker nations and companies will be
hit first from the outside in.
The trouble always starts on the
edges. We see junk bonds falling before
higher quality grades. Poor companies
sink before better ones. Weaker countries fall into chaos before stronger
ones.
Even within a given country, some
areas will fare far better than others.
The trouble has already begun in
Greece, obviously, but under more normal times the events in Venezuela, Puer-
CH R I S M AR T EN S O N earned a Ph.D. from Duke and a MBA from Cornell. He worked in
the world of corporate finance and strategy for 10 years and is an accomplished speaker and
author who has presented the “Peak Prosperity” material at the U.N., U.K. Parliament, in Las
Vegas, to corporations and audiences the world over. Dr. Martenson spent six years researching
and creating the video version of the Crash Course, which has been viewed more than 2.5 million times. His Crash Course book was published by Wiley in 2011.
to Rico, Brazil, and Portugal would be
getting a lot more attention. The core of
the problem is that these countries took
on too much debt and now cannot possibly pay it all back. Compounding the
problem was borrowing in US dollars,
which removes a lot of maneuvering
room because a country cannot simply
print up the money to pay off the debt.
Eventually straightforward logic and
simple math will be performed on other
larger economies and the same conclusions will surface. What cannot be paid
back, won’t be paid back.
Japan cannot ever possibly pay off
its debts. Somebody is going to have
to take losses. Argentina is a mess.
Portugal is not currently in crisis but
with debt-to-GDP of 129% it won’t
take much for it to enter the same path
towards public recognition of its own
math problems. Ireland at 123% and
Italy at 132% debt-to-GDP are also in
line.
Welcome to the next phase of this
mega-drama, where it becomes impossible to completely ignore simple math
and basic logic, despite the best efforts
of the press, politicians, and other powerful entities.
The Great Unraveling then is really
nothing more than a bunch of unrealistic
hopes and dreams being forced, kicking
and screaming, into alignment with reality. But the way it will play out is with
what the people of Venezuela would tell
you is a period of immense wealth destruction. A time when a Bolivar sinks
from 46 cents of purchasing power to
half a cent.
The truth, however, is that the wealth
of the people of Venezuela was not
destroyed; it was merely transferred.
Actual wealth, unlike paper claims on
wealth, cannot be printed up, nor is it
easily destroyed. But it does get transferred all the time, and every single QE
(quantitative easing) effort by the central banks has done exactly that.
The Coming Wealth Transfer
suzybecker.com
page 5
Martenson will
Chris and Becca
ving
Prosperity: Thri
present “Peak
April 24-26.
in Any Future,”
G R E A T U N R AV E L I N G
erhaps the largest predicament
we face is that infinite economic growth on a finite planet is
an impossibility, and yet that’s
exactly what our monetary and banking
systems require.
Not merely because the bankers and
politicians want it — which they do —
but because that’s how the system itself
is designed. When you loan money
into existence, you get an exponential
increase of that money over time. Actually, you get an exponential increase in
debt, too, only at a faster pace, which
translates into larger quantities.
For as long as debts are growing
at an exponential pace, everything is
fine with the world, the economy hums
along, politicians get re-elected, and the
big banks churn out profits year after
year. However, when the debt growth
stops, financial panic sets in, the banking system threatens collapse, and the
fiscal and monetary authorities pull out
all the stops in their efforts to prevent
these various ills from getting any
worse.
What the political and banking folks
are desperately seeking to prevent is
nothing less than a Great Unraveling.
Their task is impossible.
The Great Unraveling will be a set
of related economic and financial crises
that end up taking inflated expectations
and reducing them to match reality.
Perhaps this process will take years, or
maybe it will take decades, or maybe
it will take months. Nobody knows.
But the longer that final process of accounting is delayed, the wider the gap
between expectations and reality.
Greece has merely exposed the flaw
in the system of money that requires
endless, perpetual exponential expansion. Sooner or later it hits a limit, and
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
The good news about wealth transfers is that with a little forethought you
can be on the right side of the line —
towards which wealth is transferred —
when the time comes.
History is full of periods when wellmeaning but self-interested leadership
tried to cover up past mistakes with
a combination of money printing and
refusing to acknowledge those past
mistakes, exactly as is happening today.
We have loads of history to study on the
matter. Consider the Weimar Germany
experience. A set of bad decisions, a
prior war, and a punitive reparations
treaty all combined to create a period
when printing more and more money
made sense to those in power. And so
they did, with much applause from seated politicians and most of the populace
too. At least for a while. But you know
how that all turned out: Vast fortunes
were lost, savings were entirely wiped
out, and the moment is still referred
to by many as a period of great wealth
destruction. And, indeed, many experienced it that way, as people in Venezuela are today.
But the truth is that wealth was not
destroyed; it was transferred. It passed
from the unwary to the alert, and it
did so in enormous and magnificent
amounts. It’s true that the money claims
against true wealth were destroyed as
the money spiraled down an inflationary hole, but money and debt are not
wealth; they are merely claims on
wealth. Real wealth is factories and
farms, buildings and houses, raw land
and minerals and water and food. There
were just as many of these things before
the Weimar hyperinflation as there were
afterwards. That is, the amount of real
wealth was fairly consistent throughout.
But who owned it changed a lot.
And this is the hidden part of money
printing — the inevitable destructive
events are always presented to us as if
they were some form of natural disaster,
unseen and unforeseeable, an unavoidable accident that just happened.
But they are neither unforeseeable nor unavoidable. When too many
claims are piled up against too little
real wealth, a resettlement is inevitable.
The only question is whether it comes
about in the form of an inflationary destruction, as in Venezuela today, or in a
deflationary bust, more in the fashion of
Greece today.
Either way the perceived value that
people think they hold just evaporates,
like morning mist. Because we cannot
yet pick which way the tower will fall
— into deflation or inflation — it is best
to be poised for either. If I had to pick,
I would say that the world will see a
mix of both deflationary and inflationary outcomes over the next two years.
Deflation will happen if the pile of debts
topples faster than authorities can print
up new money and get it into the hands
of the same people/entities that borrowed all that debt. Inflation will happen if it is people’s faith in the national
currency that declines more quickly.
Inflation will probably strike:
•South America
•Mexico
•Japan (eventually, and horrifically)
•China (this is a 50/50 toss up)
•Eastern Europe
•Russia
•Greece (after reverting to the
Drachma)
•Africa
Deflation will probably strike:
•U.S.A.
•Northern Europe
•Canada
•Australia
For those countries that experience
deflation first the second act will be
inflation — if not hyper-inflation, as
the central banks panic and really begin
to print in earnest. The reason I expect
this, rather than a scenario of just letting the deflation run its course and burn
itself out, is because deflation of the
sort we are talking about here — with
over four decades of too much borrowing to erase — will destroy institutions,
careers and countries. Nobody in power
ever has the stomach for those sorts of
things.
The summary is this; we are still
printing and borrowing enormous
amounts of money and credit, but the
world is not growing any larger in
response. The pressure is building. Nobody knows when all of that money and
credit will have to be “trued up” against
the amount of real stuff out there, but it
will. It always does.
On Being Prepared
It’s critical that you read widely,
suzybecker.com
consume multiple points of view, and
accept pretty much nothing at face value
that comes from the defenders of the
status quo. The truth is always more
complex, nuanced, and hidden than
most people believe.
For example, U.S. interests in
Ukraine are not centered on democracy, for the situation in Ukraine is but
a much more complex amalgam of old
fault lines and new energy and emerging
geopolitical power realities that involve
Russia and China.
Knowing how access to energy
supplies has always shaped history,
combined with an understanding of
Europe’s permanent energy shortfalls,
gives us a workable map of the Ukraine
conflict that allows us to mentally and
even physically prepare for the possibility that the conflict gets worse and
spreads before it recedes.
Or we might note that economic
growth as practiced in the past relied
on equivalent surges in cheap oil supplies that no longer apply. Today we can
either have stagnant or falling supplies
of cheap oil or we can have growing
supplies of expensive oil, but we cannot have growing supplies of cheap oil.
Those days are gone.
This gives us a workable map of the
future which centers on the idea that the
growth rates of the past are a thing of
the past. With that knowledge we then
can assess the likelihood of success for
the central banks that are busily printing up vast quantities of new claims on
future economic growth.
If that growth arrives, there will
be relative stability in the financial
markets. If not, there will be disappointment, if not outright chaos at some
point.
Still, here we are in 2015, when the
very idea that endless economic growth
is an illogical impossibility of the most
obvious sort remains a fringe view.
Odd, but true.
Everyone should be asking themselves exactly what they would be doing differently today if they knew for
certain that the next wave of financial
and economic disruptions were going to
arrive in their country next month.
How would your answer change if
the crisis were known to be coming in
one year?
What if it was going to be two
years? What changes in your answer?
Anything?
It is time to prepare.
This piece is adapted from one that
appeared on the blog site http://www.
peakprosperity.com/blog.
page 6 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
Ralph Nader w
ill
present “Gettin
g It
Done: How to R
estore and Repai
r Our
Wounded Democ
racy,” May 15-1
7.
POLITICS
R A LPH NADER
How to C HA N GE C ON GR ESS
on CL I M AT E C HA N G E
This letter was sent three times to Al Gore, George
Soros, and venture capitalist Thomas Sever, without
receiving a reply:
I
n light of your efforts to educate and galvanize
the public regarding the urgencies of climate
change and the increasingly documented necessity for action we, the undersigned environmentalists, wish to propose a new major initiative focused
on members of Congress.
The adoption of a comprehensive energy conversion program requires the kind of grassroots and local/
state efforts that have been growing around the country.
But it is also clear that without Congress on board, our
national legislature will continue to be an instrument of
the vested fossil fuel interests perpetrating the status quo
that stops these changes and obfuscates the reality connecting widely supported greater energy efficiency and
lower ground-level pollution with reduced greenhouse
gases.
Currently, despite mounting studies and visible
worldwide evidence of human-made climate change,
Congress, as a whole, operates in an eerie bubble, as if
oblivious to the consequences for the people and communities it purports to represent. Those who are concerned about climate change on Capitol Hill too often
surrender to the futility of taking any action in the face
of the obstructive power of the rejectionists. The defeatism is palpable, notwithstanding the recent all-night
stand on the Senate floor by 30 Democratic senators and
the one-minute floor addresses some members of Congress are making about the perils of inaction on climate
issues. Meanwhile, climate change deniers rarely get
challenged for outlandish and irresponsible claims that
warnings about climate change are exaggerated, part
of a “hoax,” nothing more than “fear mongering,” or
based on “unsound science.” The result is that too many
outside advocates and environmental groups have practically given up for any action on the Hill. This is a selfinflicted retreat that nullifies much of their good efforts.
We cannot allow a legislative stalemate to continue
to justify civic resignation and inaction in addressing
this greatest of threats to our country’s and world’s
environmental future. As you know well, the knowledge sufficient for action is here; the technologies and
capital necessary to transition to a clean energy system
are available and in many cases cost-competitive at the
consumer interface. And the obligations to posterity are
undeniable.
R AL P H N AD ER has launched three major presidential
campaigns and founded more than 100 civic organizations that
have affected auto safety, tax reform, atomic-power regulation,
occupational safety, the tobacco industry, clean air and water,
food and drug safety, access to health care, civil rights, open government, congressional ethics, and much more. He is a tireless
advocate for ending the destruction of civil liberties, the economically draining corporate welfare state, the relentless perpetuation
of America’s wars, sovereignty-shredding trade agreements, and
the unpunished crimes of Wall Street against Main Street. He has
written many bestsellers, including Unstoppable: The Emerging
Left-Right Alliance to Dismantle the Corporate State; The Seventeen Traditions; The Good Fight; and the landmark Unsafe at
Any Speed.
What is lacking is the kind of focused pressure on
Congress that’s necessary to overcome the corporate
special interests and their political allies in Washington
that have blocked every significant attempt to rescue
our country and the planet from the existential threat
that looms ahead. Apart from some credible efforts
around elections and targeted but limited policies, the
environmental movement has not managed to leverage
its grassroots power to overcome or even perturb the
Congress’s intolerable institutional gridlock.
We believe that an effective way to crack this inertia
would be to create a new congressional climate action
lobby, staffed by first-rate professionals with the drive,
requisite skills, and singular daily focus on Congress.
The idea would be to build a team sizeable enough —
perhaps as many as 100 people working daily on the
Hill alone — to sustain a consistent presence around
every member’s office. An array of strategies and tactics
would be used to hold members accountable to the impacts of climate change on their districts. Efforts would
be made to mobilize a diverse range of constituencies
(including businesses, residents, and farmers suffering
the consequences of drought and other extreme weather
events), public health professionals, scientists, national
security experts and other eminent leaders to pressure
individual members of Congress. In addition to providing improved capacity toward congressional accountability, the initiative would help shape, promote, and
publicize congressional hearings and debates, and eventually drive momentum toward far-reaching legislation,
while expanding and intensifying other congressionally
mandated policies, including regulatory oversight,
procurement and new initiatives designed to accelerate
the spread of renewables and efficiency standards, and
reduce our addiction to fossil fuels.
These activists will be skilled at generating newsworthy material and framing cutting-edge media cov-
erage that helps marginalize the climate deniers and
strengthens the resolve of already concurring members
of Congress and their staffers. With bold vision and
leadership, such an effort could create the type of atmosphere in which climate change rises from the back
benches to become a priority for congressional leaders
confident that the country is ready for significant strides
forward.
