SDI Encounters

EP042 - Updates on SDI's Annual Conference and One-Night Sacred Feminine Celebration

It’s a special Friday afternoon house episode with Matt Whitney and Frederica Helmiere, updating you on two amazing upcoming events for spiritual companions. We give updates on our SDI Annual Conference happening in April 2020, having just returned from a site visit to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and shared a bit about the increased workshop options and the second one-day Journey we added. We also talk about the one-night event with Mirabai Starr and Reverend Ann Holmes Redding happening in Bellevue, Washington on November 12, 2019. We recorded on a Friday afternoon and we had some fun with our conversation, doing an improvised deep dive into the differences between “adobe” and “adobo” – listen to the whole episode to learn about the important distinctions between these very different things!
Spiritual Companionship for our Times – Our Annual Conference – is happening April 23-26, 2020 in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Learn more at www.sdievents.org.
Information on our one-night event, A Fierce and Tender Wisdom – An Evening with Mirabai Starr and Reverend Ann Holmes Redding, can be found here: https://www.sdiworld.org/educational-event/fierce-and-tender-wisdom-reclaiming-feminine-across-spiritual-traditions-evening

EP041 - Interspirituality and the Sacred Feminine - Reverend Ann Holmes Redding

Ann Holmes Redding is an author, university lecturer and former Episcopal priest who honors Islam alongside her Christian belief. She will be co-presenting with Mirabai Starr at a one-night event and gathering, hosted by SDI, on November 12th at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue Washington. The event is called A Fierce and Tender Wisdom: Reclaiming the Feminine Across Spiritual Traditions. Learn more on our website, sdiworld.org
What is the Sacred Feminine? In this conversation with Frederica Helmiere, Reverend Ann talks about spiritual practices of birthing, midwifing, and even hospice care – as a way of exploring and holding space for our urgent and troubling times. Through the metaphors of labor in childbirth, we hear of the Sacred Feminine as practicing the “lived experience of unimaginable pain for new life”

EP040 - Spiritual Journey - Iona with Frederica Helmiere and Dave Brown

This week we talk about Iona and Pilgrimage. Our Director of Events and Programs, Frederica Helmiere, chats with Pastor Dave Brown, one of the Pacific Northwest Interfaith Amigos, and one of the guides for our next Iona Journey, happening in May 2020 – we’ve just released all the details for this trip and you can check it out at sdijourneys.org/iona-scotland-2020
Some of our previous episodes by Frederica Helmiere are dedicated to spiritual travel and our Journeys offerings and I encourage you to check those out.
You can read all about our SDI Journeys, and consider taking your own pilgrimage journey with us, at sdijourneys.org.
Book recommended during the podcast is called The Art of Pilgrimage by Phil Cousineau 
 

Ep039 - "I Was Re-Created." Diane Millis on Writing Her Book - Part 2

Dr. Diane Millis is an inspirational speaker, teacher, writer and spiritual director. She's one of the most deeply respected and most popular workshop presenters at SDI's annual conferences. SDI Press has published her book, titled Re-Creating A Life: Learning How to Tell Our Most Life-Giving Story, which you can purchase via this link.
In these next two episodes we share a really beautiful and intimate conversation we recently recorded between Diane and Reverend Seifu Anil Singh-Molares around the writing of Diane’s book, and how she brought her own stories and experiences into this important work on storytelling. This conversation was the basis for the Presence journal article that appears in the September 2019 issue of Presence – our quarterly journal on spiritual companionship, which is mailed out to members of SDI.
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Support for this podcast comes from Spiritual Companionship For Our Times, SDI’s annual gathering of spiritual companions happening in Santa Fe New Mexico, April 23 – 26 2020. Registrations are now open, with Early Bird pricing through January 31. We’ll be celebrating SDI’s 30th Anniversary, and charting the road ahead as we seek to welcome more and more people to the transformational gifts of spiritual companionship, and to make this healing modality available to every person on the planet.
Learn more now about our annual conference at www.sdievents.org.

