Immerse Yourself in the Wisdom of Poetry and pen the words Your Soul Longs to Share.
“…great poetry speaks truth in a universal language that crosses cultural boundaries and speaks directly to the human heart with a precision and force that prose can rarely aspire to.” –Roger Housden
A Quarterly Gathering that invites poetry to help us unpack the theme for Eremos in 2021, Unfolding: Being Present to Life. How can poetry help us attend to and articulate our experience of the present? Drop below the surface of events to listen for personal meaning and feeling.
Join facilitator Cathey Capers for one or all of these quarterly 2-hour sessions. She will be attuned for what is alive in our community and poems that offer insight or an invitation into Presence. Time together will include: silence, reading poetry, personal reflection, and invitations to write and share. Poetry in community gives us the opportunity to reconnect with our authentic selves, to be witnessed by others, and to bear witness for others.
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No prior experience reading or writing poetry is required. Sharing your thoughts and writing is always by invitation.
“I make deep claims about the benefits of poetry. I say it surprises us in ways that are healing. I believe it is surprising in large part because the words of a poem come alive in silence and in the space that surrounds a poem. I believe this joining of spacious silence with words is where the voice of the soul flourishes.” –John Fox, poet, author, and founder of the Institute for Poetic Medicine.
Come join us for this respite for the spirit, food for the soul, gift for the heart that time immersed in poetry can bring!
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Next Sessions: Tuesday, September 14th, and December 14th
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Cathey Capers
Bring Presence, Calm and Balance into Your Daily Life
4-Week Course Beginning April 20th
“Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make your peace with that and all will be well.” –Jack Kornfield
As we begin to move ever so slowly forward out of the pandemic, we invite you to let the gift of mindfulness meditation accompany you on the journey.
Whatever your contemplative practice may be, you’ve likely heard of — or even taken a class or two — in mindfulness meditation. Alice Lottes, PhD was so transformed by mindfulness meditation, she recently completed her two-year mindfulness teacher training from leaders in the field, Tara Brach, PhD and Jack Kornfield, PhD. After rave reviews of her programs with us in 2020, we’ve invited Alice back! Come explore or refresh you experience of mindfulness meditation with her from the comfort of your home for an investment of only $20 for four 60-minute sessions!
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You Will Learn To:
Develop a healthier relationship with your thoughts
Experience more awareness of your emotions
Be more in touch with your body and mind
Find your inner place of balance, peace, and freedom
Stay calm and bring presence to your interactions.
You Can Experience These Benefits:
An increased ability to relax
Reduced stress
Greater energy, enthusiasm and happiness
Improved immune system functioning
Course Topics include:
Week One
Introductions and Mindfulness of Breath
Week Two
Mindfulness of Body and Feeling Tones
Week Three
Thoughts and emotions and R.A.I.N.
Week Four
“Bring it All Together” with Compassion Meditation
Please join us to begin experiencing these wonderful benefits now, so they may support you in the months ahead.
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Each session will include a short talk, followed by a guided meditation practice, and finish with a question-and-answer period.
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Alice Lottes PhD
A Conversation with Author Debby Irving
“The good news is that everyone can do something to loosen racism’s hold on America. The bad news is that unless you set yourself up for success, trying to do something helpful can actually perpetuate racism. Take time to learn and engage with the problem in order to lower the chances of making the same mistakes I did.” –Debby Irving
The summer of 2020 brought an awakening to many that we need to do our own “work” to help be part of the movement to ensure words, beliefs, acts, and policies of racism are no longer tolerated.
After many of us have read numerous books – including our Fall Book Reflection of Rhonda Magee’s book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice – those of us identified as “white” are waking up to the privileges and “white” lens we view the world through. Understanding our unconscious beliefs and biases is critical to effectively being part of the change.
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We invite you to join Eremos as we educate ourselves to be better leaders in the movement toward racial justice through our 90-minute zoom conversation with Debby Irving. She will discuss her book, Waking Up White: And Finding Myself in the Story of Race, and lessons learned in being a racial justice educator for the last seven years on Thursday, March 18th at 7:00pm Central.
Since a powerful aha moment in 2009, Debby Irving has been on a journey towards being part of the solution and has been sharing her personal “often cringe-worthy story” with openness and compassion, helping many transform confusion and well-meaning intentions into ideas and actions that make a difference.
Please join us for this inspiring conversation with Debby Irving!
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The event will be RECORDED, with all registered guests able to view the recording for 30 days. (Link will be sent the day after the event.)
No previous experience with Ms. Irving’s book is required. Open to anyone!
Join us for a special pre-event conversation!
For those interested in a pre-event conversation about the book (to make the most of our time with Ms. Irving), you’re invited to a FREE 60-minute Zoom conversation with Executive Director Dianna Amorde on Tuesday evening, March 16th at 7:00pm Central.
Debby Irving
Virtual Men’s Retreat – 2 Evenings March 17 & 18 from 7-8:30 p.m.
A Swig of Water and a Wedge of Orange
In a marathon, the halfway mark is no time for grand assessments and atta-boys, but it is a good place to pause, taste a bit of fruit, swish some water and take stock of where we are, how we are, and maybe, to make some adjustments for the rest of the course.