Currently, there are astonishingly too few lobbyists
working full time in Congress in this way. The most
effective advocates on any issue are those who have
money and continually engage in personal advocacy
with members and their staff — here in Washington and
back home. Given the magnitude of the threat posed
by climate change, such an operation should rival the
scale and effectiveness of groups such as the NRA and
AIPAC. It should be possible to do so with an initial annual budget of $20 million.
Despite suggestions to the contrary, we believe a majority of Americans would rise to the call to dismiss the
naysayers and drive Congress to action. Many leaders,
outside of Washington, from a variety of sectors who
have already spoken out about the urgency of the issue,
could be constantly mobilized to focus on individual
members, including articulate celebrities and a wide
circle of elders and persuaders from both parties.
Of course, here in Washington, D.C. there are environmental groups (including our own) that deal with
climate change policies that arise in the regulatory agencies and Congress. But there are also the many daily
brushfires that consume so much time and energy. A
new group would enter the picture without any historical baggage or other matters pulling it in various directions. Its mandate would effectively draw a spotlight on
members of Congress and amplify the efforts of existing
grassroots campaigns. It also would be poised to take
legitimate advantage of new developments — including
extreme weather events that shock the nation and underscore the urgency of the issue.
Rarely in our country’s history have we seen the
need — as well as the reliable potential — for this type
of strategically designed initiative. Given the stakes, the
annual budget is modest and achievable with your leadership. If successful, it could catalyze the kind of dynamic that we all know is crucial to liberate the energies
of our country over a matter of such economic, social,
and environmental magnitude.
Sincerely, Ralph Nader and colleagues
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
page 7
ARTS
SHAUN MCNIFF
FA I L B E T T E R !
“In a dark time, the eye begins to
see.”
—Theodore Roethke
L
iberating creativity is all
about creating with the shadow. When I first started introducing people to how art furthers healing and social transformation,
I viewed myself as evoking the positive
aspects of creative activity. I often encountered a reluctance to participate:
“No way am I going to do that.” And
if people did start to work, they were
guarded. At first I thought the discomfort came from something I did, which
may have been partly true, but experience has shown that the source of ten-
S HAUN M C NIF F has written the forthcoming Imagination in Action: Secrets for Unleashing Creative Expression. An exhibiting painter, his life work has been freeing the artist in every
person. He is the first University Professor of Lesley University, where he established the first
Expressive Arts Therapy graduate training program, from which the discipline of Expressive
Arts Therapy emerged. An Honorary Life Member of the American Art Therapy Association, he
has published many other books, including Art Heals: How Creativity Cures the Soul and Trust
the Process: An Artist’s Guide to Letting Go.
sion was already there smoldering, and
I ignited it.
“Tension is beneficial,” Heraclitus
of Ephesus said. It activates, communicates, and gets things moving. The word
“agitate” derives from the Latin agito,
agitare — to move, drive, urge forward. A
certain agitation enhances creative expression, like the washing machines in our
homes. Things have to be broken down,
dissolved, softened, and stirred up so that
they can change and be made anew.
As someone whose life work is involved with the arts and health, I have
been able to see how this ability of art
to engage the difficult materials, appreciate their place, and do something
with them as affirmations of life offers
a practical model for how healing and
creative change happen in personal
and social realms. The process may not
cure the angst, yet it brings relief and
satisfaction in a reliable way. Throughout history, from shamanism to Greek
Shaun McNiff w
ill present
“Imagination in
Action:
Secrets for Unl
eashing
Your Natural C
reativity.”
May 8-10.
tragedy and on to Frida Kahlo
and the moaning piano in “The Weary
Blues” of Langston Hughes, the arts
are replete with models for transforming pain and difficulties into soulful
expressions.
As Samuel Beckett put it in Worstward Ho: “Ever tried. Ever failed.
No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail
better.”
This piece is adapted from Shaun
McNiff’s forthcoming book Imagination in Action: Secrets for Unleashing
Creative Expression (Shambhala).
C AT H E R I N E A N N J O N E S
Learning to Be COMFORTABLE in the UNKNOWN
L
earning to be comfortable with the
unknown, with not
knowing, is an integral part of the inner journey.
You can move forward even
in the state of unknowing,
trusting the inner process that
when it is time to know, knowing will come. The invisibles
will be there to light the way.
Meanwhile, even if all is not
yet clear, muster the courage
to remain in uncertainty while
trusting the inner process.
Many years ago, I was in
the middle of an acting engagement in which I was playing
the female lead in a revival of
an old Sidney Kingsley play,
CATHER I NE ANN J O NE S is a writer whose books include The
Way of Story: The Craft & Soul of Writing and Heal Your Self with Writing (winner of the Nautilus Book Award) and whose films include The Christmas
Wife, Unlikely Angel, and the TV series Touched by an Angel. Her 10 plays have
been produced in and outside of New York City. She holds a graduate degree in depth psychology and archetypal mythology from Pacifica Graduate
Institute and has been a Fulbright Research Scholar studying shamanism in
India. She teaches internationally and works as a writing consultant.
The Patriots. After the stage run
of the Pulitzer Prize-winning
play, Great Performances decided to film it for PBS television. Even though this was
all very good, something had
changed in me during the run
of the show, and I knew it was
time to stop acting.There was
no outer reason, only a clear
inner feeling. So, trusting this
inner voice, I finished the stage
and television job, and then
simply stopped acting. There
was a three-month period when
I had no idea what was next. I
meditated and trusted that when
it was time to know, knowing
would come.
Then I was invited to be a
bridesmaid at a friend’s wedding just outside of New York
City and to spend the weekend
there with the couple and their
close friends. Among the guests and trusted, an ally appeared to
was an astrologer whom I had
guide. Later, too, I realized how
never met. As we had time, he
my years as an actor were inoffered to look at my chart.
valuable in order to later write
Knowing nothing about me
plays and
or what livelihood I
movies. When
Jones
nn
A
ne
had, he told me that
asked if I
ri
he
at
C
he Way
“T
t
en
es
he saw an acting
miss acting, I
pr
ill
w
raft and
C
e
Th
y:
career but that writsay, “No, the
or
St
of
”
g,
tin
ri
W
ing would be much
difference
of
ul
So
0.
more important. I
now is that I
September 18-2
laughed and realized
play all the
that somehow I had
roles as I create
known this all along, as I had
them.” All the parts of one’s
always written but had never
life make sense in retrospect.
considered it as a possible
livelihood. He said I would do
This piece is adapted from Heal
even better as a writer. GrateYourself with Writing (Divine
fully, I took this advice and
Arts, 2013) by Catherine Ann
never looked back. As I waited Jones.
page 8 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
page 9
R E L AT I O N S H I P S
J OY C E V I S S E L L
suzybecker.com
Find Out What’s
Important to HER
B
arry loves me by
doing simple things
that are really important to me, and
not necessarily to him.
It’s very important to me to
have the kitchen clean before
we go to sleep. My Swedish
mother once advised me to always do the dishes before I go
to sleep, so I don’t start the new
day with yesterday’s dirty dishes. I took her words to heart,
and cannot go to sleep until the
kitchen is all tidy. Sometimes
we are so tired after working all
day, Barry looks at the mess in
the kitchen and sighs. I know
he could easily go to sleep and
deal with it in the morning,
but he looks at me and knows
how I feel without even talking about it. As tired as we are,
we tackle the kitchen together
and, by the end, we both have a
good feeling about it. And each
morning it is very nice to start
the day with a clean, organized
kitchen.
I also have the same feeling about our bedroom. I want
the bedroom to be neat with all
B A R RY V I S S E L L
Find Out What HE Really Wants and Needs
Y
ou may think the
man you love is
completely up
front with what
he wants and needs from you.
Sorry to burst your bubble,
but he is most often not. First
of all, he often doesn’t know
what he wants and needs. Or
he may mix up the two, wanting one thing but needing
something else.
One very common example is sex. How often have
I wanted sex with Joyce, but
really needed acceptance or
comfort. Joyce loves me by
gently asking me what I really
want and need.
You may recognize that
your man is unhappy, or even
depressed. You may ask him
what he wants or needs and he
responds with “I don’t know.”
It takes loving patience to sit in
front of him and give him permission to want and need. He
may not have ever gotten this
permission from his parents,
or worse, he may have been
told what he wants and needs
by them. His own wants and
needs may have been ignored,
rejected or even ridiculed.
Dad: “You want art lessons? Art is for sissies! I don’t
want anyone calling my son a
sissy!”
Mom: “You need me to
hold you? I don’t have time
for that. Besides, you’re not a
baby anymore.”
So you can see, telling your
man what he wants or needs is
not a good idea. However, gently asking can be quite helpful.
Sometimes it’s hard for me
to identify what I need. A little
while ago, I was on a very difficult phone call with someone
who was angry and blaming
me. Even though it was obvious to me that she was much
more angry at her father and
her husband (I knew some of
the details), she kept projecting
it onto me. I apologized for my
part and invited her to go deeper, but she refused. I got off
that phone call feeling shaken
and walked through the house
to the kitchen. Joyce was
standing near the entrance to
the kitchen. She took one look
at me and knew something was
wrong. Unbelievably, I walked
right past her with hardly a
glance, and began busying my-
self in the kitchen. She could
have easily felt brushed off,
but instead came quietly up
to me and gently wrapped her
arms around me and I melted
into her loving embrace.
It can be a huge challenge for a man to recognize
and then admit his need for
love. For many years, the
word “need” to me was a four
letter word as bad as some
other bad four letter words.
It implied pathetic weakness.
I was strong, independent,
self-sufficient and secure that I
didn’t need anyone. It took me
the clothes put away. Again, I
know that Barry could easily
be at peace with putting his
clothes away once a week. But
I feel our bedroom is a sacred
place where we sleep, make
love, and I say my prayers in
the morning. I feel much better
when it is kept neat. Barry’s
office, supply closets, and the
garage are another matter. I try
not to look, and only once a
year insist on bringing a little
order to those areas.
Sometimes I think it must
be so hard to live with my idiosyncrasies. I can’t sleep unless
the window is open. Even on
cold nights, when the tempera-
Joyce and Barry
Vissell will pres
ent “Couples
on the Path to
ay
Wholeness,” M
22-25.
tures in Santa Cruz fall below
thirty degrees, I still crank open
the window. Barry occasionally sighs from his side of the
bed away from the window, but
also realizes it’s non-negotiable. I crave fresh air. If Barry
books a hotel for us, he knows
to ask if the room has windows
that can be opened. Some hotels don’t, so he goes on to the
next hotel on the list. Once we
were working in Canada in the
winter and the temperatures
were below zero. When we
were getting ready for bed,
Barry looked at me with pleading eyes. “Only a little bit,”
was my reply. Though the window was only open a fraction
of an inch, I still had my fresh
air. Most other people that
night slept with the heat on and
their windows closed. Barry
tolerates this because he knows
how important it is to me. It’s
worth it to him to pile on more
blankets knowing how much
the fresh air means to me. His
sacrifice feels so loving to me.
I
love spending time in nature with Joyce, especially on overnight river trips. The wildness of nature feeds our relationship.
The busyness of life falls away as we settle into a rhythm
based on the simplest of things: the direction of the wind, a level
protected spot to set up our tent, the different moods and sounds
of the river, the temperature letting us know how much we need
to wear, and the solitude letting us know if we need to wear
clothes at all. Nature allows us to see one another in a new and
JOY CE VI S S ELL, R . N., M.S., is a nurse/therapist and B A RRY
VI S S ELL, M.D., is a medical doctor and psychiatrist. It’s been said that
their main medicine is unconditional love. Marianne Williamson has written,
“I can’t think of anything more important to the healing of our society than
a connection between spirituality, relationship, and parenthood. Bravo to the
Vissells for helping us find the way.” Ram Dass describes the Vissells as a couple
who live the yoga of love and devotion. They have been deeply in love for 50
years and have raised three children. Since 1972, they have been counseling,
healing, and teaching internationally and have written six books on relationship, parenting, and personal growth, including The Shared Heart and Models
of Love. They are co-founders and directors of the non-profit Shared Heart
Foundation.
I
love Barry by sharing his vision or at least
having an affair with Joyce’s
best friend three years after
we were married, and Joyce’s
leaving the marriage, to finally
crack open my shell of resistance. I soon discovered that
the child inside me was not
only still alive and kicking, but
also needed Joyce’s love. It
was rarely safe for me to need
love as a child, so I formed a
protective shell around that
little boy’s need for love, and
hid it away even from me. The
rediscovery of that little boy
and his need for love was a
cornerstone for a whole new
life, and a deeper relationship
with my beloved.
These excerpts are adapted from the Vissells’ forthcoming books
To Really Love a Woman and To Really Love a Man. Although
their writings refer mostly to heterosexual women and men, they
note that “gays and lesbians will find a wealth of information for
same-sexed relationships. Our focus, after all, is how to deeply love
another person, whether it be a man or a woman.”
fresher way....You love your man by encouraging him to really get
outdoors. More than mowing the lawn (which I love to do!), or
pruning the trees (which I also love to do!), encourage him to get
away in nature. Especially if he spends most of his time indoors,
you give him a great gift by inspiring him to receive from our great
Earth mother. Go with him sometimes and enjoy nature together,
but also allow him to experience solitude in the great outdoors,
where he can reclaim his inner pioneer or explorer. — B.V.
around people who were older than me.
