Cultivating Connections Recommends:  
Events for Metro Louisville - February 2016 

Affirming Connections between Planet, People, Power and Possibilities

Table of Contents - Click to Jump to the Details
Monday the 1st * Earth Talks Book Club: Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry
Wednesday the 3rd * Louisville Sustainability Forum: 21st Century Louisville Zoo
Saturday the 6th * Community Peace Concert with Harry Pickens
Sundays at 5 pm * The Guest House: Exploring the Human Life Cycle
Monday the 8th * Integral Theory and Practice Book Club Launches
Wednesday the 10th * Compassionate Louisville Town Hall Meeting at Tu An Temple
Thursday the 11th * Roy Bourgeois: Following Conscience for Justice & Equality
Saturday the 13th * Eco Justice Hike and Eco Justice Worship
Sunday the 14th * Louisville TimeBank Potluck Dinner
Monday the 15th * Social Change Book Club:The Evolution of Everything
Tuesday the 16th * Sierra Club: 2016 General Assembly: What's in store for the environment?
Four Tuesdays, February 16 - March 8 * Ecology of the Spirit: Rachel Carson & Thomas Merton
Saturday the 20th * White Environmentalists Acting for Racial Justice:  A Training
Sat. the 27th - Sun. the 28th * Deep Imagery With Marilyn Stoner and Doug Van Houten
March the 7th * Earth Talks Book Club: Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy
March the 19th * Spring Equinox Celebration

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Monday, February 1st, 6:30 pm
Earth Talks Book Club presents,
Dream of the Earth by Thomas Berry
at The Loft, 107 Crescent Ave, 40206 

Our very existence, each moment of our lives, is dependent on Earth and her ability to sustain us.  It is a relationship that Earth-elder Thomas Berry described as "primary," yet fails to make our consumer-based culture's "top ten."

"Earth Talks" will offer a counter to this cultural error, offering a safe place to nurture the Earth-centric aspects of our nature.  Utilizing the books and essays of some of today's greatest wisdom teachers, we will gather as a mutually supporting circle learning from both these important texts and one another. Through discussion, reflection and process we will expand our sense of connection and the reach of our compassion to deeper inclusion of the natural world.

For February we will explore the work of author and "geologian" Thomas Berry.  Participants our encouraged to read his book The Dream of the Earth, his essays and/or watch some of his videos.

While reading of the full text is encouraged, participants will have the option of reading a suggested section, chapter, or essay that will be central to the focus of that month's group exploration.  

               
Sessions will be hosted and facilitated by Mark Steiner,
co-founder and director of Cultivating Connections.

$5 - 10 is the suggested donation for participating though no one will be turned away.

Loft CC Logo Final

 
Wednesday, February 3, 12pm - 1:30pm 
Louisville Sustainability Forum
Passionist Earth and Spirit Center
(located behind St Agnes Church at 1920 Newburg Road)

Featured Presentation
Twenty-first Century Louisville Zoo with
Steve Taylor
Assistant Director of Conservation, Education and Collections

The role of a modern accredited zoo is far different than the past. Conservation and education are central to the Louisville Zoo's work of preserving endangered species. The Louisville Zoo works mostly with species that need help in the wild. The zoo's mission includes educating guests about conditions in the wild, the continuing devastation of animal habitats, the ways that animal behavior is changing as a result, and the ways to help.

Steve Taylor is the Louisville Zoo's Assistant Director of Conservation, Education and Collections. He oversees the animal departments and the animal collection at the Zoo. He manages the Zoo's conservation efforts and animal training programs.  

Shorter Presentations
Center for Neighborhoods
Tom Stephens, executive director

Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government Waste Management District
Angela Futter, Public Education Coordinator
 
Now in its seventh year, the purposes of the Louisville Sustainability Forum are:
1. We hold and promote the intention of sustainability for Louisville.
2. We establish and nourish relationships that strengthen
community and create change.
3. We create a space for discussion that inspires, motivates and deepens
our ability to catalyze social change.

Food & drink:
Feel free to bring a bag lunch. If you'd like to prepare extra food or drink to share with others, that is always welcome!
 