A year into the coronavirus pandemic, lockdown fatigue, vaccine availability and the uncertainty of what lies ahead tells us we have come a long way indeed, but there is still a long way to go. Time to take a beat. Our pandemic experience is a shared struggle, but day-by-day, we are largely on our own as we learn, change and find new growing edges. Eremos’ first Men’s Retreat is an opportunity to bring into community some of the experience that has reshaped our lives and the lives of those we love.
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During the retreat, we will reflect and share our own personal experiences, centering on written reflections, then expanded by leaders’ personal journeys, then opened up to broader discussion. The overnight break is to give us some time to sleep on it – potentially bringing depth and new focus to the discussions of night two.
Through the process we expect to share, support one another, and build community.
The Men’s Gathering is a monthly Eremos event on Zoom, where we seek to build a community of trust and openness in acknowledgment of the spiritual unity that binds us all. You need not attend the monthly meetings to take part in the retreat. In fact, it might be an opportunity to find a new kind of connection in this time of socially distanced fragmentation.
Hope to see you there!
As we come together to share our reflections on our journey, the overnight break will give us some time to sleep on our initial thoughts – potentially bringing depth and new focus to the discussions of night two.
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Doug Fritzsche, MDiv.
John Fassnacht
“Always we begin again.” –Rule of St. Benedict.
Late winter/early spring is a wonderful time to begin again. The frenzy to jump into the new year is behind us and we can settle into clarity about what really matters to us in 2021.
Join us in this virtual contemplative retreat to return to the basics. Breath, silence, rhythm. We will spend time reflecting on where we’ve been and where we want to go, but most important—where we are now. Join us for a day of reflection and discussion interlaced with silence, focused on looking deeply at what matters and how that can be realized in each day. Annie Dillard writes, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”
We will experience this time together in silence and community, then Begin Again to live our lives, with greater understanding of the rhythms of the day.
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Sharon Dunn
A Series of Virtual Conversations with Spiritual Leaders
“in your light we see light continue your hesed [unending love]”
—Psalm 36: 9-10
Thank you for your interest in our Being with the Divine Series. Our next scheduled speaker will be announced soon. In the meantime, consider accessing the Zoom Recordings of these past sessions:
Pastor John Garland on January 14th, 2021 (90 minutes), speaking about how praying the Psalms can help heal trauma (details below).
“Two Going Deeper sessions with Pastor John Garland on January 21st and 28th (1 hour each) (details below).
Author and Ordained Minister Jan Richardson on November 19th, 2020 (90 minutes), speaking about the gift and power of blessings.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro on August 2nd, 2020 (90 minutes) on gift of Passage Meditation in times of stress and unprecedented change.
Recording of January 14th’s Session with Pastor John Garland now Available!
In a 90-minute interactive experience with us, Pastor John will share the profound impact singing and praying the Psalms has had on both the parishioners and the asylum-seekers they serve at the San Antonio Mennonite Church.
Through stories and an opportunity to experience the practice, Pastor John invites us to consider the Psalms as a blueprint for healing trauma and a pathway for transformation.
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Come Experience the Psalms as a Pathway for Transformation as We Embark Upon This New Year.
To learn more about the healing work Pastor John Garland and the San Antonio Mennonite Church is doing, read this powerful article from faithandleadership.com.
Go Deeper:
Join us for two 1-hour follow up experiences with Pastor John Garland on using the Psalms for healing trauma:
January 21st and 28th from 7pm to 8pm.
$40
($80 for all three sessions)
John Garland
Each morning he leads Psalm-based prayers, works with those held in immigration prisons, and supports the community of asylum-seekers centered in the church.
He is currently doing doctoral work on communal trauma, spiritual resilience, and the Psalms. He is a fellow at the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty. He is the National Association of Social Workers' Texas 2020 ``Public Citizen of the Year.``
Most recently he has traveled extensively in Central America, visiting rural churches on the border of Honduras and Guatemala that are living through violence, poverty, and governmental failures. Mennonites are pacifists. John pastors with an applied theology of Christianity as a trauma-transforming faith movement, he reads Scripture as divinely inspired through--and for--deeply traumatized communities, and understands hospitality, story, and prayer-centered community as the most powerful tools of healing.
John's wife is a high school principal a few blocks from their downtown home and he has two daughters in the elementary school down the street.
Before San Antonio, they taught school together outside of McAllen, on the Texas-Mexico border, where he also pastored a little Spanish-speaking church.
NOTE: Session will be recorded, so you don’t need to be present in order to enjoy Pastor John Garland’s wisdom.
(You’ll have 30 days to view the video.)
If you missed our first two speakers, Rabbi Rami Shapiro and Jan Richardson, you can still register for a link to the recording HERE.
Returning to the Present Moment
with Elota Patton
One of the greatest causes of anxiety is making negative predictions about the future. What if, instead of living in a future that rarely turns out the way you predict, you could live with greater peace at the edge of the unknown?
Many spiritual paths focus on bringing the meditator/prayer back to the breath, back to the now, back to Source, back to the present moment. Elota Patton, Licensed Professional Counselor, offers an introductory exploration of the deeply meditative process developed by Connirae Andreas, author of The Wholeness Process.
This work lies at the intersection of personal growth and spiritual practice, and participants will learn about and practice this innovative path to calming the mind, healing the heart, and deepening the self by connecting embodied experience with the Mystery of all that is.
Please join us!
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