Barry lovingly and gently assured me that
trying it on for size. When we were both
Toward the end of Barry’s first year of
his vision definitely included me as well. I
27 years old, we had been married for
residency, the psychiatry program changed
knew that only my fear was standing in my
five years. Up till then, I had financially sup-
from being human-centered to being drug-
way. So I agreed to try his vision on for size.
ported Barry through medical school even
centered in its approach to patients. One day,
I maintained that if it didn’t work for me,
while I was in graduate school. Then he did
Barry came to me and said, “I can’t continue
I would go back to working with children.
a year of psychiatry residency in Portland,
with this residency. It goes against who I
Barry was so happy that I was willing to
Oregon, while I worked in the department
am. I have a vision of the two of us helping
support his vision.
of child psychiatry. I had a great job teach-
people in a deeper way.”
It took nine years to bring that vision,
ing medical students how to interview
I could understand why he wanted to
which eventually became my vision as well,
children and evaluate them for psychiatric
leave. He only needed one year of residency
into fruition. During those nine years we
problems. I liked working with the medical
to get an MD license and this felt like a good
traveled and studied, had two of our three
students, who were all younger than me, but
vision for him. What I couldn’t see was my-
children, and studied some more while our
I really loved being with the children. I felt
self joining him. How could I do this work
babies slept. For the past 40 years, we have
completely natural with children and, in a
with him when I was afraid of most adults?
been living the vision that Barry had during
short time, just by playing with them, a child
I gave him my blessing for his vision, but
his residency. I am so grateful that I pushed
would open up to me. I felt shy and insecure
said that I was simply too afraid to join him.
past my fear and tried it on for size. — J.V.
page 10 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
R E L AT I O N S H I P S
WA LT E R C U D N O H U F S K Y
Rachel Gibson will
Walter Cudnohufsky and
mp: Three Days of
present “Generations Ca
d Love for GrandJoyous Music, Art, Fun, an
ges 6-13),” May
parents and Grandkids (A
22-25.
What Are GRANDPARENTS Good For?
W
hy is it important for grandparents to have
a close bond
with their grandchildren, and
vice-versa?
Grandparents have lifederived wisdom to pass along,
and grandchildren need many
models for how to be in the
world.
We elders also have a genuine need to share our wisdom.
My now 98-year-old mother
Gertrude has 39 grandchildren
and great-grandchildren. She
recently wished to give them
something for the holidays and
was stressed because she had
no ideas. We encouraged her:
“Of course you have a gift! Tell
them your stories!” My sister
and I interviewed her over several days, writing down her life
stories and gentle lessons. Everyone loved receiving them!
We continue to work on the expanded story of how she raised
nine children.
It’s important to let your
WALTER CUDNOHUFSKY,
a landscape architect and author of
several books, has taught a popular
ten-month watercolor class for
adults since 2007 and also conducts
occassional watercolor classes for
children.
grandchildren know you love
them, that you are rooting for
them, because in some ways
their lives may be harder than
ours.
A recent PBS documentary, “Being Mortal,” includes
a family whose grandfather
comes home to die. He asks
his 10-year-old grandson if he
had ever talked about death and
then said, “I want you to know
I am not afraid of dying. All
living things die. I think it is
important you know that.” The
grandson asks, “Are you disappointed that you will miss out
on things?” The conversation
to follow is short, simple, and
beautiful.
There are many ways to
share your understanding of
life with your grandchildren.
The process of thinking about
those messages may be helpful
for us elders. Children learn
through imitation. The under-
LIFE LESSONS from
GREAT-GRANDMOTHER GERTRUDE
W
hen asked what advice do I offer young
people now, I say, “Gosh I don’t know
what to say, times are so different.” But
then I do go back to these memories and what was
important for me.
What comes to mind is simple. Family and
friends are so important, so choose friends wisely.
Get good at doing something you like, learn it well,
and pass it along. It is very satisfying to create
things and also a pleasure to teach.
Cooperation and families are so important, so
be kind and polite and people will treat you the
same way. It is important especially today to eat
good food to stay healthy. Do your best to avoid
starting bad habits. If my growing up has taught
me anything, it’s that one must find joy in the
small things.
Make family meals important and celebrate
holidays and family traditions.
Take care of each other! Most of all, stay in
school, because education is important for a good
life, especially today.
—Great-Grandmother Gertrude Cudnohufsky
(Walter’s mother), New Years 2015
standings are delivered through
our actions, interactions, and
by simply being together.
These messages can be simple; they need not be profound
or pre-planned. In fact, they
may have potential to imbed in
the grandchildren’s memory if
they are spontaneous and from
the heart. Susan, my wife, plans
age-specific gifts, often books.
On occasion, and after an initial reading, she has joined her
grandchildren in play-acting
the story.
Many grandparents tell
us they have difficulty finding time to spend with their
grandchildren, confirming our
own experience. There are so
many things competing for
the grandchildren’s attention:
cell phones, computers, sports,
lessons. While these are new
ways to be connected, we all
prefer to have quality time
through face-to-face meetings
which are not always easy to
arrange because of distance or
schedules.
A long-standing tradition
of mine is the writing of very
personal and brief letters to
individual family members on
birthdays, holidays, and anniversaries. When of appropriate
age, we include our grandchildren. The letter is always about
them and their specific character. We tell them what we see
in them and how that particular
attribute is valued in the world.
It is often about what we hope
for them, and never about what
they should do!
As a birthday present, we
recently decided to give a book
of fables to our nine-year-old
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
page 11
YOUTH
grandson. I created a new fable
using details from our grandson’s life, so he could more
easily identify.
Art and music have always
played an important role in our
times together, especially under
the skilled guidance of Rachel,
the music-focused mother of
our local grandchildren. We
have been playing, drawing
and painting with them since
they were little. We attend their
violin recitals and they attend
my local choral concerts. The
grandchildren often give us the
superb gift of a mini-concert.
One of the memorable
moments from the last Rowe
Generations Camp was when
grandparents and grandchildren did a joint thumb-print art
project. Each grandparent and
grandchild stood up together
and told a brief story about
the family of animals they had
created. It seems uncommon
for grandparents and grandchildren to make something from
scratch together. Some of the
grandparents attending had a
discovery: they were capable of
making art and singing.
I have long believed that it
is important to contrive situations where this interaction
can happen. We cannot depend
totally on spontaneity. Rather
than diminishing the experience, careful contrivance can
actually enhance it.
Not only did everyone leave
last year’s camp with new
projects they could do together,
they also left knowing how,
and possibly with the courage
to create things on their own.
Adults, no matter how old,
need creative expression as
much as children do! And one
of the things grandchildren can
do for their grandparents is to
remind them of the more open
and innocent way in which they
once saw the world, inspiring
grandparents to tap into uplifting emotions yet again.
COLEEN MURPHY
DEAR ROWE CAMP
A Long-Overdue Thank You Note
D
ear Rowe Camp,
I miss you! I think that’s why it’s taken me
so long to write, and why I’m drawn to a cutesy
format as a bit of a crutch. I hope you’ll forgive
me on both counts. Actually, I’m confident that you will,
seeing as how unconditional acceptance is one of your core
values, so let me begin by thanking you for that.
Thank you for the opportunity to spend three weeks every year with people who believe that all of us are worthy of
love and respect. That belief, and the bold articulation of it,
binds us together while freeing us to grow more fully into
our truest selves, and, well, it’s beautiful. It’s also hard as
hell sometimes to live up to, as it can require some serious
stretching on everyone’s part. Being at camp called me to be
my most honest self, and to listen for that self in others, resulting in my growing both tougher and more tender during
my time there. Again, thank you.
Thank you for having long, complicated, nuanced ways
of examining the joys and challenges of choosing to live
in community. During the 15 years I spent directing Senior
High camp, I lost track of how many times I would be approached by someone during the year, asking me what it
was like to work at “that camp with no rules.” After a few
years, I learned to be less defensive (thank you for that, too!)
and more of a listener, asking these people what rules they
thought might be necessary, before launching into a description of the Senior High Camp behavior standards, what they
include, what they don’t, and why.
Sometimes these conversations would get messy and I
would lose my cool. Cool is often where some honesty has
been hiding out, though, and so thank you for providing the
context in which I have blurted out, “I don’t care whether
they sleep at night or in the daytime, or what they wear or
how they cut their hair, what I care about is that they respect
themselves and each other because that’s how we’re going
to make real change in the world!” Uh… you know?! Thank
you.
Thank you for trusting people, and especially trusting
youth. Thank you for knowing (and always reminding me)
that every voice adds value to the discussion. Thank you for
seeing that another world is possible. Thank you for teaching me that I can always grow. Thank you for knowing that
A
t Senior High Camp (August 2-22), young people
make responsible choices, balancing freedom with
radical self-expression. We welcome diversity as part
of our strength, including the LGBTQ community and people
of color. Teenagers engage in a variety of planned and selfdirected activities, including dancing, cooking, art-making,
sports, and nature skills. Participants engage in educational
workshops about social justice, sexual health, and guidance
about the difficult choices that are part of being a teenager.
A staff of dedicated young adults offers support and guidance. Share your summer with Senior High Camp 2015 and
learn something new about yourself! We still have a few
spaces left, but don’t wait!
you, too, must always be ready to grow and change and listen. Last year when I visited Senior High Camp and saw the
gender-neutral restrooms in the rec hall, I was profoundly
impressed and moved. Thank you for working hard to be
increasingly welcoming of trans and non-binary people.
My sons grew up on the edges of Senior High Camp,
and have gone through sessions of Young People’s Camp
and Junior High as part of their paths. This year, they will
both be at Senior High Camp and I am so proud and happy
and excited for them. It would be dishonest to say that I
parent fearlessly, but I strive to parent (and live) in a way
that is not ruled by fear. A thing about having kids, though:
Sometimes it’s terrifying. Thank you for your patience with
me during my anxious parent moments, and thank you for
consistently hiring staff who are kind and compassionate
and funny and cool and think deep thoughts and also have
first-aid training and are secure enough in their own personhood to speak up when they have concerns for campers’
well-being.
Camp, you gave me so much! Memories, yes, and also
tools, skills, lessons that I use every day out here in the
wider world, and in my home. I treasure these gifts and look
forward to our mutual continued growth.
Love, Coleen Murphy
Unplug, Unwind, and Understand
The Rowe Center
M AY 8 - 1 0
Imagination in Action
Secrets for Unleashing Your
Natural Creativity
SHAUN M C NIFF
Discover practical methods for breaking through
creative obstacles, trusting your own truth, and
sharing it with the world.
M AY 2 2 - 2 5 (Friday - Monday)
Engaging the Realms
of Enchantment
A Faery Seership Experience
(Friday-Monday)
Generations Camp
Restoring the Soul after War
A Memorial Day Retreat for People in Military
Service, Veterans, and Those Who Love Them
JUNE 12-14
EDWARD TICK & KATE
DAHLSTEDT
This retreat honors the original
spirit and meaning of Memorial
Day and is for all people who
wish to heal the effect of war
on themselves, their families, and our nation.
Earth Activist Training
STARHAWK &
CHARLES WILLIAMS
This two-week Earth Activist Training
(EAT) program can set your life on a
new path, help you transform your
neighborhood, and show you how to
save the planet. Fulfills requirements
for Permaculture Design Certificate.
Spontaneous Music-Making for Everyone!
Take Charge of Your Health
Without Firing Your Doctor
J U LY 1 9 - AU G U S T 1
TERRY-ANYA HAYES
J U LY 1 9 - J U LY 2 5
Kickstart your wellbeing with
a mix of habits, foods, and practices that
nourish, nurture, and heal.
J U LY 2 6 - AU G U S T 1
AU G U S T 2 9 - S E P T E M B E R 3
SEPTEMBER 4-7
SEPTEMBER 11-13
Skill Set: A New Retreat for Emerging Adults
(Ages 20-24)
Kindred Spirits: A Community Supporting
Healing and Self-Discovery
WomenCircles: Priestesses of Peace
Woman Soul: A Community of Sacred Trust
Labor Day Retreat for Gay, Bisexual, and
Questioning Men
Members and Friends Vacation Retreat
SEPTEMBER 18-20
SEPTEMBER 25-27
Farming The Forest
The Growing Storm
Foraging for Wild Mushrooms and
Cultivating Gourmet Mushrooms,
Ginseng, Ramps, and More!
The Work That Reconnects
Accompanied by Rilke’s Poetry
KEN MUDGE &
DAVID FISCHER
This introduction to foraging and
forest farming will thrill your inner
hunter-gatherer!
OCTOBER 2-4
The Healing Voice
Liberation through the
Ecstasy of Chant
JILL PURCE
Liberate your voice, your heart, and
your mind in an uplifiting exploration of
breathing, mantra and sonic meditations, sacred
chants, and shamanic ceremony.
OCTOBER 16-18
Time Travel 101
JEAN HOUSTON
“Jean Houston’s mind should be
considered a national treasure.”
—R. Buckminster Fuller
OCTOBER 30-NOVEMBER 1
Reading the Forested
Landscape
TOM WESSELS
Learn to see the forest for the trees—once
you spend a weekend in the woods with this
passionate and gifted teacher, you won’t look at
a forest the same way.
AU G U S T 2 - AU G U S T 2 2
SEPTEMBER 17-20
A D U LT C O M M U N I T Y R E T R E AT S
AU G U S T 2 9 - S E P T E M B E R 3
JOANNA MACY &
ANITA BARROWS
Junior High Camp (ages 13-15)
O C T O B E R 4 - 9 (Sunday - Friday)
Healing Family
and Ancestors
Ritual and Resonance
JILL PURCE
Find the keys that set yourself, your family, and
future generations free; transform clamorous
ancestors into benign allies and powerful guides!