Saturday, February 6, 7 to 9 pm
Community Peace Concert 2016:
A celebration of World Interfaith Harmony Week 
Concert led by renowned jazz pianist and peacemaker, Harry Pickens 
St. Paul United Methodist Church, 2000 Douglass Blvd, 40205
 
A concert to promote inter-religious and intercultural music and dialogue for global unity and peace in recognition of the United Nations World Interfaith Harmony Week.  There are many who seek to divide people of faith -- this concert intends to bring us all together as one -- regardless of our faith, traditions, or backgrounds.  People of all faiths, as well as those without, are encouraged to attend our Peace Concert to build harmony, cooperation, and understanding through music and dialogue.

This evening of inter-religious and intercultural music and dialogue for global unity and peace is dedicated to our local community refugees.

Featuring
Authentic music from Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Baha'i, Hindu
and Buddhist traditions
with
Gelugpa Buddhist Monks from the Drepung Gomang Monastery - Syrian Musician Sipan Mzorie - Cantor David Lipp from Congregation Adath Jeshurun - Sunder Iyer of the Hindu Temple of Kentucky - Persian Rumi Singer Massoud Fariohi Louie - Classical Pianist Nada Loutfi - Baha'i Musician Judy Parsley - Soprano Victoria Gaar

Tickets $10. Click here. 
http://www.paths2peace.org/v-peace-concert.html
 
May peace prevail on Planet Earth!


  
Sundays at 5 pm
The Guest House:
an intentional community of integrative wisdom and practice
The Loft, 107 Crescent Ave, 40206

We will be exploring a theme of the human life cycle from birth to death
using Bill Plotkin's model as a scaffolding for both our Sunday evening programming
and our outward focus.  This is a broad theme that I hope provides enough
structure to evoke our creativity and collaboration.  

We are exploring three primary expressions within each of the 8 stages:

* Inward Journey - "What are the primary developmental tasks of this life stage? 
What can we learn about being human from this phase of life?"

* Outward Journey - "How can we create a city that supports each phase of life so
those in this stage are able to thrive?"  "What rituals, ceremonies and rights of
passage can we create and host for ourselves and our city that support the
transition into these phases of life?"

* Communal Journey - "How can we gather and organize ourselves as an intentional
community of wisdom and practice to support our own growth and wholeness and
empower us to move inward and outward?"

 

  
Monday, February 8, 6:30 pm
Integral Theory and Practice Book Club
Integral Spirituality:
A Startling New Role for Religion in the Modern and Postmodern World
by Ken Wilber
The Loft, 107 Crescent Ave, 40206

Integral philosophy, theory, and practice is providing a framework for the emergence of a new cosmology and way to making meaning out of pre-modern, modern, and post-modern world views.  This book study offered on the second Monday of the month is designed to support the growing number of integrative practitioners in our community with educational resources and a community of practice.  Hosted by Jud Hendrix.




  
Wednesday, February 10, 12 - 1:30 pm 
Compassionate Louisville Town Hall 
Tu An Temple, 4600 South Sixth Street, 40214
 
Experience compassion in action!  Each month we invite you on a pilgrimage to discover the city's often hidden compassion gems. Once at the site, we will share the mission of the host organization, celebrate the newest organizations to have adopted a compassion resolution, share how Compassionate Louisville is encouraging compassionate action, and provide a forum for you and others to share their compassionate actions.
 
Everyone is invited! Bring a Friend! No RSVP required. 
 
Questions: Contact Mary Sullivan, (502)292-6154 or mary.sullivan@metrounitedway.org   
Through intention and social innovation, Compassionate Louisville creates 
and celebrates a community and world becoming more and more compassionate.

The mission of the Partnership for a Compassionate Louisville is to 
champion and nurture the growth of compassion.

You Are Helping to Build A
A Compassionate Louisville!

 
  
Thursday, February 11, 7:30 pm
The Kentucky Interfaith Taskforce on Latin America and the Caribbean, The Alliance of Louisville Laity and Christ Sophia Inclusive Catholic Community
invites you to attend
Roy Bourgeois:
Following Conscience for Justice & Equality
First Unitarian Church at 4th and York Streets, 40203

Roy Bourgeois, a laicized Roman Catholic priest will speak on his continuing work for justice and equality and importance of not being silent in the face of unfair policy, whether from governments or institutions. Roy will reflect on the ongoing work with the School of the Americas, militarization of Latin America and the borders, criminalization of immigrants, women's ordination and LGBT rights.
.
Eco Justice

