January 15-18, 2016 | Activist Retreat at Blue Cliff Monastery 7

Sacred Justice: The Heart of Compassion for Ourselves and Our World

A retreat for social justice activists

Blue Cliff Monastery, Pine Bush, NY (2 hours north of New York City)

Facilitated by Kaira Jewel Lingo and Marisela Gomez

This retreat for activists, community organizers, and human rights defenders will give us the opportunity to come home to ourselves so we can take better care of ourselves and others. The path of mindfulness helps us cultivate a clear mind, as well as understanding and compassion, to ensure that we do not perpetuate the injustices we seek to change. It also helps us to be and to cultivate the Beloved Community we wish to manifest.

The lives of social justice activists are challenging and easily lead to burnout. We are working in unjust systems that maintain disproportionate control in the hands of the powerful, and have marginalized and disenfranchised people of color, low income and working class people, women, lesbian/gay/bisexual/ transgender/queer/intersex/questioning (LGBTQIQ) individuals, people with disabilities, immigrants, non-English speakers, and non-Christians.

In this retreat we will slow down and reconnect with ourselves and each other through Sitting and Walking meditation, Vegan meals in Noble Silence, Dharma Talks, Dharma Sharing in smaller groups, InterPlay, and other body wisdom practices.  Issue-based workshops will be offered by a variety of activist-practitioners.

Please bring something to share, musical instrument, etc. for our Be-in on Monday morning — and something for our activist altar that connects you with causes that inspire you.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Registration Information

Total Room and Board per person for 3 nights:

$150 – $270 – dorm (employed adult)

$90 -$210 dorm (seniors (65 and older), students (18-27), unemployed).

Scholarships are available, please contact:  Marisela Gomez –  socialhealthconcepts@gmail.com

Donations for facilitators are welcome as support for facilitators is not included in the retreat cost.

Registration site: http://www.bluecliffmonastery.org/register-for-a-retreat/

• Scroll down and click on Group Registration Z.
• In the box, “I am registering” select “I am registering individually.”
• On the second page of the registration site, please type in the group name: “Social Activists”.

For Scholarship information, please contact:  Marisela Gomez –  socialhealthconcepts@gmail.com

For ride share information, please contact:

Baltimore area: Heather Douglas – heather.lynn.douglas@gmail.com

Washington DC area: Ashindi Maxton – ashindi@gmail.com

NY City area: Danielle Saint Louis – lovecirclesangha@gmail.com

Facilitators:

Marisela Gomez is a mindfulness practitioner, public health scholar activist, and physician. Of Afro-Latina ancestry, she has spent more than 24 years in Baltimore involved in social justice activism and social determinants of health research, writing, and practice. Since 2004 she has been studying and practicing mindfulness and other forms of meditation at Buddhist practice centers in US, Nepal, Malaysia, Thailand and France. She has co-organized and co-facilitated mindfulness retreats for People of Color and Social activists since 2007.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        

Kaira Jewel Lingo teaches Buddhist meditation, mindfulness, and compassion internationally, with a focus on children, families, and young people. Of African American and European American ancestry, she was an ordained nun for 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing. She is now a lay Dharma teacher, leading retreats in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Brazil, India and Southern Africa, and offering mindfulness programs in schools. She   edited Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children by Thich Nhat Hanh. She also leads regular retreats for people of color, activists and artists. She explores the interweaving of art, play, ecology and spiritual practice and is a certified yoga teacher and InterPlay leader.  In spring 2015, she was spiritual practitioner in residence at Schumacher College, an ecological college, in the United Kingdom.

Workshops and Presenters:                                                                                                                                                                                                     

Presencing Theater with Somatics Practice: Healing our Activism

Social Presencing Theater is an innovative social art form that cultivates body-based, intuitive knowledge of the usually unseen dynamics of relationships and social systems. We will engage in individual and group embodied mindfulness practice that allow us to map the “social body.” Participants will access fresh insights into self and the collective, and explore the practice of leadership as caring for the whole.