Young People’s Camp- YPC1 (ages 8-10)
YPC 2 (ages 9-11)
Senior High Camp (ages 16-19)
(Thursday -Sunday)
Approaching That More
Beautiful World Our
Hearts Know Is Possible
CHARLES EISENSTEIN
“One of the up-and-coming great
minds of our time.” —David Korten
S E P T E M B E R 2 7 - O C TO B E R 1
(Sunday-Thursday)
Autumn Work Week
FRIENDS OF ROWE
Shamanic Wisdom for
Living—and Dying—Well
CHRISTINA PRATT
SEPTEMBER 18-20
The Way of Story
The Craft and Soul of Writing
CATHERINE ANN JONES
“Catherine Ann Jones is in
possession of a powerful talent…
Nothing is more rare in my
opinion.” —Norman Mailer
OCTOBER 2-4
Healing the Soul from War
A Training Retreat for CareProviders of Veterans
EDWARD TICK
& KATE DAHLSTEDT
Learn to use Soldier’s Heart’s innovative—and
successful—model for our veterans’ healing and
homecoming.
OCTOBER 9-11
OCTOBER 9-12
(Friday-Monday)
Composing a Life of Wonder,
Creativity, and Beauty
Building a Vocal Community®
MARY CATHERINE BATESON
YSAYE BARNWELL
Recreate your life as a vibrant
composition, characterized by
harmony, grace, continuity, and
change!
OCTOBER 23-25
OCTOBER 16-18
FULL! WAITING
LIST ONLY!
Transitions Camp (ages 11-13)
Bring your hearts and senses vividly
alive through the beauty of nature,
a prescient early Twentieth Century
poet, and two modern champions of
sanity, peace, and compassion.
“Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious
life?”—Mary Oliver
KATHY LEO, WITH MARY CAY
BRASS & PETER AMIDON
YOUTH CAMPS
J U N E 2 8 - J U LY 1 8
AU G U S T 2 3 - 2 8
Bedside Singing
for the Dying
Hospice choirs are springing up all over the
country, many of them modeled on the Hallowell
Choir. Learn to help ease the final transition,
anointing the dying person with voices in harmony.
Eclectic Wellness Bootcamp
JUNE 14-20
Imagine your relationship expressing the true
depths of your love and commitment. If you
are in love, this retreat is an opportunity to rise
even higher. If you are in crisis, this retreat is
an opportunity for healing on the deepest level.
JUNE 5-7
Adventures in Sound-Play
Reclaim your natural birthright to
express yourself and experience
joy through sound-play!
JOYCE & BARRY VISSELL
M AY 3 1 - J U N E 1 4
JUNE 12-14
PAUL WINTER
(Friday -Monday)
Couples on the Path
to Wholeness
How to Restore and Repair
Our Wounded Democracy
Spend a very special weekend strategizing for
change with America’s Public Citizen # 1.
“Orion is smart, savvy, funny and
down to earth, with great wisdom.”
—Margot Adler
Three Days of Joyous Music, Art,
Fun, and Love for Grandparents
and Grandkids (Ages 6-13)
WALTER
CUDNOHUFSKY
& RACHEL
GIBSON
Getting It Done
RALPH NADER
ORION FOXWOOD
M AY 2 2 - 2 5
M AY 2 2 - 2 5
M AY 1 5 - 1 7
Singing in the African-American Tradition
Reserve quickly: This workshop is a
whole lot of fun and sells out early!
OCTOBER 23-25
The Gift of Isis
Fundraising in Difficult Times
A Weekend for Women on New
Paths to Desire and Intimacy
KIM KLEIN
GINA OGDEN
Through sacred ceremony and a supportive
circle of women, heal the past and celebrate your
unique sexual self—body, mind, heart, and spirit.
We all know the best way to raise
money is to ask for it. But what
is the best way to ask?
WORKSHOPS ♦ RETREATS ♦ SUMMER CAMPS
M AY 8 - 1 0
M ay – N o v e m b e r 2 0 1 5
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
22 Kings Highway, Rowe, MA 01367
1 hour from Brattleboro • 3 hours from Boston • 1½ hours from Albany
2 hours from Hartford • 4 hours from NYC
page 14 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
Seven SPIRITUAL
JOURNEYS
S
piritual journeys can take many
conventional, with God and without. If you know these
our new Spiritual Guidance Training Program, which
forms. In this special interview sec-
people already, some of what you discover here may
commences this fall. (Please see page 21.) Dr. Wake-
tion of The Center Post, we’ve asked
surprise you; if any of these teachers are new to you,
field, one of our interviewees, is the director, working
seven notable conference presenters
their revelations about their personal spiritual journeys
with a team of distinguished faculty members. We
— Mary Catherine Bateson, Kathy
may serve as an introduction, and an invitation to know
encourage you to learn more about our Spiritual Guid-
Leo, Joanna Macy, Christina Pratt,
them better. We hope their reflections on their spiritual
ance program on the Rowe website, and we invite you
journeys help you in contemplating your own.
to share the rich and revelatory journeys of our inter-
Jill Purce, Starhawk, and Chelsea Wakefield — to
share accounts of their own spiritual evolution, in faith
traditions that range from the conventional to the un-
“What We
Crave Is That
Deep Sacred
Community”
An interview with
JOANNA MACY
Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is a
scholar of Buddhism, general
systems theory, and deep ecology, and the root teacher of The
Work That Reconnects, known
worldwide for empowering activists in social and ecological
justice. She has published many
books, including Active Hope:
How to Face the Mess We’re in
Without Going Crazy (with Chris
Johnstone); her memoir, Widening Circles; and translations of
Rainer Maria Rilke’s poetry.
Macy is descended from Congregationalist and Presbyterian
Spiritual journeys often benefit from spiritual guidance. Here at The Rowe Center we’re pleased to offer
ministers and was a devoted
Christian as an adolescent, even
preaching at age 17 in rural
churches as part of a traveling
group called Youth Caravan. She
studied religion at Wellesley, majoring in Biblical history. As she
began to question and seek new
answers in her spiritual journey,
in 1965 her path led her to India
while working for the Peace
Corps, where she encountered
Buddhism, and later to Sri Lanka
and Tibet. In the 1970s, she began academic study of Buddhism
at Syracuse University, merging it
with her work in systems theory.
For Macy, religious scholarship has combined with personal
mystical experiences, meditation
practice, raising a family, world
travel, writing, teaching, and social activist work.
In your
memoir Widening Circles, you
define “grace” as the experience of being supported by a
THE ROWE CENTER:
power greater than your own.
Do you feel that your spiritual journey has been shaped
mostly through personal seeking and effort, or have you
had the sense that it’s mostly
been an experience of grace?
It definitely
has been for me a journey of
receiving, more than putting
out; of taking in, absorbing,
integrating. I’d be tempted to
say it’s been a journey into
reciprocity — the reciprocity
of being part of the universe.
That, in itself, is quite a shift
from the individualistic view
assumed by the mainstream in
the West. I see it as an opening to grace. The web of life,
the sacred intelligence at the
heart of the natural world,
seems to work through us —
it has to work through us, at
this point of sustained emergency and the breakdown of
natural systems, as well as the
J O A N N A M A C Y:
view subjects — each a spiritual guide in her own right
— in the pages that follow.
breakdown of cultures. But it
also involves a lot of work on
one’s own part to sustain the
grace. The universe depends
on us to make that effort to
receive and respond, and that
receiving and responding is a
spiritual emotion. That’s the
essential feedback loop.
You describe working
in Deep Time, extending the
realization of interconnectedness temporally and praying
to those in the future, asking
them to help us be faithful in
the urgent work we need to
do in saving the planet. What
is the role of prayer in your
life, and how do you think of
prayer?
R.C.:
It’s prayer to the future
ones, and to the ancestors as
well. The past generations
and future generations in a
very real way coexist with
us; the ancestors’ blood flows
in our veins, and the future
J.M.:
ones are present in our ovaries
and gonads and DNA. So we
can pray to them, speak for
them, do role plays, engage
with them, and we experience
them. Intuitively and imaginatively, the ancestors and future
ones are going to help those of
us in this generation — I think
of this generation as everyone
alive now — because ours
is the weak link; we’re very
much in danger of wiping out
the whole story.
For me, a lot of prayer
also is praise and thanksgiving. At this point in my life,
the natural world is so alive
for me. I walk around the
block and smell blossoming
jasmine and see crocuses,
and I can’t help saying,
“Thank you, thank you, do
you know how gorgeous you
are?”
Responsiveness to natural
and human beauty is prayer.
My root tradition of Christi-
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
anity always began services
with prayer and thanksgiving, and certainly Native
Americans do. The Work
That Reconnects begins with
gratitude.
When did you first encounter the poetry of Rilke,
and how did it affect you earlier in your spiritual journey?
R.C.:
I encountered it 60 years
ago. I was in Germany with
two of my three children. On
a snowy day, I simply walked
into a bookstore and saw this
little volume on the table. I
picked it up, and it was Rilke’s Book of Hours. I turned
to the second poem there:
“I live my life in widening
circles / that reach out across
the world….I circle around
God, around the primordial
tower. / I’ve been circling for
thousands of years / and I still
don’t know: am I a falcon, /
a storm, or a great song?” At
that moment my sense of my
life was that I felt I should
have been on a straight path,
like the Pilgrim in Pilgrim’s
Progress. I’d been doing this
and that, I left my early faith
because it felt claustrophobic,
and when I read that Rilke
poem I realized I’m not lost,
I’m just living my life in widening circles.
J.M.:
How has Rilke’s poetry
helped to sustain your spiritual journey through the past
six decades?
R.C.:
Rilke’s poetry has been a
marvelous fountain of beauty
and meaning for me — his
utter treasuring of the gift
of life, even in the darkness,
and not insisting on a happy
ending. He’s seen the suffering of the First World War,
he’s aware of the destructive
nature of the 20th century and
the suffering to come. He has
a strong intuition that things
may come to an end, but that’s
no reason to stop praising this
world and the great mystery
of it. What says it all for me
J.M.:
Joanna Macy w
ill
present “The G
rowing
Storm: The Wor
k That
Reconnects Acc
ompanied by Rilke’s
Poetry”
with Anita Burro
ws on
September 25-2
7.
is the last sonnet in Sonnets to Orpheus,
where he writes of letting this
darkness be a bell tower and
you become as a bell, and
as you ring what batters you
becomes your strength. In
our times, how that can happen is that the breakdown of
systems can be a vehicle to
help us realize the interconnectedness of all life. What
we crave is that deep sacred
community.
On the last page of your
memoir you write, “The widening circles of my life have
not had as their center the
Big Papa God of my preacher
forebears. I walked out on
that belief when I was twenty.
What authority now holds me
in orbit?” At the time, you
suggested “love.” That was
15 years ago. What is your
sense now of God — what
does that word mean to you?
R.C.:
I would say, “The sacred
intelligence of the universe.” I
see each one of us as a vehicle
for this sacred intelligence.
And we express that not only
in praise and thanksgiving
but also in grief; I’d be unable to bubble with praise and
thanksgiving if I had not almost drowned in my grief and
outrage at what’s happening
in the world.
But when you see yourself
and all other beings, you see
the whole show with fresh
eyes. You awaken what in
Buddhism is called bodhicitta, the motivation to act for
the sake of the whole. And
you discover the bodhisattva in yourself, the one who
knows there is no private salvation, because we awaken
together. Then it’s a matter of
J.M.:
page 15
going forth and giving back
the gift.
“Wonder and
Trust are the
Basis of Faith”
An interview with
MARY CATHERINE
BATESON
Mary Catherine Bateson,
Ph.D., is a writer, a cultural anthropologist, and a visiting scholar at Boston College. Her books
include With a Daughter’s Eye:
A Memoir of Margaret Mead and
Gregory Bateson; the bestselling
Composing a Life; and Composing a Further Life: The Age
of Active Wisdom. Her family
background offers a robust example of religious pluralism: Her
grandfather William Bateson was
a biologist who read the Bible
aloud so his sons “would not be
empty-headed atheists”; her father, the anthropologist Gregory
Bateson, defined spiritual words
such as “wisdom” and “sacred”
and “love” in terms of systems
theory and died in a Zen hospice;
her mother, the anthropologist
Margaret Mead, was Episcopalian. Mary Catherine was raised
in the Episcopal church and now
is a Roman Catholic who has had
significant cultural contact with
Judaism and Islam.
Many
people today identify as
“spiritual, not religious,”
and they’re sampling from
diverse faiths and practices.
Viewed from the perspective
of your own spiritual journey, how can people engage
authentically with a variety
of religious traditions without succumbing to spiritual
dilettantism?
THE ROWE CENTER:
M A RY C AT H E R I N E
B A T E S O N : My feeling about
the religion-spirituality issue
is that I wouldn’t be much
interested in religion without
spirituality, except as social
convention. I also think that
there probably are people
whose spiritual life is entirely
solitary, but my own spirituality involves engagement with
other people, and ideally that
is what religion is about — a
shared spirituality. I also feel,
though, that the labels omit
the fact that any real religion
is a path of development,
not a state. It’s when you’ve
signed on a dotted line and
that’s it, that religions tend to
become caricatures of themselves. My feeling about the
religions of the world is that I
can learn something from any
of one of them. Another way
they become caricatures is
when there’s too much effort
toward uniformity.
You’ve written about life
as an ongoing, improvisational art. Can forming a spiritual
life be ongoing and improvisational as well, and do you
feel that you’ve done that?
R.C.:
Yes. Roman Catholicism, of course, is not
particularly improvisational.
