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The Guild for Spiritual Guidance

October 2021 Newsletter

Contents
Monthly Reflection
Follow Guild Facebook Page
Guild Film Festival
Psychological Consciousness Workshop
Spiritual Autonbiography Course 
2023 Pilgrimage to Assisi
Sacred Places in Switzerland
Iona Pilgrimage
Virtual Coffee Cafe
Creative Oasis
Community Gathered in Silence
Wisdom House Programs
Deep Time Network Courses
Call for Writers, Designers
Connect via Social Media

Monthly Reflection

by Steve Allen, chair of operations

When I entered the Apprenticeship Program of The Guild for Spiritual Guidance, I didn’t know what I was looking for. I’m not even sure that I knew that I was looking.

I did know a few things I was not looking for. I knew that I was not looking to
improve my resume or strengthen my vocational skills. I knew that I was not
looking to satisfy my curiosity or expand my reading list. And I was not looking
for well-intentioned encouragement to keep me slogging through life. Fortunately, I didn’t find any of the things I was not looking for. Instead, I discovered spiritual depth and human presence with a diverse group of colleagues who profoundly cared about the universe, the human psyche, and the transparent reality behind and beneath the mask and surface of everyday life.

For me, the Apprenticeship Program rekindled hope: hope in long arc of the
evolutionary process, hope in the resurgence of the human spirit, hope in the
richness of authentic relationship with myself, others, and God.

It is time for each of us to identify and enlist the members of Apprenticeship
Program XXII. Who should you invite from your communities? Who needs the
gift the Apprenticeship Program gave you? Who among your friends and
colleagues might broaden and deepen their creative gifts through intentional
immersion in our four strands? Who is longing for sacred space and authentic
community?

I came to the Apprenticeship Program because someone cared enough to invite me. Who is waiting for your invitation?

For more information or brochures, email Dianne Disston at diannedguild@gmail.com.

Guild for Spiritual Guidance and Spiritual Life Center Co-Host Series on Suffering and Joy

The Guild for Spiritual Guidance is hosting a four-part program with the Spiritual Life Center, entitled “Holding the Tension Between Suffering & Joy.”

The program, which began in the second half of October, takes place from 6:30 to 8:00 PM by Zoom on four consecutive Thursdays.  The two upcoming sessions include:

November 4—Sacred Community—interconnections and interdependence within a Circle of Trust.  How do you recognize community in your life?  Might we need to work within community to expand our understanding of society and earth as our common spiritual community in order to save our human species? Presenter: Rev. Dianne Disston 

November 11—Evolutionary Cosmology—featuring the writing of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.  Since the earth cannot endure humanity in our current state, systemic global unraveling must happen in order for something new to emerge. What is your response to this unraveling?  Where do you find inspiration and hope? Presenter: Bernice Marie-Daly, Ph.D. 

Register For Sacred Community
Register for Evolutionary Cosmology

Share the Guild's Facebook and Instagram Accounts 

“We’d love your help making The Guild’s impact even greater. Do you have a Facebook or Instagram account? If so, make sure to follow us and be encouraged by our posts. Follow this link and click the button Like and Follow”
Link for newsletter: https://www.facebook.com/GuildForSpiritualGuidance
 

Guild Film Festival Focuses on Hope and Resilience

Artists and spiritual writers through the millennia remind us how the capacity to hope keeps us human. The Guild will explore this important topic with a series of three films, one each month from November to January.  

Through viewing and discussing three films that evoke feelings surrounding the resiliency of ‘hope,” participants will explore how the promise of life and freedom can break down the limitations of self-sufficiency and fear. The presenter, Father Larry Lewis, will conduct the discussions following the films along the lines of group spiritual direction.
 
Tuesday, November 9, 2021,  7 p.m. ET      Lars and the Real Girl (US)            
Tuesday, December 7, 2021, 7 p.m. ET       The Lives of Others (German)       
Tuesday, January 11, 2022, 7 p.m. ET         Jojo Rabbit (US)                              
 
About the presenterRev. Larry Lewis:
Father Larry Lewis has facilitated film discussions since 2004. The author of The Misfit: Haunting the Human – Unveiling the Divine, Father Lewis received his Ph.D. in spirituality from Duquesne University, and has been a friend of the Guild since 1997. A Maryknoll missionary, he spent many years in China and now serves in the Maryknoll Office of Society Personnel.  

This Engaged Wisdom film course is free and open to all, Guild members and non-Guild members.
Register

Workshop Explores Psychological Consciousness:
A Practice of Belonging for the 21st Century

This workshop will explore the experience of belonging from several different cultural lenses or worldviews.

While worldviews from different eras have yielded great gifts, their shadow sides have been neither seen, acknowledged, nor integrated. This lack of integration and projection of undigested hatreds onto one another has created our current culture wars. Navigating these turbulent waters, however, can create a pathway for a new worldview.
 
The 20th century focused primarily on helping the isolated individual with his or her own crisis of belonging. Applying the wisdom of Carl Jung, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, and countless other visionaries, we can see and participate in the emergence of an integral psychological paradigm. This 21st century paradigm can provide a new foundation of connectedness and interdependence.
 