Saturday, February 13
Eco Justice Hike 1 pm
Eco Justice Worship 3 - 3:30 pm
Crescent Hill Presbyterian Church, 142 Crescent Ave, 40206

As we pay attention to the rhythms of the seasons, how the earth is expressing itself, and how God's Spirit blows through the world, we discover part of who God wants us to be, as creatures made of dust and connected to all matter. In circles of community, we have the opportunity to acknowledge the earth as it expresses God's wisdom, and to consider what it means for our lives- spiritually, physically, emotionally, relationally. In our collective experiences-whether around small group dinner tables or coffee conversations or communal worship- we seek to support one another and to find creative, inclusive, dynamic and intergenerational ways of seeking God's call as we pursue eco-justice in the world.

You are invited to help plan and/or to simply join for any of the community worship experiences in 2016. Please contact Rebecca to be looped in!

Sat Feb 13 at 3pm is our first gathering, in a public park in Louisville. We are gathering on this day, after a contemplative hike, for 30 minutes to "love God's creation" (through movement, poetry, and music).

More information coming soon!  
 
 

 
Sunday, February 14, 5 - 7pm
Louisville Time Bank Potluck Dinner
Highlands Community Campus 1228 E Breckinridge 40204
    
Potlucks are a big part of the TimeBank community. We come together to share food, fun and build community all at the same time. Members get to know each other, and people who are not members can learn a bit about timebanking from chatting with our members at the potluck. Many exchanges get set up at our potlucks too!

We always encourage members to bring guests, and all community members are welcome too!

Please bring a dish that serves 12 and your own table service to make clean up easier (if you forget, there is plenty to borrow from the kitchen).

The Parking lot is behind the building, with the entrance to the parking off of Barrett Avenue. The entrance to the building is also in the back of the building.
 
 

Monday, February 15, 6:30 pm 
The Social Change Book Club presents 
The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge 
by Matt Ridley 
The Loft, 107 Crescent Ave, 40206
Working from the idea that evolution is happening all around us and is the best way of understanding how the human world changes, Matt Ridley in our February book, The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge, looks at how countless facets of society and nature develop and change over time. More often than not, there is no rational mind or organized decision-making behind the development of common concepts or widespread phenomena, but an unconscious reaction to an immense variety of factors.

The Social Change Book Club is now in its ninth year of monthly meetings. It is open to everyone who is interested in understanding, participating, leading, or supporting social change. Each month we select a book and get together to discuss. Selections rotate among three themes: social changes, how we work with others to make change happen, and the inner qualities needed to bring change into the world.

Hosted by Howard Mason 
HowardMason@NewPossibilitiesAssociates.com 
www.NewPossibilitiesAssociates.com

  
  Tuesday, February 16, 7 pm
Greater Louisville Sierra Club presents
"The 2016 General Assembly:
What's in store for the environment?"
Clifton Center,  2117 Payne Street, 40206

Please join us Tuesday, February 16 as we welcome Tom FitzGerald for our annual Kentucky legislative update. We'll learn about the good, the bad, and the ugly of our current state legislative agenda. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about what's going on in Frankfort and what we can do to make a difference.

Tom FitzGerald has been Director of the Kentucky Resources Council(KRC) since 1984.  KRC is a non-profit environmental advocacy organization providing free legal, strategic and policy assistance to individuals, organizations and communities concerning environmental quality, resource extraction, energy, and utility issues. Fitz received the Environmental Quality Commission Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002; the Henry R. Heyburn Public Service Award from the UK College of Law in 2003, the Kentucky Nature Preserves Commission Biological Diversity Award in 2003, the inaugural Professional Achievement Award from the University of Kentucky College of Law Alumni Association in 2008, the 14th Heinz Award in the Environment Category in 2008, and the Brennan-Haly Award from the University of Louisville Department of Political Science in 2012. He has been a fixture in the halls of the Kentucky General Assembly since 1978.

Greater Louisville Sierra Club's programs are always
free and open to the public.
Please join us.