I’ve done a good deal of experimenting. I have had a lot
of experience of Islam, having
lived in the Islamic world;
I’ve spent time with different
kinds of Christian communities. There is a sense in which
— I’ve never thought of it in
quite this way before, till just
now — but a great deal of
meditation and prayer that’s
personal is improvisational,
sort of like sitting down with
a musical instrument and
finding your way to an improvised piece of music. If
you’re going to have dense
gatherings that involve a lot of
people, there will be elements
of formality — Quaker meetings are formal and Catholic
masses are formal, but that
doesn’t mean that the same
thing is happening inwardly
for each person. People have
different styles, and they have
different stages of develop-
M.C.B.:
ment — you have to include
that, too.
In many cultures, spirituality has been considered a
special province of elders, of
those in the second half of life
— the wisdom years. You’re
writing and teaching about the
fact that many of us now have
unprecedented opportunities
for extended years in the second half of life. What are the
implications for spirituality,
and how have you experienced them yourself?
R.C.:
I’d like first to address the idea that spirituality
becomes more important in
later years. I think it changes
through time. There’s spirituality in infancy — I often talk
about the sense of wonder and
basic trust as the beginnings
of spirituality, quite early in
life. One of the interesting
things about later life is that
for many people it may be the
first time they look over their
whole life and find meaning.
It may be a time of complete
freedom and leisure, and certainly both in Western society
and in traditional societies a
time of spiritual deepening —
in some societies you can’t
become a priest or shaman
until you have passed the age
of reproduction. That’s particularly true of women. But
that’s not true everywhere.
My own story is complicated by the fact that I
dropped out for a while, or
thought I did, and I came
back. I feel that I’m continuing to discover...there’s so
much to learn from a tradition as rich as the Catholic
tradition, and a huge amount
to learn about oneself.
M.C.B.:
As a woman and a practicing Roman Catholic, what
are your thoughts about Pope
Francis?
R.C.:
Along with many
people I was very excited
about the Second Vatican
Council and Pope John XXIII,
but it is not surprising that
M.C.B.:
page 16 there’s been backtracking and
reaction since then. I think
the entire Catholic world has
taken a deep sigh of relief
with Pope Francis. Pope John
Paul II charmed many people
and was charismatic, but he’d
been in Poland holding the
line since the Soviets, so the
Polish pope was an exceedingly conservative pope; in
fact, a reactionary pope. And
Benedict seemed to me a very
unhappy pope from the beginning. It was not the right role
for him. So I like that Francis
is clearly having a good time
— he’s bringing joy back into
the Vatican.
As a woman, I have to
say it is certainly true that the
ways in which women can
participate in Catholicism are
limited. As an Episcopalian I
have preached in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine
— that’s not going to happen
to me in the Catholic Church.
One thing that led me to the
Catholic Church was that,
living in the Philippines,
I realized that Americans
go abroad and can have an
American Protestant church
to go to and complain about
the natives; I wanted to be
close to the people I’m living
with.
You’ve written of the
need to move beyond an absolutist view of a transcendent
Father God. At this stage of
your life, what is your personal view of God?
R.C.:
I lived a year in Israel
when I was young and graduated from high school there,
and part of the required curriculum involved a tremendous amount of study of the
Hebrew scriptures. In many
M.C.B.:
Mary Catherine
esent
Bateson will pr
Life of
“Composing a
ity, and
Wonder, Creativ
er 9-11.
Beauty,” Octob
The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
ways my concept of God
was shaped by the Hebrew
scriptures, then modified by
various things Jesus says in
the New Testament about God
as father.
What’s thrilling and powerful to me in the Hebrew
scriptures is the emergence
of the concept of justice, and
what Christianity brings to
that is an emphasis on love.
I have a very strong sense of
the presence of God, always,
and I’m not too particular,
as maybe some theologians
would like, in defining that
in terms of the persons of the
Trinity.
Wonder and trust are the
basis of faith as it develops.
But wonder may not take a
religious form; wonder may
lead to art or to science, or to
both. But simply the experience of living and traveling
and being with people and
being astonished at the wonders of nature, and the goodness of so many people, keep
me in a state of wonder.
The thing that saddens
me most about organized
religion is that people feel
they can take a label and not
move, not grow. Composing
a life is an improvisational
art form, and what we’re trying to do is create lives that
have an intrinsic harmony
and beauty in them, and contribute that to the world. And
that’s a lifelong task.
“Birth and
Death: That
Edge Between
the Worlds”
An Interview with
KATHY LEO
Kathy Leo is the founder
and coordinator of Hallowell,
a hospice choir in Brattleboro,
Vermont, that for 10 years has
been visiting people near the end
of their lives and also offering
workshops for singers called to
this work.
You’re
performing a remarkable
service helping people in the
sacred passage from living to
dying. What was your early
spiritual and religious life
like?
THE ROWE CENTER:
I was raised as
a Catholic on suburban Long
Island. I didn’t go to Catholic
school, but every day I went
to Mass, I did catechism,
received all the sacraments,
communion, the whole
works. I loved the ritual of
church plus the mysteries
and community and feeling
of gathering, and the candles
and prayerfulness and peace.
Those things were very compelling to me always.
But what I wasn’t drawn
to was feeling fear, a dread
about right and wrong, strict
rules, a lot of shame. The
priest would yell at people
if they came in late, and I
felt very uncomfortable in
his presence. As I got older
I saw a lot of hypocrisy in
the Church. I started to look
elsewhere and think differently. My whole perception
of spiritual life was outside
the church walls — even at
a young age, I spent more
time looking out the window
at treetops or passing clouds
than listening to the priest.
K AT H Y L E O :
Was it a crisis for you
when you left the church?
R.C.:
I was in my late teens
when I stopped going. There
was a conflict of wanting to
be a good Christian girl and to
be good in God’s eyes, while
inside myself knowing there
was Spirit, something other
in the world, but not knowing
what that was exactly. I really
appreciate church communities and appreciate the quiet
and the services — I’m not
anti-church — but after that
time I never embraced a reli-
K.L.:
gion again.
I was an avid reader and
read a lot of different kinds of
writing about spirituality, and
I was interested in Buddhism
but never really wanted to
be put in a kind of form that
was a practice. I was more
open than that. I think nature
became my place of Spirit.
Hiking, kayaking, gardening, being close to the Earth
felt like the most intimate
connection.
I feel guided in my life.
I would ask God, Spirit, the
universe to show me what’s
next, give me directions, and
it always just happened to
me, living different chapters,
one floating into the next. I
left home, had travel adventures, sailed in the islands,
married, became a mother,
and moved to Vermont.
How has that guidance
manifested in your spiritual
journey?
R.C.:
I was a midwife for 10
years, doing home births,
and it opened me to God and
Spirit in a whole new way. I
can quiet myself enough and
be still and I’d get messages
or visions or insights to give
me information about the
woman who was laboring. I’d
know what she needed and
what to do, I’d know if the
baby was okay or not — it’s
a deep intuitive listening, and
it feels like a guiding for me.
I believe and trust that we’re
not alone here, and that we
have a lot of helpers. It’s the
same energy I feel now at a
bedside for the dying.
K.L.:
How does that work with
dying people affect your spiritual life and your understanding of God?
R.C.:
Whether it’s a baby coming into the world or a soul
leaving the body, it’s a shimmering kind of place, and if
there’s anything you can call
God, that’s where I see it. At
that edge where it’s between
the worlds, a thin veil, you
K.L.:
y
Kathy Leo, with Mary Ca
will
n,
Brass and Peter Amido
for
g
present “Bedside Singin
.
the Dying” on June 5-7
feel the mystery so strongly,
everything else falls away,
and there’s a truth there. A
sense of oneness.
And in this practice of
bedside singing for the dying,
when we leave that space and
go back into daily life, we
feel gratitude and wanting to
give love. Forgiveness comes
more easily, and kindness,
and joy.
Raised as a Catholic girl,
with this concept that God
is a man in the sky watching and judging everything
I did — that concept has so
changed for me. I feel that
God is here in this place we
are. Whatever God is, is not
secret from us. In our work
with the dying, sometimes
we’ll sing Christian hymns
and it gives great comfort;
sometimes we sing songs
about nature; we meet their
spirit wherever they are,
without judgment. In the end
it’s all the same. Whatever
you want to call it, it’s all
Love, consciousness, truth.
Have there been specific
experiences in your work with
the dying that touched you
most profoundly?
R.C.:
There have been hundreds of stories of grace, but
I remember one time when
an elderly mother was dying
and her daughter asked us
to come. They were pretty
much estranged; it was a very
hard energy. In the hospice
room, the mother lay in bed,
and the daughter sat on the
couch across the room. I offered the daughter a place
near her mother, but she said
no. As we started to sing, the
daughter put her face in her
hands. I went over to her, and
gently put my arm around
her shoulder and said, “Why
K.L.:
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
don’t you come over to your
mom now?” She let me lead
her. She lay down with her
mother and wept the whole
time, holding her mother as
we sang five more songs. I ran
into her six months later and
she said that the experience
had been an epiphany for her,
deeper than we ever could
have known.
The kind of presence
we feel when we are close
to someone who is dying is
a sacred kind of presence.
Sometimes, just before we
cross the threshold into the
room of a dying person,
where grief is almost tangible, we pause and simply
say to ourselves, “May I be
of service.” In that way, we
become open, grounded, and
present. This can be a practice in our daily lives as well.
Just pause and say, “May I be
of service,” and you’ll find
yourself in the presence of
something that touches and
opens your heart.
“The Goddess
Is Embodied in
Every Human
Being”
An interview with
STARHAWK
Starhawk is an author, activist, permaculture designer, and
one of the foremost voices in
Earth-based spirituality. Her
12 books include The Spiral
Dance; The Fifth Sacred Thing;
The Earth Path; her first picture
book for children, The Last Wild
Witch; and her book on group
dynamics, The Empowerment
Manual: A Guide for Collaborative Groups.
Starhawk directs and teaches
Earth Activist Trainings, and will
offer one at Rowe from May 31
to June 14 which will include the
curriculum for a Permaculture
Design Certificate. “Rowe is such
a beautiful, welcoming, magical place,” she says. “I’ve done
Goddess and ritual work there,
and I’m very excited to teach
a whole permaculture course,
which I think is one of the best
things anyone can do in life. It
teaches a whole range of what’s
possible in sustainability and
understanding how to weave different practices together to create
systems that are inherently selfrenewing and self-supporting.
Some of it focuses on gardening,
camping, and land use and has
many applications for education,
planning, business, or other systems. We also teach grounding in
spirit, and how to weave a human
connection around that and take
action to bring it forward in the
world.”
Both
of your parents were children
of Jewish immigrants from
Russia, and, as you write in
The Spiral Dance, you were
raised Jewish — you were
very religious when you were
young, and pursued your Jewish education to an advanced
level. What were you seeking
in your spiritual journey that
led you away from Judaism to
the Goddess tradition?
THE ROWE CENTER:
Growing up in
the fifties and sixties, I was
looking for a way to experience the sacred as a woman,
and a chance to take on roles
of responsibility and power.
At that time, there wasn’t
much in Judaism, although
that changed in the late sixties
and seventies. That’s why the
Goddess movement was so
attractive. Also, the Goddess
who speaks to us as women
is an icon of sacredness not
just of woman’s body, but of
the immanence of the sacred
in nature — that for me was
a strong appeal. I had always
had my own experience of the
sacred in the natural world.
S TA R H AW K :
One of your core theological principles is that the
Earth is sacred — how does
R.C.:
page 17
Starhawk will pr
esent
“Earth Activist
Training”
with Charles W
illiams on
May 31-June 14
.
that manifest for you personally, and how do you feel
called to embody and live that
principle?
I now spend most of my
waking time in nature. I teach
a lot of permaculture design,
which is a whole system of
ecological design that allows
us to look at nature and how
it works, and to meet our human needs while regenerating
the landscape and environment around us. I practice on
the land in my own life, and
for me it’s a really important
aspect — knowing how to
make compost, how to till
soil, how to take carbon out of
the atmosphere. We have to be
engaged to do what we can to
hold back the tide of disaster
and really put the world on a
regenerative course.
If you believe that the
Goddess is embodied in every human being, then you
can’t just sit on your fanny
when people are suffering;
you have to try make the
world a better place. I’ve
been involved in many issues
over the years, from protesting the Vietnam War in high
school and doing antinuclear
and weapons work, to participating in the feminist movement and a huge amount of
work in the global justice
movement, the Palestine
question, and anti-racism
work. Right now a lot of my
focus is on climate change
and building the permaculture movement. We know
how to regenerate land on a
large scale; what stands in the
way is finding the political
will to do it.
S:
You’ve written that the
three core principles of Goddess religion are immanence,
interconnection, and community — how are these most
R.C.:
alive for you at this stage in
your spiritual journey, and
how do you experience them?
I often say to people that
the Goddess is not something
you believe in; if I walk outside my door I can see soil
where leaves and needles
have fallen, and trees that are
drawing from that soil in an
incredible, interconnected
web of organisms and nutrients, and the trees growing
and taking in sunlight, and
transforming air and water
into wood, leaves, flowers.
That’s something going on
around us all the time. So it’s
not a matter of belief; it’s a
matter of opening your eyes
and allowing yourself to experience the wonder of what’s
here right in front of your
face — death, growth regeneration. When we allow ourselves to approach them with
wonder and reverence, we can
create more emotional and
spiritual health in the world,
and joy and life and beauty.
I think the way we work
together with other people
and connect with other
people is a profound expression of the sacred that is immanent in each human being.
In our work in communities,
we don’t set up some individual as being of more inherent worth than others, but
at the same time we have a
structure to function, and we
allow people to earn empowerment. Trying to build networks of community where
we take care of each other
and celebrate together, create
a human fabric together — in
life we experience loss and
death and often disease, and
those are moments when
what really makes it bearable
is love and support. They’re
gifts we can always give to
one another.