The new paradigm of ‘belonging’ allows us to connect across ideological differences to create a new, responsible humanity and successfully face the multiple crisis of our time – environmental, spiritual, economic, and social.

Presented by Peter T. Dunlap, psychologist in the Jungian tradition and chair of the Clinical Psychology PhD Program at Pacifica Graduate Institute. 

January 22, 2022, 11 a.m. – 1 p.m. The workshop costs $35. This Engaged Wisdom Program is open to non-Guild members as well as Guild members. See the website for registration information.

 Write Your Spiritual Autobiography 

We all have stories. Some stories define us. Some may point to our purpose in this life. Some may describe critical turning points. Some are welcomed as mysterious, challenging, explanatory, and mythic. Others are painful and tend to be repressed. Our stories speak to how we experience life and the ego persona we have cultivated. And those that change the way we live are called our sacred stories.

In this workshop we will compile our sacred stories to make a spiritual autobiography. We will notice how our stories reflect the mythology of our times and how we live into them. We will identify unconscious archetypical myths that have guided and navigated our soul.

St. Francis of Assisi prayed, “Who are you and why am I here?” By examining our sacred stories, we may find the answer. Each week we will focus on topics that build upon the prior week. 

Week 1 – The Mythic Power of Our Sacred Stories 
Week 2 – Discovering Our Personal Mythology
Week 3 – Identifying Our Soul Archetypes
Week 4 – Sharing Our Sacred Stories and Their Myth 

Presented by Daniel Robinson, professor, spiritual director, retreat leader, and lover of souls. His current passion is the mentoring of faculty, students, and pilgrims through the art of soul companioning by writing our personal stories, myths, and spiritual autobiographies. 

This Engaged Wisdom Program is open to non-Guild members as well as Guild members. Four sessions via Zoom: Sundays January 30, February 6, February 13, February 20, 2022 
The cost is $100. 

Register for Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography

Befriending Dreams Seminar

The Befriending Dreams Seminar will explore the realm of dreams and how we can become better acquainted with them and the messages they offer. The presenter, Dr. Dianne Frost, will introduce us to the lively art of "dream tending" and social dreaming. In dream tending, dreamer and dream tender invite a past dream to become animated in present time and offer its wisdom. Dream tending touches personal, collective, and environmental understandings. Social dreaming springs from the dreams of groups of people and provides a way of reflecting on shared wisdom. It may reveal conditions and possible directions to take for couples, families, businesses, neighborhoods, cities, and even countries.

Dianne Frost, Ph.D. is a depth psychologist who has long been intrigued by sleeping dreams, waking dreams, and the wisdom gleaned from dreams of any kind. She is an advocate for the expansion of consciousness and love in our world, so her passions are to educate and facilitate people’s growth in healing their hearts, expanding their insights, and offering their love and gifts to the world. Sharing her experience with dreamwork is one way she expresses her passions.

Offered on six Mondays from 6:00 to 7:30 p.m. March 7, 14, 21, 28, April 4, 11. The cost is $125.

This seminar is open to all, members and non-members alike.

Good News from the Universe for Bad Times:

Crisis, Transformation, and Deep Trust from a Cosmic Perspective

This seminar invites us to reflect on the universal nature of crisis, change, and transformation as well as the resources available for cultivating resilience and trust during difficult times. Drawing on insights from modern cosmology and the evolutionary perspective, we find sources of support, renewal, and guidance that can sustain us through the challenges we face personally, culturally, and globally at this critical time.
 
About the Presenter: Steve Martin
Astronomer, educator, and author, Steve Martin has taught astronomy, physics, and consciousness studies at colleges, universities, and learning centers across the U.S. for over 25 years. He is currently one of the lead instructors for the Deeptime Network, and he also consults at the Center for Spiritual Emergence in Asheville, NC. 
 
Three virtual sessions, Mondays, 6—8:30 p.m. ET beginning April 25, 2022
Dates: April 18, 2022, April 25, 2022, May 5, 2022       
The cost is $75.
This course is open all, members and non-members.                                       
Register

Guild Explores Potential Future Pilgrimages to Assisi 

 

The Guild will offer a pilgrimage to Assisi, Italy, in 2023. Led by Brother Mark D'Alessio, the pilgrimage will offer the opportunity to walk in the steps of Saints Francis and Clare, both in Assisi and in the surrounding area. More information will be forthcoming in future newsletters.
Pilgrimage to Sacred Places in Switzerland

 

Penelope Yungblut, AP I, Jungian analyst and faculty member at the International School of Analytical Psychology in Zurich, will lead an eight-day Guild sponsored “Pilgrimage to Sacred Places in Switzerland” in May 2022.

With a base in Zurich for eight nights, Penelope will lead pilgrims on day trips to Rapperswil to walk along an old part of el Camino to Santiago; Einsiedeln to visit a beloved Black Madonna; Lucerne to see the life work of a woman who knew and collected the work of Picasso and Paul Klee; the hermitage of Brother Klaus, Switzerland’s venerated mystic and visionary who saved the Swiss Confederation in 1481; and Gornergrat to face the majestic Matterhorn and the surrounding snow covered Alps.

