Prayer as Resistance: Contemplative Practices for Liberative Justice

Speaker: Andrew Skotnicki

Workshop Description:

Among the prohibitive hurdles that impede the progress of the contemplative activist, assuming that s/he is a practicing contemplative, is self-righteousness. Jesus established loving and healing relationships with everyone except two groups who adamantly resisted: the very religious and those convinced of their moral rectitude. All noble sentiments of the passionate reformer aside, a binary approach to the problems we confront in furthering the Reign of God leads to further division and ends up profiting the dualist, not those s/he aims to serve. Shaking hands with the devil not only means shaking hands with one's opponent; it means shaking hands with oneself.

Title: Brokenness to Beauty: Kintsugi

Speaker: David Kim

Workshop 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 $70 fee) are available if needed. Please contact [email protected] for more information.

Note: $70 fee for materials (15 participants max, in-person only)

Title: Repairers of the Breach: A Contemplative Politics for Our Time

Speaker: Leonard McMahon

​​Workshop Description:

Common Ground Dialogue 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 it does so 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 or even “empathy.” 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 takes a political stand.

This brief workshop will involve an introductory lecture with some detail as to history and sources, an overview of the method, a short practice session with fellow participants, and a question and answer period. The aim is to become acquainted with the basics quickly while piquing interest in future practice.

Title: Ignatian Imaginative Contemplation as Resistance

Speaker: Robert W. McChesney, S.J.

Visiting Research Fellow and Spiritual Director
Ignatian Retreats, Spiritual Direction, and Leadership
Holy Trinity Church
Washington, DC 20007

Workshop Description:

Have you ever seen Jesus face to face? I have. Are you familiar with the timbre of his voice? I am. Did you ever touch his wounds? Yes, many times. The formal use of the imagination in contemplative practice in the western tradition can be traced at least to a popular 14th century bestseller by Ludolph of Saxony called Vita Christi. It was subsequently reinterpreted and popularized by Saint Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus (Jesuits). Ignatian imaginative contemplation is widely practiced internationally today, and mediates divine encounter, personal healing, solidarity, and transformation into the compassion of God for a troubled planet and its most pressing needs.

This workshop includes three components: presentation of an authentic first-person account as case study exemplifying the liberative power of imaginative contemplation; prayerful participation in a short, Scripture-based guided imaginative contemplation; and an opportunity to share the experience of contemplation and debrief the workshop.

Title: God Dwells in the Thick Darkness: Listening and Wrestling with the Divine Antagonist

Speaker: Shann Ray

Workshop Description:

In contemplative leadership embodied by listening and action, a lens of poetry, story, and song can help us find the greater good in the wake of national and world violence, grief, and loss. In this presentation we will consider the body at rest and war, in beauty and strength, in violence and despair, in the finality of darkness and the atomic fusion that beckons new life. From the ashes of holocaust, in the unity of deep listening, love becomes an essential human gift found not only in casting one’s eyes upward, but in visceral, physical gestures found in reconciliation ceremonies worldwide: a healing hand on the chest of friends and strangers, a loving embrace between enemies. The breath of the holy over the wrist bones of a child. Deus in omnibus. God in all things. In this session we will craft poems together through a joyful method of engaging contemplation and the imagination.

Title: Finding, Holding, and Being "Center": God-Self Integration as Liberative Justice for Marginalized Peoples

Speaker: adwoa Lewis-Wilson

Workshop Description:

For persons who inhabit marginalized identities in a climate of heightened consciousness of oppressive systems, 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 on the individual's spiritual vitality and the ongoing revelation of God among all people. We will reframe the definition of justice and reconciliation precisely in the marginalized person's liberated spiritual practice, arguing that this recentering is essential for any sustainable, culturally transfigurative shift in justice. What revelation of God is nested exclusively in those who are oppressed and how might they reclaim that spiritual dignity for the good of all as a form of generative resistance? This workshop is grounded in the Christian tradition as well as the experience of being a person of marginalized identity serving among folks of dominant identity (for myself, a Black woman exploring race in predominantly White congregations.) However, the concepts should be applicable to all. Participants are invited to prepare by reflecting in advance on their own areas of privilege and marginalization, as well as their sentiments toward each. Push back, curiosity, and personal experience are welcome!