 
Four Tuesdays, February 16 through March 8, 6 - 7:30 pm
Ecology of the Spirit: 
Reflection from Rachel Carson and Thomas Merton  
at Bellarmine University

Using selections from both Thomas Merton, a Cistercian monk, and Rachel Carson, a scientist, we'll explore how being aware, identifying spots of time, and recognizing the holy in the ordinary are integral to expanding our ecological and spiritual consciousness. We'll identify points of connection and discover new ways of being in relationship with all of creation. Recommended (but not required) reading: New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton; Silent Spring by Rachel Carson

Instructor: Vanessa Hurst, MA is the former Executive Director for The Merton Institute for Contemplative Living and author of of Engaging Compassion Through Intent And Action. 
HMAN 469 / 4 Tuesdays / Feb.16 - Mar. 8 / 6 - 7:30 p.m. / $59 ($69 after Feb. 9) 
For more information/to register: http://www.bellarmine.edu/ce/

 

 

Saturday, February 20, 9:00 am - 12:30 pm
White Environmentalists Acting for Racial Justice:  A Training
Thomas Jefferson Unitarian Church, 4936 Brownsboro Road, 40222

"To Change Everything We Need Everyone."   Start to embody this powerful climate change slogan by coming to this event.  

The training will be conducted by "Louisville Showing Up for Racial Justice" (LSURJ).  The goal of the training is to strengthen the Louisville environmental community's work on climate change and other earth-care issues through racial justice action and accountable relationship-building with communities of color.  The format will be interactive and workshop-like.

Let's face it: most Louisvillians who work on behalf of the natural world are privileged white people.  Since last October's "People's Climate March," there have been some small but significant success in breaking down the racial barrier.  This training is an effort to continue breaking down that barrier.

LSURJ is part of the group "Showing Up for Racial Justice" (SURJ).  "SURJ is a national network of groups and individuals organizing White people for racial justice. Through community organizing, mobilizing, and education, SURJ moves White people to act as part of a multi-racial majority for justice with passion and accountability."

To attend please RSVP here.



Saturday, February 27 and Sunday, February 28
Deep Imagery
Participating with Images from Earth, Soul and the Invisible World

With
Marilyn Stoner and
Doug Van Houten

Venue: Rice House, Goshen, Kentucky - with fields, woods and ponds to wander,
Saturday 9 am - 8:30 pm  &  Sunday 10 am - 3 pm
Fee: $150 - 225 (a sliding scale to fit your financial needs. Your generosity allows others to participate.) A $75 non-refundable deposit is required to hold your space.  Advance registration required.

Deep Imagery is a traditional tool of 21st Century psychologists for exploring the unknown parts of our individual psyches helping us to befriend the demons and angels, fears, wounds and shadowy entities that dwell there. Deep Imagery is the process of inner journeys in which one interacts, while awake, with the images, beings, and entities that live in the deeper layers of our psyches. Jungians know this as Active Imagination. On such journeys we gather up healing, direction, and radical transformation.

There will be time for solo wandering on the land while engaging in tasks designed to feed the mystery at the center of our lives. Practices that we'll use could include art, poetry, council (group sharing), ceremony, dreamwork, and deep imagery journeying.  

To register or obtain more information you may contact:
doug@dougvanhouten.com (502) 472-6563  or  
marilynstoner@fastmail.fm  (502) 456-1502




March 7, 6:30 pm
Earth Talks Book Club presents
Coming Back to Life by Joanna Macy

"The heart that breaks open can contain the whole universe."

"The most remarkable feature of this historical moment on Earth is not that we are on the way to destroying the world  we've actually been on the way for quite a while. It is that we are beginning to wake up, as from a millennia-long sleep, to a whole new relationship to our world, to ourselves and each other."

"The Courage to See, the Power to Choose" with Joanna Macy, PhD


Gaian Teacher Joanna Macy PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, she has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application.

Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science. The many dimensions of this work are explored in her books including Despair and Personal Power in the Nuclear Age (1983); Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World 1998); Joanna's memoir entitled Widening Circles (2000); World as Lover, World as Self (2007), and A Year With Rilke, (with Anita Barrows, 2009).

"To Live in the Fullness of Time", Joanna Macy
Audio problem corrects :25 seconds Macy takes stage at 9:40

Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings. Her group methods, known as the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.

Choosing Life at Bioneers, Joanna Macy

Visit her website
In addition to the amazing text Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World, we are recommending Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We're In Without Going Crazy (coauthored by Chris Johnstone) as well as the above videos.  Watch, read what you feel called to.

 
Hope arises in action - Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone

Save the Date
Spring Equinox Sacred Celebration
Saturday, March 19 7pm


Circle - Midway

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