Prayer as Resistance 2.0:

Title: Deep River: The Spiritual Wisdom of the Unknown Black Bards

Time Slot: Friday Keynote Lecture, 9-10 a.m. (60 Minutes)

Format: In-Person and Virtual

Description: This keynote will delve into the musical genre known as the Spirituals, songs of the Spirit created by the unknown Black bards, enslaved Black peoples. It will explore the ‘deep river’ of their wisdom and how these songs can be a spiritual contemplative resource for the practices of prayer, resistance, justice, and hope.

Title: The Garment of Praise: the Art and Science of Forgiveness

Time Slot: Friday Workshops #1, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. (90 Minutes) / #2, 2-3:30 p.m. (90 Minutes)

Format: In-Person

Description: The Lebanese poet and novelist Khalil Gibran said, “The strong of soul forgive.” The elusive and agile strength of forgiveness is an aspect of life and relationships that can be as freeing as it is radical. In this workshop on the art and science of forgiveness, Jenn and Shann give practical steps for the daily interactions that involve forgiveness asking and atonement, as well as speaking to the larger generational forces that heal individuals, families and nations. By listening to the beloved other in this way we may hear the echo of Isaiah in the mystery of forgiveness: “God has given you the garment of praise instead of the spirit of despair.”

Title: Tending to Moral Injury and Religious Trauma: A Processing Space for Spiritual Care Practitioners, Contemplatives, and Activists

Time Slot: Friday Workshop #1, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. (90 Minutes)

Format: This workshop is only available in-person and is limited to 30 participants.

Description: Moral injury and religious trauma are specific harms that deeply violate people’s conscience or threaten their core values. Those who experience these harms may feel guilt, sorrow, shame, outrage, despair, and a loss of faith or meaning. This workshop will be an embodiment-centered, collective learning space for participants to learn about and process moral injury and religious trauma in justice-orienting or religious spaces. Through group practices and sharing, the workshop will explore how we may tend to these harms for ourselves and how we can accompany others as spiritual care practitioners, contemplatives, and activists.

Title: Praying with your senses: An Ignatian Path for Everyone

Time Slot: Friday Workshop #1, 10:30 a.m. – 12 p.m. (90 Minutes) / Saturday Workshop #4, 9-10 a.m. (60 Minutes)

Format: Hybrid

Description: For about five hundred years, Ignatian spirituality has been offering us a different avenue to meet the Creator, through creation and creatures through prayer. There are ways to pray. It is not one way. Come, let us pray with what you have, what you bring, and who  you are. 

Title: Suffering Sofia: Finding Communal Wisdom through Contemplation

Time Slot: Friday Workshop #2, 2-3:30 p.m. (90 Minutes)

Format: Hybrid

Description: Our collective consciousness of social injustice and marginalized identities is growing. However, for persons who inhabit marginalized identities in the climate of heightened awareness, it is easy for the “stock stories” of injustice to become the center of our personal identities and our call to action. This workshop explores the insidious consequences of this reality, spiritually, for both the individual and the community. We will explore how the wisdom thread of Christianity can transfigure the experience of (social) sufferers, gleaning from it new revelations of God. This workshop centers the experiences of sufferers and the oppressed. However, the concepts should be applicable to all. Participants are invited to prepare by reflecting in advance on an area of marginalization or pain that they feel ready to transform to the greater glory of God. Push back, curiosity, and personal experience are welcome!

Title: Brokenness to Beauty: Kintsugi 

Time Slot: Friday Workshops #2 & #3,  2-5 p.m. (3 Hours)

Format: In-Person

Description: In this hands-on workshop you will learn about this 400-year-old Japanese craft in the mending of ceramics making beauty from brokenness. A certified instructor from Academy Kintsugi will guide a small group through Kintsugi techniques to equip each participant with the needed skills and materials. Every participant will need to bring a broken, cracked, or chipped piece of ceramic — a mug, a bowl, a cup, or a plate. This reflective practice is a powerful experience in seeing how the very cracks in our lives become the places in which new beauty can emerge to nurture a community that seeks to turn brokenness into beauty in our hearts and broader culture. This workshop is only available for in-person participants and partial scholarships (to assist with the $45 fee) are available if needed. Please contact info@goldenwoodnyc.org for more information. Note: $45 fee for materials (14 participants max, in-person only)  

Title: Deep Reconciliation as Christian Mysticism—Not Cheap Grace

Time Slot: Friday Workshop #3, 4-5 p.m. (60 Minutes)

Format: Hydrid

Description: Drawing upon the three-fold stages of Christian mysticism, we will explore the first mystical stage of purgation, connecting it to both contemplative prayer and restorative justice. Desmond Tutu’s life, Ubuntu theology, and spiritual practices ground this talk, showing how justice and prayer fit together. Subsequently, we will explore illumination, the second stage of Christian mysticism, focusing on the confluence between contemplative prayer and social activism that can produce epic events such as South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Lastly, we focus on the last mystical stage of union with God. Here, we explore vestiges of union with God through restorative justice, pilgrimage and forgiveness. Caution is urged in any rush to force this last mystical stage into being, especially for Christians in powerful positions or who live in the global north. These concluding thoughts offer space for discernment about what God might be inviting you and your community into regarding deep reconciliation.

Title: The Silent Activist

Time Slot: Friday Workshop #3, 4-5 p.m. (60 Minutes)

Format: Hydrid

Description: Activists require contemplation to free themselves from the tyranny of results, to move to greater anonymity as instruments of God’s justice, and to free themselves from the trap of what Ernest Becker calls “character armor.” Being on the “right side” of issues is not enough, for the temptation to exalt rather than humble oneself  for doing what a Christian is called to do is one that is not easy to overcome. The contemplative activist must follow John the Baptist first in admitting that “I did not recognise him” and then continually shining the light on “The One,” while taking pains to live in the shadows. 

Title: The Truth Method

Time Slot: Saturday Workshop #4, 9-10 a.m. (60 Minutes)

Format: Hydrid

Description: Common Ground Dialogue (cgdialogue.org) is an organization dedicated to improving civility and civic engagement in American political life. Its aim is not “conflict resolution” because, while laudable and necessary, this is shortsighted and misguided. Conflict is necessary and even desirable in a healthy democracy, so “resolving” it is not appropriate. Rather, our aim is to make conflict function as it is supposed to in a democracy, as an impetus for engagement. Thus, civility is the use of healthy functional conflict to generate constructive political engagement. Political life then moves from harmful discord to productive disagreement. And we achieve this via a process we call the Truth Method. This method is easily learned and, unlike most resolution techniques, difficult to forget. Since it relies on ancient techniques that have been tested over centuries, the Method seeks deeper and more lasting transformation than mere crisis management of conflict resolution methods. This Method takes ancient tools and adapts them for modern circumstances and psyches. It involves a safe, supportive, and patient process of slowly deepening awareness and allowing one to touch the unspoken ground upon which one’s opinions stand.