S:
In 1999, when the 20th
anniversary edition of The
Spiral Dance was published,
you wrote that “the feminist
R.C.:
religion of the future is currently being formed.” How
does that “feminist religion of
the future” look to you now,
16 years later?
I think it’s has grown enormously in the last years. It
encompasses the broad pagan
movement and the broad
nature-based movement starting to take place on the world
stage. I’d say that the central
focus has shifted, so it’s not
so much around feminism
but around nature, in part
because of the huge crisis
we’re in right now, when the
life-support systems of the
planet are under siege and we
desperately need to wake up
and make changes.
S:
The Craft that you practice honors both the Goddess
and the God. What do each
of these mean to you in your
own spiritual life?
R.C.:
For me, Goddess and God
are like portals; each offers
entryways into different ways
of caring for the world. When
you call on them and work
with them, they’re aspects of
yourself. They allow you to
look at the world with a different prism; energies come
to you; you experience death,
growth, regeneration in different ways.
When I began, I focused
more on myth and story. My
practice was sitting at an altar, doing trance and meditation, using my own imagery.
Now, the focus is much more
on being out in nature and
working directly with the
land, soil, animals — opening up and putting myself in
a state of consciousness to
get out of my inner imagery
and connect with what’s going on around me.
S:
page 18 Helping People
Discover Their
Soul-Print
An interview with
CHELSEA
WAKEFIELD
Chelsea Wakefield, Ph.D.,
LCSW, director of the Rowe
Spiritual Guidance Training
Program, is a depth psychotherapist, soul worker, writer,
international teacher, and retreat
leader. She has been on the faculty of the Haden Institute since
2000, where she teaches both the
Spiritual Direction and Dream
Work training programs. She is
the author of Negotiating the Inner Peace Treaty: Becoming the
Person You Were Born to Be, a
method of psycho-spiritual work
that helps people develop peace,
integration, clarity, and purpose.
She is also the creator of the Luminous Woman Weekend, which
provides a safe space for women
to explore archetypes of the feminine and women’s wisdom in an
experiential way.
You
grew up in a fundamentalist church-going Christian
family, but the spirituality
that spoke to you couldn’t be
found there. What were you
looking for?
THE ROWE CENTER:
I was
a deeply soul-centered child.
I felt the Earth was filled with
energy. But there was no
encouragement for that kind
of spiritual sensibility in my
family. The emphasis was on
believing certain doctrines,
and good behavior, and I was
a very well-behaved child.
We lived near the beach,
and I’d ride my bike to
the pier and talk to God. I
brought my innate mysticism to a passion for Jesus.
Looking back, I see an early
calling to spiritual guidance.
Kids would talk to me about
CHELSEA WAKEFIELD:
The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
their problems, and I would
talk to them about God and
teach them to pray. I had a
profound mystical experience when I was 13. I’d been
talking to a teen who had
recently walked through a
plate-glass window while on
drugs. I was praying for her
in my bedroom, and the room
disappeared and was filled
with light. Filled with an ecstatic joy and a sense of the
presence of the divine, I also
began to speak in some foreign language. I ran into the
family room to find my parents, who told me later that
I was in this state for about
half an hour. I was deeply
changed by it.
What did the people at
your church think of this?
R.C.:
That’s where the big
trouble began. I’d been bringing a lot of troubled kids
to church, and the “good”
church people were concerned
that these kids would ruin the
good ones. So I was already
suspect.
This church was very concerned with demons and the
devil, and when I went to talk
to the minister about what
had happened he concluded
that I was under demonic
influence. In truth, they did
not want to be in contact with
what was dark and difficult,
with what makes us fully
human.
I was then publicly denounced and cast out of
church. You can imagine how
wounding this was. Healing
that wound has provided a
foundation for working with
others who’ve had profound
spiritual wounding in their
history.
C . W. :
You call yourself an “embodied mystic.” How did you
find your way to that?
R.C.:
Part of what has been so
important in my spiritual journey has been to actually be on
Earth. When I was younger, I
longed for the transcendent;
C . W. :
most of my mystical experiences had nothing to do with
other people. When I was 17,
my college roommate gave
me a copy of Autobiography
of a Yogi, which introduced
me to meditation and a spirituality that was more aligned
with my Soul Print. I was not
a very good meditator in those
years. I couldn’t settle down
enough.
Sexuality became another
place in which I began to
value being embodied and
where I could experience a
communion of souls. Motherhood helped me learn to
settle; breastfeeding was the
first time I could really sit
and be still, not wanting to be
anywhere else.
Parenthood has taught
me a lot spiritually. I vowed
to not repeat the way I was
parented, as an extension of
my parents’ ego. It was important to me to see the soul
of my child and encourage
his growth into his unique
Soul Print. We have these
lofty ideas about how we’ll
raise a child, and then we’re
confronted with reality and
the challenges of being out
of control! Can we really live
up to what we say we believe
in the onslaught of real life?
Another important part
of my life has been music;
I’ve played the piano since
childhood, and this became
a meditative road for me.
Sometimes I would shut
myself in a room and play
for hours to express what my
soul was feeling. I composed
a lot of music in college and
became a professional musician for several years. But
the music business wasn’t
a healthy place for me, and
I’ve always been someone
to whom people turned for
help, so I decided to become
a psychotherapist.
What is your spiritual
practice today?
R.C.:
I’ve customized a set of
spiritual practices that work
C . W. :
for me. I encourage others to
do the same. Being in the moment, engaged with the flow
of life, is important. I attend to
what’s profound and beautiful. I try to be present to each
person sitting in front of me…
including my husband of 25
years. Anyone in a long-term
relationship knows this can
be challenging! Dream work
is important, because dreams
bring us messages about the
state of our soul as well as the
cutting-edge of our growth.
Being embodied is incredibly important to me. We
cannot be fully present to life
or to others unless we’re in
our bodies. We are disturbingly disembodied in this
culture, and certain kinds of
spirituality can actually make
this imbalance worse. I do
a daily review of the events
of the day, tracking where
I’ve slipped off my center
into fear or reactivity. This
becomes material to work
with for my own growth
into wholeness. I track what
I’m over-defending or what
my ego is becoming overidentified with. I like to do
sitting or walking meditation
to re-center myself in the fast
flow of the day. I practice
gratitude.
You’ve recently returned
from Hong Kong, where you
were teaching at a spiritual
guidance program on sexuality and spirituality.
R.C:
Yes, this area largely is
neglected by many Spiritual
Guidance practitioners. I’ve
worked extensively with
sexual trauma and the wounding that results from religious
teachings and teachers. Sexuality and the soul are closely
linked in the psyche. People
long for a soul-satisfying sexual connection. We live in a
culture that has split sexuality
from soul and sent sexuality
into the shadow lands.
C . W. :
You sometimes talk
about “omnipotent inflation.”
R.C.:
What is that?
I learned this from Al
Pesso and it changed my life!
People who are drawn to
helping professions, including
myself, fall prey to this.
It starts in childhood, in an
environment where the big
people were not okay. The
only way we could be okay
was to figure out what was
missing in their lives and to
become that. The problem
was that it worked, and this
can become habitual. It forecloses on childhood, and as
a professional helper, it can
lead us into deep levels of
despair and burnout.
The antidote is to see
where we’re extending ourselves beyond our bounds,
into this savior complex,
and to stay grounded in our
own centers, inviting others
into their own growth. We
do our piece, not everyone’s.
This helps me set limits and
practice self-care. Being
spiritually grounded allows
me to monitor the work I
am truly called to do, and
to know what is needed and
when. The right action at the
wrong time is ineffective.
If we can contribute to the
person in front of us, even in
a way that looks small, sometimes that is all we’re called
to do. Small acts have ripple
effects.
C . W. :
What is the difference
between doing psychotherapy
and spiritual guidance?
R.C.:
There can be an overlap,
but there are distinct differences. I’ve always been a
soul-centered psychotherapist. The primary focus of
spiritual guidance is to help
people discover their unique
Soul Print, to support them in
the process of finding a sense
of alignment and integration
with what is most deeply true
to them, to foster a connection
with the transcendent. Most
psychotherapy focuses on
healing the wounds of the past
C . W. :
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
page 19
and fostering personal development and success in life,
but not necessarily referencing what the soul needs.
feelings of blissfulness were
unforgettable. Then as the
chant developed, the wind
and storm abated. It was
the amazing power of the
human voice to transform
emotions and the natural elements, which had a seminal effect on what I would do
later.
One of the areas that interests you is spiritual bypass.
What is that?
R.C.:
Working with people
on the spiritual journey, I’ve
encountered many who want
to engage in premature transcendence — they haven’t
really engaged life on Earth or
learned to navigate the difficult realm of human relationships. Many have a history
of hurt or trauma and they’re
using spirituality, meditation,
strings of self-improvement
retreats to avoid the messy
aspects of their lives. Certain
people would rather go to a
retreat or workshop than fix
problems in their primary
relationships and navigate
the vulnerability of an intimate relationship. Lots of
people avoid the hard questions of right livelihood; they
have marvelous meditation
practices but cannot sustain
themselves financially. People
who’ve never learned to address things directly or deal
with conflict sometimes try
to ascend into a spiritual perspective rather than feel and
address issues activating hurt
or anger. This is not spirituality; it’s denial and avoidance.
C . W. :
Does one need to believe
in God to have a spiritual life?
R.C.:
Certainly not. Jeremy
Taylor, the Associate Director for our Spiritual Guidance
program, refers to the word
“God” as a “place holder” for
an experience beyond words;
I like that. I’m more interested
in where people are inspired,
where they experience passionate engagement with life,
how they’re connecting in
meaningful ways with others,
and what opens them to deep
places within. They may or
may not relate these experiences to God, but they are
related to spirituality.
C . W. :
In your early work
with the spiral you observed
what you called “the formcreating principle of flow,
resistance, and rotation.” In
your own spiritual journey,
where have you experienced
the most flow, where the
most resistance, and where
has there been a circling out
into new forms of spiritual
understanding?
R.C.:
suzybecker.com
Being Sound,
Sound Being
An interview with
JILL PURCE
Jill Purce is recognized internationally as the pioneer of the
sound-healing movement. She discovered ancient vocal techniques,
the power of group chant, and the
spiritual potential of the voice as a
magical instrument for healing and
meditation. Working with family
and ancestors, she is highly sought
after for her family constellations
with sound. Author of The Mystic
Spiral and Overtone Chanting
Meditations, she guides non-singers as much as international opera
performers in their pursuit of the
lost voice. She lives in London with
her husband Rupert Sheldrake and
their two sons.
Your
mother was a concert pianist
and your father a physician.
What was the religious background in your household
when you were growing up?
THE ROWE CENTER:
My father was a
Presbyterian from Northern
Ireland. His father had been
very religious; my father
rebelled against his father
and became an agnostic. My
mother was Church of England and although she prayed
every night, only went to
JILL PURCE:
church on high holy days. I
went to a Church of England
boarding school where everyone except me was confirmed
at age 12, and only at 18 did
I join them. From an early
age I had a deep interest in
spirituality and philosophy.
Then in my twenties I started
exploring different spiritual
avenues, and at one point was
involved with a Sufi group.
In the early seventies, I met a
Tibetan Buddhist Dzogchen
Lama who at the time was
staying in a hut in the remote
Italian Alps. I was completely
captivated. I suppose you
could say I’m a ChristianBuddhist, but I dislike labels
of any kind.
As a child you had a remarkable experience traveling
in a small boat off the Irish
coast — a violent storm arose,
and amid the terror of those
onboard, three old women
began an ethereal chant that
transformed your fear to bliss,
and the storm subsided. What
effect did this experience have
on your subsequent spiritual
journey?
R.C.:
It was huge. That immediate shift from terror to ecstasy
was unforgettable. The sense
of imminent mortality, as it
was clear we weren’t going to
survive, was terrifying. Then
as they began their chant,
a sense of ecstasy began to
ripple through us. The sudden
J . P. :
It’s always been flow
without resistance. In my
whole journey so far, I feel
very fortunate that I’ve never
come to a point where I had
to question the next step; it always seemed to unfold seamlessly, without blockages.
There was a brief moment
when I left university when
I wasn’t sure what I would
do — and it was then that I
met the composer Karlheinz
Stockhausen. He burst into
my life, initiating a complete
change of direction, and I
went to live and work with
him in Germany.
J . P. :
Your work with cymatics
(how formless matter is organized into precise patterns
through sound vibrations)
led you to explore the effects
of sound on matter, and your
collaborations with Stockhausen and with Tibetan Gyuto
monks deepened your pioneering work with the voice
— all of this leading to new
techniques for sacred healing.
In your own spiritual journey,
what were the areas of your
life most in need of healing?
Did using the healing power
of sacred chanting help you?
R.C.:
Although my mother was
perhaps more interested in
J . P. :
Jill Purce will pr
esent
“The Healing Vo
ice: Liberation through
the Ecstasy of Chant,”
October
2-4, and “Healin
g Family
and Ancestors:
Ritual and
Resonance,” O
ctober 4-9.
her music than
anything else, she had a very
strong influence on me and
was a very creative person.
My father was deeply loving,
and a profound healer; people
came just to be with him
because they knew that was
enough to heal them.
Being the child of a
musician and a healer must
have affected my path of
healing through sound. What
the chanting has given me
is what it gives everybody:
a means to be present. You
can’t be anxious if you’re
in the present, because you
have no extraneous parts of
your mind available to regret
the past or dread the future.
As long as you’re chanting,
and listening to the unfolding
sound in the present, you’re
in a state of bliss, of flow.