Presenter: Beatrice Anderson

Beatrice is the program director for Brooklyn Zen Center’s teen meditation program, the Awake Youth Project. Beatrice began her contemplative practice in 2001 and has studied in the Tiep Hein Vietnamese Zen tradition with Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and also in the Nichiren Buddhism tradition. As an artist and educator, Beatrice has facilitated learning environments in self-discovery and self-empowerment for the past sixteen years in embodied and sound healing contemplative practices. Her life’s calling is to help others experience total liberation of their hearts and minds from our co-created human conditioning.

The Dharma, Hindrances and Opening Our Hearts to Ecological Crises

A monk once asked the Chinese Master Yun Men, “What is the work of the Buddha’s whole life?” Yun Men replied, “An appropriate response.” In the face of extended and deepening ecological crises, we have the opportunity to creatively define for ourselves appropriate response: response that is wise, compassionate and transformative. The Dharma offers vital gifts to this moment of individual and collective suffering: resources to inspire and sustain the heart and mind, insight into the deep interdependence of all of life as well as the common roots of climate change and other social crises, and a path of engagement as a direct form of practice. In this workshop, we’ll explore these gifts as well as the hindrances that prevent us from opening our hearts to these crises, supporting ourselves and one another in a wise, compassionate, transformative response.

Presenter: Kristin Barker

Kristin is director, co-founder of One Earth Sangha and exploring what it means to practice a Buddhist response to environmental and social injustice. She is dedicated to cultivating broad-scale awakening to authentic earth relationship through meditation, sustainable living and advocacy. Kristin is an active member of the Insight Meditation Community of Washington (DC), former board member of the Buddhist Insight Network, GreenFaith fellow and is currently being trained as a Community Dharma Leader through Spirit Rock. Kristin is also a co-founder of White Awake whose mission is to develop awareness of race dynamics among white people. She holds a Master’s in Environmental Management from Duke University, has worked as an independent consultant and staff member at several environmental organizations. Kristin is a native of New Mexico and currently lives in Washington DC.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Does My Race Matter in My Activism?

This workshop will provide a space for learning and reflection about the role our race plays in being an activist for justice—how we can enter into, interact with, and contribute to social movements with awareness of the impact of racism and white privilege on what we do and how we do it.

  Co-presenter: Dottye Burt-Markowitz

Dottye has done training, consulting and coaching on racial justice for over 25 years, first through her own organization Paso Training and Consulting and now with Baltimore Racial Justice Action. Her journey to this work began with growing up in East St. Louis, Illinois, as a white child witnessing everyday blatant racism against Black people. Attending college at Texas Christian University she learned that Mexican Americans were also targets of racial bigotry and oppression, expanding her understanding of how racism affects different people of color with different histories in the U.S. Working in the 1980’s with a national peace organization, she saw how predominantly white organizations acted against their own interests by failing to recognize how habits of unrecognized white supremacist thinking kept them from achieving their own goals. She studied anti-racism education with Dr. Margo Okazawa-Rey in the 1990’s and has been doing racial justice education and consulting ever since. Her husband, son, and granddaughters, along with her friends and collaborators in the struggle for justice, enable her to grow in understanding and humility in the work. Her spiritual reflection and practice is influenced by teachers and writers from different religious perspectives including Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism, and American Indian traditions, and is primarily rooted in connection with the natural world and the richness of its teachings.

