At the heart of every religious tradition is the personal experience of the Mystery of Living Compassionately. This experience reaches beyond any particular person, nation, culture, or religion and animates all of them spiritually. It embraces the whole human race and all of creation. Religions can witness and point to this Mystery but only a person can experience it. That is why this deeply personal work of exploring the Mystery of Living Compassionately is of universal importance.

In every religious tradition and age there are contemplatives, mystics, saints, sages, pilgrims and prophets who personally experience and give witness to the Mystery that is within us of the compassionate connection with creation and with everyone else who exists. Their lives keep telling us that, deep down, each one of us already is a mystic but most of us don’t know it. Their constant refrain is not just “be all that you can be,” but “be what you already are.” They call, not just for more mystics in the monasteries, but for more mystics in the marketplace so that a culture of compassion may gradually replace the culture of competition and violence that our self-centered way of living has created for us. For them, experiencing the Mystery of Living Compassionately takes place in the here and now and it makes all the difference in the world.

Saturday, September 17, 2011, 9:30 a.m.-Noon (no registration necessary)

As spiritual pilgrims, we experience the Mystery of Living Compassionately by learning how to walk in a Sacred Way. This is not a program or a project. It is a creative process through which we begin to embody the Mystery of Living Compassionately. This new way of walking comes to us as a discovery and a marvelous gift. It is very different from the self-centered way in which we may have first learned to walk. In this keynote presentation, we will describe and explore the experience of walking in a Sacred Way and the atmosphere of universal Harmony and Compassion that it creates in our divided self and in our deeply divided world.

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Saturday, October 1, 2011, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (Please register by September 26, 2011.)

Through these meditations you will make a pilgrimage in which you will experience the Mystery of Living Compassionately flowing through the story of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures. The cost for this retreat is $45.00, lunch included.

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Saturday, October 15, 2011, 9:30 a.m.-Noon (no registration necessary)

In this workshop we will study two core prayers from daily Jewish liturgy. These two prayers, which Jewish people have prayed daily for the last two thousand years, envision Creation and Revelation as mirror images, each embodying God’s compassion in a different way. Through careful text study, conversation and meditation, we will explore our own experiences of God’s compassion in Creation and Revelation and ask how we might be ever more faithful vessels of God’s compassion.

Rabbi Nahum Ward-Lev is the Scholar-in-Residence at Temple Beth Shalom in Santa Fe, NM. He founded the Beit Midrash (House of Exploration), an in-depth learning circle now entering its twelfth year. For many years, Nahum has led workshops on Scripture Study at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu. He trains physicians in Spirituality and Medicine at the Northern New Mexico Family Practice Residency Program. He is a trained Spiritual Director, and a national Fellow of the Rabbis Without Borders Project in New York. Nahum is a co-founder of the Jewish and Christian Dialogue in Santa Fe. Rabbi Ward-Lev lives in Santa Fe with his wife and teenage daughter.

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Saturday, November 12, 2011, 9:30 a.m.-Noon (no registration necessary)

The God of Compassion is first revealed in Creation itself and the image of the Compassionate One develops through the liberation of the people from Egypt and being drawn through the Reed Sea into the Promised Land where they will know the care and tending of the covenant with their faithful God. And the heart of the Prophets is the shifting, maturing image of the God of compassion, of justice and mercy, as Shepherd, as Mother/Father, as Refuge and Sanctuary. We will look at stories and pieces of the earlier Testament that are hinges opening into an experience of God that Jesus will know and reveal in his own person.

Dr. Megan McKenna is a renowned author on biblical and spiritual themes who travels the world as a lecturer, retreat leader and storyteller. She works with Indigenous groups, in base Christian Communities and with justice and peace groups as well as parishes, dioceses and religious communities. She has been on the United States National Board of Pax Christi and in 2002 was appointed an Ambassador of Peace for Pax Christi. 

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Saturday, December 3, 2011, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (Please register by November 28.)

Through these meditations you will make a pilgrimage in which you will experience the Star of David and the Cross of Jesus embracing and creating an atmosphere of universal Peace and Compassion in an environment of increasing animosity, violence, and war. The cost for this retreat is $45.00, lunch included.

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Saturday, January 7, 2012, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (Please register by January 3, 2012.)

Through these meditations you will make a pilgrimage in which you will experience the monk within you Walking in a Sacred Way through the Mystery of Living Compassionately. The cost for this retreat is $45.00, lunch included.

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Saturday, February 4, 2012, 9:30 a.m.-Noon (no registration necessary)

Jesus' God is tender, forgiving, a healer, intent on reconciliation, and instilling freedom in those who are to be known as Beloved Children and Friends of God. Compassion takes on new depths and breadth extended to those most in jeopardy, most in need as human beings, and most disdained by others. And yet compassion is strong, demanding, physical and concerned with touch, with heart and with passion. Stories of God, as giving birth to new Christians and sustaining them, fathering them, in body and inspiriting will draw into the icon of God the Most Compassionate One.

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Saturday, March 3, 2012, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (Please register by February 27, 2012.)

Through these meditations you will make a pilgrimage in which you will experience the Mystery of Living Compassionately that flows through the depths of transpersonal psychology and of every religious tradition. The cost for this retreat day is $45.00, lunch included.

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Saturday, March 24, 2012, 9:30 a.m.-Noon (no registration necessary)

The paths of service and activism are paths of compassion necessary to save what is left of our planet and all its inhabitants. How can we participate in our democracy in ways that conform with our own nature and principles, especially nonviolence? As Gandhi said, “I have never advocated passive resistance to injustice, just non violent resistance.” In this morning together, we will explore social activism from a Buddhist perspective.

Doug Booth is a meditation teacher and attorney living with his wife, Lyra, in the mountains outside of Santa Fe. He has represented numerous political dissidents and was lead lobbyist for the New Mexico A.C.L.U. for six years. He currently represents debtors in bankruptcy, and homeowners in foreclosure.

Doug is also the founder, and a teacher, with the Heart Mountain Prison Project. Since 1998, Heart Mountain has provided meditation and yoga classes to prison inmates and juvenile offenders throughout New Mexico. He plays bass, writes fiction and is finishing a meditation handbook for inmates.

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Saturday, April 14, 2012, 9:00 a.m.-4:00 p.m. (Please register by April 9, 2012.)

You will spend this day meditatively identifying with a person whom you consider to have embodied the Mystery of Living Compassionately. To do this kind of work, the person you choose must no longer be physically alive, and you have to be quite familiar with the basic facts of her or his life. Otherwise, it is good to read their biography in preparation for this retreat and to bring your book(s) with you. You can
then take that person as your spiritual companion and spend the day meditatively walking in her or his shoes. The cost for this retreat day is $45.00, lunch included.

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Sunday, May 6, 2012, 3:00 p.m. (no registration necessary)

In what has become an annual tradition, our “Compassion” Series concludes with a wonderful celebratory performance by this renowned a cappella men’s ensemble. The name “de Profundis” is Latin for “out of the deep.” It plays on the distinctiveness of the male voice, while at the same time bespeaking the conviction that music has the capacity to reveal the profound and the sacred, that which is concealed within our own depths.

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The cost for each 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Retreat Day is $45.00 which includes lunch. Please make checks payable to “Norbertine Community.” (We are not able to process credit cards.)

There is no charge for the 9:30 a.m.-Noon Mornings of Recollection however free-will offerings are greatly appreciated to help defray the cost of the programs. Thank you!

For more information on any of these offerings and/or to register for a retreat, please contact Meg Ashcroft at 873-4399, Ext. 204, or email her at MAshcroft@norbertinecommunity.org.

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