The healing that sound does
for others and for me is that
it embraces us in the present
moment — that is the most
profoundly healing state to
be in.
You also work with family constellations — work that
was first informed by your
observations in Japan of how
ancestors are honored and
included. Were there constellations in your own family
that needed healing during
the process of your spiritual
journey?
R.C.:
After my mother died in
1984 — my father had died
some years before — I found
a novel she’d written in her
later teenage years. It was a
romantic novel about meeting
a world-famous musician and
going abroad to live with him.
As I was reading this novel, I
realized that by having gone
to Germany to live and work
J . P. :
page 20 with Stockhausen 13 years
before, I had been living out
the unrealized dreams of my
mother. In working with family constellations, you see that
children often find themselves
fulfilling unrealized ambitions
of their parents. It was uncanny the way that had happened
to me.
In the last 10 or so years,
you’ve developed a practice
you call Living Mandala Ceremonies, including one that’s
about to happen this spring related to Green Tara, the Mother of Buddhas, sometimes
thought of as a Goddess, in
the Tibetan tradition. In this
context, what does the word
“Goddess” mean to you? How
do you define Goddess, or, for
that matter, God?
R.C.:
Whether Tara is a bodhisattva or a Goddess or a
principle, it’s hard to say. I’ve
done these mandala processes
with different themes also,
such as conscious dying, conscious dreaming. I’ve done
several around other aspects
of Tara: white, yellow and red
Taras. Each of these aspects
of her represents a different
aspect of divinity or of spirituality that we might want to attain in our lives. On one level,
you can see the various Taras
as Goddesses and ask them
for help. But at a more sophisticated level you become
them — you incorporate those
aspects of divinity into your
own life.
J . P. :
“Shamanism:
Living in
Relationship
with All of Life”
An Interview with
CHRISTINA PRATT
Christina Pratt is a teacher of
authentic, non-traditional, heartcentered shamanism. She opened
The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
Last Mask Center for Shamanic
Healing in New York City in
1990 and since 2001, when she
moved to Portland, Oregon, she
has served clients on both coasts.
She wrote An Encyclopedia of
Shamanism, a two-volume set
describing shamans and their
practices around the globe, and
she hosts the international liveInternet show “Why Shamanism
Now?”
Before
you began shamanic work,
you were a modern dancer in
New York City, and prior to
that you had studied chemistry at Smith College and been
accepted at medical school.
What was your religious
background when you were
younger?
THE ROWE CENTER:
As a
child, my family was very
involved in a small Unitarian
church in northern Oregon. It
was a small-enough community that we didn’t even have
a minister. We studied world
religions as young children;
I remember thinking that if
all of these people basically
believe the same things, but
simply in a different order,
then why are we fighting? I
remember that as being seminal to my understanding of
people and religion, and the
failure of religion. It was very
powerful in shaping my early
ideas about spirituality — seeing the diversity, seeing the
connections in all of them,
and wondering why they
weren’t working.
When I was a teenager,
it was during the Vietnam
War, the formative war of my
youth, and during that time
my family stopped attending church. Another thing
happening in America at that
time was the Human Potential Movement, and my questioning swung more in that
area. George Leonard and
different early people in that
movement were talking about
religions not only through
metaphor, but were trying to
C H R I S T I N A P R A T T:
use science to talk about it.
Is that what prompted
you to intersect your personal
spiritual path with a study of
science?
R.C.:
What made science interesting to me was that it was
an effort to explain our world;
religion wasn’t working, so
how do we fix it, how do we
become better humans? I had
excellent teachers in science.
Through that experience of
true scientific inquiry, I was
seeking a cosmology and
also asking, “How did we get
here?” — seeking answers
that some people do get from
religion. In true scientific
manifestations, our world is
really magical. It’s why some
mathematicians are such
spiritual people. The closest I
had gotten to seeing God was
through science.
C . P. :
You also have been a
dancer. How did that affect
your spiritual evolution?
R.C.:
In performing I discovered a vehicle to express my
whole person. I had classical mystical experiences
while performing occasionally that were life-changing
experiences, stepping out
of everyday form and time
into true mystical experience
and then coming back into
performance. Something was
going on there that I didn’t
understand, and I didn’t have
anyone to talk to about it, but
it was nourishing my soul.
In researching consciousness
later, I realized it had names
in Hindu experiences. We
didn’t learn about that in the
Unitarian church!
C . P. :
At one point, you had a
spiritual breakthrough — after struggling deeply with the
question “Why am I here?”
you realized that you’re
here to help in the repair and
restoration of souls, and to
help people become spiritual
adults and serve as agents of
change. What was that break-
R.C.:
Christina Pratt will present “Shamanic Wisdom
for Living — and Dying —
Well” on October 16-18.
through like?
It was a breakdown, really, at the time it was happening. Studying science in
college, I’d been extremely
depressed, and as I had injuries in dancing I only got
more depressed. When I had
the breakdown in New York,
I was on my knees through
desperate nights and I knew I
wasn’t tracking reality, but I
couldn’t get back to it. I was
fully aware that it was different from the reality everyone
else was having. It wasn’t fun;
it was terrifying. But I finally
accepted that it was something I had to go through and
that I needed to find my way
out of it.
I see it now as my first
shamanistic initiation experience, although at the time I
didn’t have a context for it.
Some people come through
initiatory experiences, and
some don’t. What makes one
person a shaman and another
not? It’s the fact that you can
find your way out — if a shaman’s job is to help people
get out of their forest, how
can you do that if you don’t
get out of your own?
C . P. :
How did that experience
shape your spiritual life?
R.C.:
It was so many quantum
orders bigger than any of my
other mystical experiences. It
lasted three days, and I came
out knowing I was transformed forever. It was probably the most important thing
to happen in my whole life.
I started studying shamanism because it was the only
avenue to put that experience
into context. Even if some
shamanic teachers didn’t
acknowledge my experience
as a true initiation, I did, and
C . P. :
working with my spirits I
began to make sense of it. I’m
very grateful to my human
teachers, because from them
I learned discipline and skills,
which are very important
when working with Spirit. But
ultimately I had to step away
to validate my experiences
myself, and it didn’t matter
if I learned from a human
or from a helping spirit who
doesn’t have a form. I made a
lot of mistakes, and did everything in the hardest way possible, but once the teachings
took shape it was all about
refining them and becoming a
person who could teach them.
Elsewhere you’ve referred to a “highest power
of the universe, by whatever
name you know it” — is this
how you think now of God?
R.C.:
This is actually an interesting question with shamanism. It’s a big conversation.
Shamanic people believe in
a beginning of everything —
what religious people consider a Creation story — but with
this sense of an energy that is
really unnameable. “The Tao
we can name is not the Tao.”
Shamanism is a cosmology
that takes me back before
gods or God. Religious scholars would argue that that’s
what we mean by “God,” and
I know that, but it’s not what
most people actually practice
— they practice a personal
God. That’s not shamanism.
If we’re living shamanistically, there’s no need for a
God, because we’re living in
relationship with all of life.
Indigenous people understand
this. The thing that makes this
work interesting at this time
is for us, as humans, to understand that it’s the things that
may be near and dear in our
hearts that we’ll need to let
go of, in order to become the
medicine this time is asking
for. The question is: Are we
willing to surrender our ideas,
even about God, to become
that medicine?
C . P. :
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
page 21
SERVING OUR MISSION
A Call to Make the World a Better Place
Woodside Campaign Launched with a $10,000 Grant from the Still Point Foundation
The spring Woodside campaign is
off to a great start, thanks to a $10,000
grant from The Still Point Fund. The gift,
given in memory of Brenda Ross Winter
(1933-2003), a visionary lady, came about
through a recommendation by Christa
Lancaster and Marc Bregman, founders of
North of Eden, an organization dedicated
to archetypal dreamwork in Montpelier,
Vermont.
In addition, the First Unitarian Church
of Oakland made a donation in honor of
Margaret Woodside’s 85th birthday. Happy
belated birthday, Margaret. And the UU
Society of Greater Springfield chose the
Woodside Program for a share-the-plate
donation, thanks to a recommendation by
board member Joan Lager. If your church
has a similar program, please recommend
the Woodside Program and help us make
the world a better place.
Our children are our future. They are
hope for a better world. And at Rowe we
see this firsthand every summer. Rowe
Camp has been offering summer camp pro-
grams for young people since 1924. Camp
is fun and engaging and filled with all of
the typical camp traditions: stories around
a campfire, talent shows, candlelight chapels, cabin check-in every night. And amid
all of that, we have a long tradition of empowering youth to change their lives and to
change their worlds. Year after year, campers leave saying, “I wish that my life could
be like this all the time. I wish that every
place was like Rowe.” And our answer is,
“It’s up to you to create that.”
We know we have asked a lot of you
this year, and we are grateful for your
tremendous support to build a new water
system. We have much to celebrate. We all
pulled together to ensure that Rowe will
have clean water and now we need to pull
together to ensure that our young folks can
return to the home of their spirits and drink
of that water. Please help with a generous
donation to the Woodside Program.
The goal for the Woodside Program is
$91,500 this year. This is a great way to
begin, and we need your support to meet
our goal. All gifts large and small are
welcomed and needed. Do you feel called
to make the difference in one child’s life
by becoming a Woodside Ally? With a
pledge of $1,000 a year for 10 years, you
can support a Woodside camper to go to
camp and to have the joy of looking forward to returning year after year. Through
your donation you help to foster a richly
diverse camp community that benefits all
the campers and helps to make the world a
better place.
Rowe
Receives
UU Funding
Program
Grant
We are grateful to
The UU Funding Program for its generous
grant of $10,000 to
help with start-up funds
for Rowe’s new Spiritual Guidance Training
Program.
The grant was provided through the Fund
for Unitarian Universalism, which seeks to
strengthen Unitarian
Universalist institutions
and community life.
The Spiritual Guidance
program is designed
to train practitioners to
facilitate the spiritual
journeys of others.
The ROWE CENTER SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE TRAINING PROGRAM
T
First Session: October 29-November 3; registration deadline is May 1
he Rowe Center is pleased to announce the
launching of our Spiritual Guidance Training Program, designed to meet a growing
need for authentic, well-prepared individuals who offer support on the spiritual path, embody
wisdom and compassion, and who are spiritually literate and trans-denominational.
If you feel newly called to a career in this rewarding and significant work; if you are already providing
spiritual counsel and would like further training and
development; if you are a clergy person wishing to
expand your ministry; or someone in a helping profession, wanting to integrate a spiritual dimension into
your work, we invite you to apply.
This unique two-year program will help you develop the foundational skills and worldview that will
allow you to facilitate the spiritual journey of others.
You will learn to generate and hold the kind of space
that invites others into a deep reflection on questions
Advisory Committee: Mary Catherine Bateson,
Andrew Harvey, Robert Jonas, Rev. Darcey Laine,
Joanna Macy, Rev. Kerry Maloney, Dave Munro,
Rev. Carl Scovel, Rabbi Rami Shapiro
Core Faculty: Chelsea Wakefield Ph.D., LCSW
(Director), Jeremy Taylor, D. Min. (Associate Director), and Rev. Steve Kanji Ruhl, M.Div.
Additional guest teaching staff at each intensive – to be announced.
of significance, while broadening your spiritual literacy, expanding your awareness of spiritual practices,
and helping you to identify the shadow aspects of
spirituality. It will give you tools and skills for guiding others in the discovery of their “keys to the inner
treasure,” in ways that are right and fitting for each
individual seeker.
In coming to the Rowe Center, you will be enter-
ing a liminal, sacred space, away from the busy world.
In our beautiful retreat setting of forest, lake, orchard,
and meadow, you will join with a group of committed
peers and experienced staff to embark on this deep and
important journey. The training includes four residential
retreats at Rowe, twice a year for two years; four personalized electives selected from the Rowe catalogue;
reading and reflection assignments between residencies;
and monthly streaming video-conferences. Participants
will be grouped in small cohorts that support learning,
collaboration, and a sense of community, and each will
have a staff “mentor,” who will support and guide them
in reaching their individual goals.
For more information and to download application
forms, please go to www.rowecenter.org.
To receive a printed brochure and application form
by postal mail, please email spiritguide@rowecenter.
org. or phone 413-339-4954.
page 22 The Center Post • Spring/Summer 2015
www.rowecenter.org • 413-339-4954
page 23
L I V I N G O U R VA L U E S
IN MEMORIAM
Laurel Coggins Oleynick,
granddaughter of Rowe founder Rev. Anita Pickett,
May Tree Residency
Ripples Out into the World
Created through a bequest
from Sylvia “Hawthorne”
Bowman, the May Tree Artist
in Residence Program provides
space, time, and a nurturing environment for a woman to contribute to the world’s cultural
life through her artistic talent.
The program, which began
seven years ago, has touched
the lives of seven women. Here
are a few of their stories:
Eileen Lucas Lively is developing her art through classes
at the Hill Institute in Florence,
Massachusetts, focusing on
watercolors and mixed-media.
Amina Silk
Trish Kile
She’s also exploring a synthesis
of drawing and quilting, and
how this allows for increased
texture and ability to layer
within a theme. Since her Rowe
residency she has had several
local exhibits and won ribbons
at the Heath Fair and the “Big
E” (the Eastern States Exposition). As Senior Center Coordinator for the town of Heath,
she teaches art and sewing to
the seniors. She is inspired by
their passion to express themselves and sees this as a way to
keep them engaged with their
creativity. Eileen organized an
exhibit to display their work at
the Heath Fair and the Heath
Public Library. “Seeing is art,
art is a way of seeing,” she
says. “I see my world and,
overcome with joy, it spills out
of me into what you see as art.”