For more details, visit the website.

Intend – Attend – Extend: 
Living Each Day with Holy Curiosity 

A Pilgrimage Invitation to Iona from Cari Keith

Please plan to set aside time to join us on a pilgrimage to Iona in the summer of 2022. The hospitality of this wee island community will care for your physical needs, and the gifts of sea, sky, stone, and sun will nurture your spirit.

You are invited to a place of pilgrimage; to a place that has been receptive to the human spiritual, meaning making quest for centuries; a place that invites the intention and attention needed to reveal where we are being called to extend ourselves and our thinking out into the world. You are invited to an act of pilgrimage; to lay aside a need for answers, and to allow curiosity, yes, even holy curiosity, to nurture and nourish your spirit. 

You are invited to a time of pilgrimage; to a time of processing, holding, and listening to all that bubbled up during this pandemic year and to what is yet to emerge. 

If you are considering joining the Iona pilgrimage, don't delay. There are only a few spots left. 
 
For more information, visit the website

Join the Virtual Coffee Cafe Tuesdays at 10 a.m. 

Guild graduates, if you love the idea of connecting with friends from your Apprenticeship Program and other Guild graduates, join the Coffee Café every Tuesday morning at 10 a.m. There are people who would love to see you and reconnect.

There is no cost to attend the Coffee Café.
Join us via Zoom: 

https://us02web.zoom.us/j/259451814?pwd=Y0EvQkcrc0NlZTlnbmFsSFdPWXdIUT09

Creative Oasis, Every Monday, 7:30–8:30 p.m.

Join this sacred, supportive space to engage your creative energy!  Bring your yarn, journal, coloring books, clay, paint, etc. and join us for a time of contemplative community creating in an atmosphere of support and encouragement. No artistic experience is necessary or even expected!  The “Creative Oasis” offers a time to put our hands to paint, paper, clay, yarn, whatever; a time to unwind with the creative materials of your choice in the hope of promoting deeper sleep and new insight.  

For more information and zoom link, please contact Cari at:  cari.keith@gmail.com

There is no cost for these meetings.

Heart painting by Becky Neilson

Community Gathered in SilenceThursdays, 6:30–7 a.m.

"One of the sweetest times at a Graduate Circle retreat is our morning gathering before breakfast for silent prayer and meditation," says Holly Moore. "I love the feeling of Presence in the room as we join our spirits in the silence." While the last several retreats have been on Zoom, Holly says she was still felt that Presence and "still felt connected and supported in a special way." 

Every Thursday morning at 6:30, you can join Holly and other Guild members for time together in quiet. There is no program as such. Log on as close to 6:30 as you can, settle in, breathe, and sit together with your Guild family, holding the world, the Guild, our lives in holy space. Holly will close our time around 7:00 with a reading, and then we will each move into our days. Please know that you are welcome any Thursday morning.

For more information and the zoom link please email Holly at:  hollynelmesmoore@gmail.com

There is no cost for these meetings.
 Upcoming Programs at Wisdom House
Programs and Retreats
God the Beloved: Julian of Norwich & Jalaluddin Rumi, November 5-6
Playing with Nature: Three Ceramic Artists Gallery Opening and Talk, November 6
Let's Make Some More Pies, November 13
Women's AA, Beginning Again Every Day, November 19-21
Advent Zoom Retreat: The Joy and Risk of Incarnation, December 3-4
 

Ongoing Wisdom House Programs Open to the Public:
Wednesday Zoom Prayer Group
Friday Meditation in the Tradition of Thich Nhat Hanh
Journeying in the Spirit, Second Saturday of the Month
Wisdom House Program Information
Check out these Deep Time Network Courses
Applying the New Cosmology, January 12 - March 25
Deeptime Leadership Practicum, April 6 - June 17 
 
Writers, Artists, Digital Media Mavens Wanted
Would you like to write a reflective piece for the newsletter? Would you like to share your poetry, artwork, or remembrances of what made the Guild such a special experience for you? Would you like to write a profile of a Guild member? If so, please contact Lou Anne Bulik, newsletter editor. If you are a digital media maven, consider volunteering to make updates to the website or social media. Contact Carolyn Luce, marketing and communications co-chair. We welcome contributions.

Stay Connected with the Guild through Social Media

In between retreats, book club meetings, and courses, you can continue to connect with your spiritual community in the Guild via social media.

Visit the Guild Facebook page, check out the Facebook group set up specifically for Guild graduates. This is a place to share your endeavors, questions, and thoughts while also keeping up to date on what offerings we have for you. Follow the Guild on Instagram and visit the website for updates.

Find us on Facebook
Join our Graduate Guild Facebook Group
Follow us on Instagram
Check out our website spiritualguidance.org

Donate Now
You’re receiving this because you’re a member of the Guild or a Guild member has recommended you because of shared interests. We hope you enjoy hearing from us, but if you would prefer not to receive this, then feel free to unsubscribe at any time.   Shalom. Salaam. Peace.

October 2021
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Header Photo Credit, John Keith

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