  Co-presenter: Avis Ransom

Avis grew up in rural Virginia and attended all Black segregated schools through high school, from which she graduated second in her class. She moved to Baltimore, Maryland to attend Morgan State University and graduated four years later with honors with a B.S. degree in chemistry. She began her career as an engineer, working for Department of Defense contractors. After receiving an MBA from Loyola University she started and operated a business for 15 years providing business development and engineering consulting services to small businesses, non-profit organizations, universities and government agencies. Currently she is a senior consultant with Baltimore Racial Justice Action (BRJA), an anti –oppression training, coaching and consulting firm. Avis began to provide antiracism training and workshops about 20 years ago. Working with BRJA she supports organizations seeking to purge themselves of racist practices and ways of operating. She also facilitates trainings and workshops on antiracism and internalized oppression. She is on the Board of Directors of the Baltimore Algebra Project, the Job Opportunities Task Force, the Baltimore Workforce Investment Board and the Baltimore Sustainability Commission.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               

Applying Mindfulness and Acceptance to Our Own Privileges for More Radically Inclusive and Intersectional Movements

As activists, we are obviously keenly aware of how the specific social justice issue we work on and the people impacted by it are marginalized in our society. Often times we have personal experience and trauma related to the issue that can be compounded by this work. At the same time, we also have privileged identities that make it easier for us to not be aware of and ignore other people with different and multiple marginalized identities who are also impacted by the same social justice issue. As more and more marginalized groups are (rightfully) demanding a seat at the table, we can sometimes feel like our own marginalization in society is being erased and our work and movement are even being dominated by other multiply-marginalized people. Additionally in our resource-scarce movements where we feel the need to focus in order to be effective, being asked to give up our privilege and share space with even more marginalized groups in our society can feel counter-productive. By applying mindfulness and acceptance to this emotionally difficult situation, we can learn to be more compassionate and validating of our own marginalization and that of others in order to shift our work and movement to be more radically inclusive and intersectional.

Presenter: Sandra Kim

Sandra is the Founder and Publisher of Everyday Feminism. Founded in 2012, Everyday Feminism has become one of the most popular independent feminist media sites in the world, with 5 million monthly visitors from over 150 countries. As its leader, Sandra’s deep-seated values are evident in Everyday Feminism’s unique approach to feminism. As a person with multiple marginalized identities, she is committed to having intersectionality and radical inclusiveness be core to the feminism promoted in the online magazine. Sandra also brings an unique inside-out approach to feminism based on her belief in the interdependence of personal transformation and social transformation and that self-love and healing in community are necessary for social justice to spread. Prior to Everyday Feminism, she worked in the nonprofit capacity building field, social entrepreneurship field, and anti-human trafficking movement and volunteered to work with sexual assault survivors, intimate partner violence survivors, and youth involved in gang-related activities.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          

Playing for Justice: Resilience, Well-being and Community Building through InterPlay

We will explore the creative, powerfully integrative practices InterPlay offers to unlock the wisdom of our bodies as a tool in challenging injustice and oppression, and in building community. We will play with improvisational movement, storytelling, poetry, voice, and music to build bridges, heal, and make peace…all while having FUN. Appropriate for all ability levels, bodies and ages. InterPlay is a practice that builds individual and interpersonal awareness, leadership ability and develops strong community. InterPlay is also a world-wide community of activists who believe in their ability to change the world through freedom of expression.

Presenter: Kaira Jewel Lingo

Kaira Jewel teaches Buddhist meditation, mindfulness, and compassion internationally, with a focus on children, families, and young people. An ordained nun of 15 years in Thich Nhat Hanh’s Order of Interbeing, she is now a lay Dharma teacher, leading retreats in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Brazil, India and Southern Africa, and offering mindfulness programs in schools. She edited Thich Nhat Hanh’s, Planting Seeds: Practicing Mindfulness with Children. She also leads regular retreats for people of color, activists and artists. She explores the interweaving of art, play, ecology and spiritual practice and is a certified yoga teacher and InterPlay leader. In spring 2015, she was spiritual practitioner in residence at Schumacher College, an ecological college, in the United Kingdom

Sponsored by Baltimore and Beyond: Mindfulness Community. Baltimore and Beyond: Mindfulness Community’s root practice is based on the teachings and practices of Vietnamese Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. We also invite those practicing with us to share  other traditions which uses the path of mindfulness as a way of living more beautifully and honestly.