After returning to Morristown, New Jersey, Elizabeth
Bain took a class which led her
to create interesting abstract
work. This winter she’s painted
barns in the snow, based
loosely on photographs taken
in New England. She’s now
painting gardens and flowers
in anticipation of spring. She’s
shown her work at several exhibits and is creating a website,
which you can see at www.
elizabethbain.artspan.com. In
addition, she facilitates two
process-painting workshops a
year in her home studio, providing a safe space for new
painters to express themselves
in deeply personal ways. She
says, “Several of ‘my painters’
have gone on to exhibit their
own work, which gives me no
end of pride and pleasure! I am
so grateful to Rowe for the opportunity to spend nine months
working exclusively on my art.
What a gift!”
While at Rowe, one of
Amina Silk’s favorite things
was to organize community art.
She had a vision of renovating
her garage and creating a community art space at her home in
Gardner, Massachusetts when
she finished her residency, and
she did it. Amina posts community art hours and opens her
studio to anyone who wants
to make art. It gives her great
pleasure to facilitate the creative process with others. Amina has also exhibited at several shows since finishing her
residency. This past winter, she
and her husband Arif stayed at
Rowe as interns. During that
time she offered art space during a number of conferences.
After her residency, Trish
Kile moved to Isle La Motte,
on Lake Champlain in Vermont. She found a place to
live complete with a lake and
mountain view and beautiful
evening sunsets. She transformed the garage into an art
studio but the space inside was
in sad shape. She spent most of
the summer painting ceilings,
A Tribute to Max Greendale, 1942-2015
Eileen Lively
walls, and refinishing used
furniture to create an artist’s
retreat. She attended a weekly
farmers’ market and sold prints
and cards. She also worked at a
pre-school, making art with the
children. She recently moved
to Weston, Vermont, where
her latest project has been
yet another new apartment to
decorate and design into a cozy
space for living, a facial and
massage studio, and — most
important — her newest art
studio. She looks forward to
turning her creative journal/
log /notebook into pieces of
artwork.
Who will be next and
what might they do to put
their art out into the world?
Applications are now being
accepted for the coming year
for two residencies of three
months each (October–December 2015) and (March–
May 2016.) Rowe will provide
housing, studio space, and a
stipend of $250 a month to
the selected artist. Proposals
will be accepted by email only
through April 30th. Details
can be found on our website
at www.rowecenter.org under
the section on work.
You can help support the
Elizabeth Bain
arts. Hawthorne’s hope was to
provide the initial funding for
the residency and to inspire others to add to the fund in order
to sustain it. Hawthorne’s sister,
Janet Wheeler, has continued
to sustain the fund through her
generous donations. The artists
are committed to creating an
endowment that will sustain the
program in perpetuity. Each has
provided a piece of art which
will be exhibited at Rowe and on
our website. You can support the
program by making a donation
or by purchasing a piece of art
for the May Tree Benefit Exhibit.
We are sad to announce
that Rowe Life Member and
longtime friend Arthur “Max”
Greendale died recently after a
short illness. Max began coming to Rowe around 1980. He
had met his wife Laura at UU
Congregations of the Catskills.
She was coming to Rowe’s
Liberation Camp with her
children and introduced Max
to Rowe. He became a regular
at Lib Camp, and also attended
many conferences on relationships and couples work.
Max was a programmer
and manager at IBM until his
retirement in 1992. His dream
was to retire at 50, be able to
take at least six weeks’ vacation each year, and have time to
play tennis and enjoy life. He
realized that dream. He lived
part-time in Florida until this
year, when he sold his house in
Woodstock, New York to take
up permanent residence there.
Max served on the Rowe
Board of Trustees as Treasurer
from April 1993 to September
1997. He was elected President
of the board and served through
August 2000. Max’s vision
was to build a solid financial
foundation for Rowe. He was
a certified financial planner,
and Rowe benefited from his
expertise. Max created an
endowment plan and an invest-
Truck Needed
Do you have a truck that
you are considering trading in
or selling? Why not give it to
Rowe? Donations of vehicles
are tax deductible and the benefit increases when the vehicle is
being used for a charity rather
than sold. We are looking for a
pick-up truck in good working
order. If you can help, please
email [email protected]
or call 413-339-4954.
and Laurel’s husband of 53 years, Dr. Anatol “Harry” Oleynick,
longtime members and friends of Rowe.
Our heartfelt sympathy to their family.
Water System Campaign
Surpasses Goal at $131,000!
Max and Laura.
ment committee to oversee it.
He served on the investment
committee for 13 years. He also
was concerned about the staff’s
well-being and developed a retirement plan, as well as a plan
for disability insurance.
Max’s leadership was
matched by his generosity. The
endowment initially was funded through a donation from
Max and Laura. Also, at Max’s
recommendation the board
voted to put all proceeds from
unrestricted bequests into the
fund and to allocate five dollars
from each conference fee for
the endowment. The purpose
was to build a fund that would
generate income for mainte-
Rowe Needs
Photo Volunteer
We are looking for someone
with a knowledge of Picasa or
another cloud-based archiving
program to categorize and store
our photographs. Please contact
[email protected] if you
want to help.
nance and capital improvement
projects on the Rowe campus.
Max lived to see his vision
realized: Last year the fund
reached $200,000, the level at
which Rowe could begin to use
the interest annually.
The biggest project during
Max’s tenure was the Farmhouse Expansion Project. He
brought it from a long-term vision to the first stages of making that dream a reality, and he
provided the lead gift to make
it happen. When Rowe began
plans for a new guest house,
Max and Laura once again
stepped forward and made the
lead gift to name a room. Max
and Laura were named Life
Members at Rowe, an honor
given to those who exemplify
generosity and service to UU
Rowe Center.
Max has left a great legacy
through his work at Rowe, and
he will be missed deeply for all
of these reasons — and mostly
because he was a kind and
thoughtful man. He loved life,
gave freely of himself, and he
cared about relationships. He
was a good friend, benefactor,
and inspiring leader. Our heartfelt sympathy goes out to his
family and many, many friends.
Let’s raise our glasses with
clean, clear water and toast
to celebrate! It takes a whole
community to build a new
water system — and we did it.
We all pulled together and raised
$106,000 to build
our new system,
and we met the
challenge match
and will receive
another $25,000
donation from an
anonymous donor.
This truly is worth celebrating!
Thanks to you we will have
clean, potable water for everyone at Rowe. This spring we
will begin work to:
• drill a new well or wells
with sufficient capacity to serve
the whole campus;
• complete all the testing
needed for the project from
start to finish;
• build a new water storage
tank to replace the cistern that
is now in use;
• lay water lines to the new
system;
• give us peace
of mind.
Our conference fees and
camp fees pay for
operations, and,
thanks to your
donations over
the years, we have
been able to do
many large maintenance tasks
and major improvements that
will allow us to serve our mission to provide a safe space
to hold transformative camps
and conferences for adults and
young people alike. Thank you
for being part of this extraordinary circle of people who hold
Rowe so dear.
TO MAKE A DONATION
Visit rowecenter.org, call 413-339-4954,
or send a check to P.O. Box 273, Rowe, MA 01367
CREATE A LASTING LEGACY
Let your spirit live on at Rowe.
Remember the Rowe Center in your will.
THANK YOU FOR YOUR GIFTS
DONATIONS HAVE BEEN MADE TO ROWE IN MEMORY OF:
James Thomey’s Birthday • Arnold F. Westwood
Brenda Ross Winter, a Visionary Lady (1933-2003)
MAY THEIR MEMORIES LIVE ON.
AND IN HONOR OF
Mark Benford • Andrew Plummer • Syvlie Scahill
Opportunities at Rowe
Personal
Retreats and
Group Rentals
Create your own retreat for
yourself or for a group. Make your
own schedule. Call us for rates.
We’d be happy to send you information.
Become a
Community
Service Intern
Whether fresh out of college,
going through a midlife evaluation, or newly retired, you have
the opportunity through Rowe’s
volunteer residency program to
slow down, take stock, explore new
directions, meet wonderful people
in an inviting rustic setting, engage
in meaningful work, and be part of
a supportive community.
Volunteers spend 33 hours a
week working to support Rowe
Center in exchange for room,
board, and the opportunity to attend conferences. Work is arranged
by matching Rowe’s needs with
your skills and preferences. Each
volunteer is assigned to a specific
department: housekeeping, maintenance, office, or kitchen.
Experience living in a valuesbased community. Each volunteer
defines personal and community goals for his or her time here.
Goals may be reached through
self-directed reading and writing,
attending Rowe workshops, the
experience of living in community,
and the practice of loving service
in support of Rowe’s work.
Volunteers live with each
other and, in a more loosely knit
community, with the rest of our
staff. Living, working, and playing
with the same group of people is
full of complexities, challenges,
and joy. Each person is invited to
speak honestly and openly, to find
new ways to deal with conflict, to
take risks, to enter the mysterious
realm of the inner life, and to be
transformed by the whole experience. If you believe in what Rowe
is doing and have time to take a
break in your life, please email
[email protected] or call
her at 413-339-4954.
REGISTRATION AND OFFICE
COORDINATOR — This position
will be available at the end of May.
The ROC is part of the programming team and is responsible for
office functions, registration, and
logistics for programs. Among
the skills and experience we are
looking for are familiarity with
office management, a good phone
manner, an ability to work as
part of a team and to multi-task,
a sense of humor, and an ability
to interact with guests. Experience living in a rural area and/
or living in a community are
especially desired. Compensation
includes a salary, excellent health
benefits, and room and board.
Please send expressions of interest
to Arthur Samuelson, Director of
Programming, [email protected].
SUMMER HEAD COOK (2) —
Position 1: May 31-Sept. 7. Position
2: June 21-Sept. 7. Hands-on cooking position. Supervise summer
cooks; prepare two meals/day, five
days/week. Good cooking skills,
Center Post
A Journal of Unitarian Universalist Rowe Center • 22 Kings Highway, Rowe, MA 01367
(413) 339-4954 • Fax (413) 339-5728 • e-mail: [email protected] •
Executive Editor: Steve Kanji Ruhl
Proofreader: Carrie Nordstrom
www.rowecenter.org
R O W E C E N T E R S TA F F
Felicity Pickett, Executive Director
Arthur H. Samuelson, Program Director
Paulette Roccio, Director of Operations
Designer: Jeff Potter
Steve Kanji Ruhl, Marketing Coordinator
Rowe Owl Logo: Frederick Chadwick
Kerry Read, Registration and Office Coordinator
Cover Art: Maureen Moore
Carrie Nordstrom, Human Resources
and Finance Coordinator
Cartoons: Suzy Becker
Bobby Honeycutt, Head of Maintenance
Reed Brown, Head Cook
BOA R D O F T R U S T E E S
Albert Mussad, President
Cynthia Bolling, Betsey Miller, Gail Epstein, Kerri
Florian, Joan Lager, Salena Migeot, Cathy Perkins
Change service requested
Come Work
at Rowe
The
Editor: Arthur H. Samuelson
NON-PROFIT ORG.
U.S. POSTAGE
PAID
PUTNEY, VT
PERMIT NO. 1
The Rowe Center
22 Kings Hwy. Box 273
Rowe, MA 01367
Kelsey Oppenheimer, Associate Cook
Kate Peppard, Kitchen Intern
C O M M U N I T Y S E RV I C E I N T E R N S
Joanne Crowell, Jeff Giaimo, Mathais
Kainrath, Alyce Skelton
three years experience cooking for
groups, ability to supervise and
train others.
SUMMER COOKS (3) — Position 1: May 31-Aug. 22. Position
2: June 21-Sept. 1. Position 3: June
21 - Aug. 22. Assist with preparing
two meals/day for 75-120 people,
keeping kitchen clean, putting
away food deliveries, other kitchen
tasks. Minimum two years cooking
experience. Requires teamwork,
ability and willingness to follow
direction, physical stamina, sense
of humor.
SUMMER KITCHEN HOUSEKEEPER/PREP COOK (3) — Position
1: May 31-Aug. 22. Positions 2
& 3: June 21 - Sept. 7. Entry-level
positions for those without experience. As part of kitchen team,
keep kitchen clean, put away food
deliveries, wash pots and pans,
lead campers in doing dishes, assist with cooking prep and other
kitchen tasks. Requires teamwork,
ability to learn quickly and follow
direction, physical stamina, sense
of humor.
SUMMER MAINTENANCE (1) —
Works with Rowe’s facilities team
to keep physical aspects of the
camp functioning (everything from
changing light bulbs to construction projects and fixing cars). Hard
work, self-motivation, willingness
to work with others, sense of humor. Can begin as early as May 30
through June 7.
SUMMER CAMP HEALTH COORDINATOR (1) — RN or MD preferred. On-call 24 hours/day to
care for ill campers and staff. The
“camp nurse” has 14 days off during the camp sessions and gets
relief coverage to take hikes or
go to the beach when someone is
available to cover. Requires love of
teenagers, sense of humor, tact,
resourcefulness, and other nursely
attributes. For children’s camps
only, June 28-Aug. 22. We hire for
one camp only or entire season.
Families welcome.
SUMMER RELIEF NURSE (1) —
Covers days off for camp nurse
during three-week camps. Responsible for all duties of nurse stated
above. For any of following dates:
July 3-5, July 10-12, July 24-26, Aug.
7-9, Aug. 14-16.
SUMMER VOLUNTEERS — We
also can use extra hands as volunteers throughout the summer.
For summer positions,
please call
413-339-4954
or email us at
[email protected]