Connection and Community are essential to our well being

In the past 5 years I am finding more adult students in our masters courses and Professional Development programs are genuinely excited to be invited into an authentic community building experience.

Psychology and physiology tell us we need each other to be healthy and thrive.  We need true community for health and happiness.  We gather to celebrate our shared humanity and we gather to heal our shared wounds. 

Community and connection promote health while "isolation fosters stress, disease and death.  Social isolation is as dangerous as smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, obesity and lack of exercise." - James House, University of Michigan

Connection and Community are essential to our well being.

Fear and Loving

I am aware there are two distinctly different sides of my being.  There is the fearful side that moves away from what I do not understand and there is the loving and welcoming side that invites what I do not understand to come closer so I can learn and grow.

The fearful part of me looks for safety, security, consistency, and normality.  The open and loving part of me preaches trust, kindness, compassion and empathy.  The fearful part of me needs constraints and walls.  The loving part of me needs connections and relationships. 

I have had moments when my fear turns to anger.  In this anger fueled fear, I want to protect, run and hide, and sometimes fight.  I am grateful that my life has been filled with more moments of welcoming, trust, compassion, wonderful new learning, teamwork and community building.  This interdependence is creative, innovative and forgiving.  I pray to "be the change you want to see in the world." - Gandhi

I pray for the courage to trust when I am afraid.

I pray for the ability to listen when I don't understand.

I pray for the willingness to connect when I feel alone.

I pray for the building of bridges when I am surrounded by walls.

What really matters?

"What we do when our arm is raised, about to strike or soothe, will determine the next hundred years." - Mark Nepo

"We are one gesture away from being the cruelty that we have suffered or one kindness from helping each other heal." - Mark Nepo

We need to ask ourselves, what really matters?  We need to ask each other, what is essential?  We then must lovingly challenge each other to live the answers.  We must lean towards each other.  As we lean into each other, we create a support system that nurtures our common core beliefs.  The common core beliefs of life and community have always held human kind together.  Humanity always comes together in tragedy.  Great loss brings great love.

We are more alike than we are different.  "We are hardwired for connection." - Brene Brown.  Life teaches us to contribute to the good of the whole.  In isolation, we die.  In unity, we live.

In our human DNA there is empathy, compassion, collaboration and respect.  These characteristics are essential to our humanity.

As we repair the world, we repair ourselves

As we repair our personal worlds, we repair our wounded world

Together we heal

Cutting edge physics teaches us that there is no, single privileged point of view.  No single perspective holds the entire truth.  When we hold fast to a single point of view, we are damaging and often disrespectful.  Life is a unified whole.  We can only come to truth through relationship, connection and the willingness to understand other points of view.  

Einstein's theory of relativity and the core of all spiritual beliefs teaches that we are more together than alone.  We need to start to live the truth of our connection.  We need to recover the desire to build community.  We need to heal!  We must gather together in community to heal our social and emotional wounds.