EP038 - "I was re-created." Diane Millis on writing her book - Part 1

Dr. Diane Millis is an inspirational speaker, teacher, writer and spiritual director. She's one of the most deeply respected and most popular workshop presenters at SDI's annual conferences. SDI Press has published her book, titled Re-Creating A Life: Learning How to Tell Our Most Life-Giving Story, which you can purchase via this link.
In these next two episodes we share a really beautiful and intimate conversation we recently recorded between Diane and Reverend Seifu Anil Singh-Molares around the writing of Diane’s book, and how she brought her own stories and experiences into this important work on storytelling. This conversation was the basis for the Presence journal article that appears in the September 2019 issue of Presence – our quarterly journal on spiritual companionship, which is mailed out to members of SDI.
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Support for this podcast comes from SDI’s upcoming one night event with Mirabai Starr and Ann Holmes Redding – A Fierce and Tender Wisdom: Reclaiming the Feminine Across Spiritual Traditions, happening November 12 2019 at Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington. In this extraordinary SDI event, we will gather and explore and model cooperative feminine leadership in these turbulent times.  Join us for an interactive sacred celebration that reclaims and centers women’s voices in spiritual spaces.  Together we will step up to the call for prophetic feminine wisdom and take refuge in the sanctuary of community. Learn more at our website. Register via this link.

EP037 - Rewilding and Companioning the Earth - Mary DeJong - Part 2

Mary DeJong is a deep ecologist, ecotheologian, urban naturalist, and practitioner and guide of place-based pilgrimage. She specializes in the spiritual companionship of "rewilding." Mary facilitates retreats and pilgrimages in the Pacific Northwest and in Iona, Scotland that strengthen the unique and mystical interconnection of participants, the sacred, and the natural world.
How do we facilitate space for the Holy to speak through nature, and more specifically, the bioregion in which we live? How do we meet the growing anxiety that is undeniably present related to the ecocidal destruction of their homescapes and the Earth as a whole?
Mary discusses this with Frederica Helmiere and myself, and offers a preview of what to expect at the Rewilding Institute that she will facilitate as part of our ‘day-before’ offerings at our 2020 Conference in Santa Fe in April 2020.
Mary is offering a Rewilding Institute at our SDI Conference in Santa Fe in April 2020. Learn more at www.sdievents.org You can learn more about Mary’s work at her website, www.waymarkers.net
This is Part 2 of our conversation with Mary. You can check out Part 1 in the previous episode.
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Support for this podcast comes from:
THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE TRAINING INSTITUTE
BEGINNING JANUARY 2020, “INTERFAITH AND INTERSPIRITUAL WISDOM TRAINING, ”A UNIQUE, ONLINE PROGRAM WITH AN OPTIONAL URBAN PILGRIMAGE IN CHICAGO. IF YOU’RE DRAWN TO COMPANION PEOPLE OF OTHER TRADITIONS, INCLUDING THE EVER-GROWING TIDE OF SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENTS, THIS PROGRAM IS FOR YOU! IDEAL FOR SPIRITUAL AND SECULAR COMMUNITY LEADERS, EDUCATORS, SOCIAL WORKERS, LIFE COACHES, THERAPISTS, CHAPLAINS AND MORE. VISIT WWW.SPIRITUALGUIDANCETRAINING.COM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS INNOVATIVE OFFERING. 

EP036 - Rewilding and Companioning the Earth - Mary DeJong - Part 1

Mary DeJong is a deep ecologist, ecotheologian, urban naturalist, and practitioner and guide of place-based pilgrimage. She specializes in the spiritual companionship of "rewilding." Mary facilitates retreats and pilgrimages in the Pacific Northwest and in Iona, Scotland that strengthen the unique and mystical interconnection of participants, the sacred, and the natural world.
How do we facilitate space for the Holy to speak through nature, and more specifically, the bioregion in which we live? How do we meet the growing anxiety that is undeniably present related to the ecocidal destruction of their homescapes and the Earth as a whole?
Mary discusses this with Frederica Helmiere and myself, and offers a preview of what to expect at the Rewilding Institute that she will facilitate as part of our ‘day-before’ offerings at our 2020 Conference in Santa Fe in April 2020.
Mary is offering a Rewilding Institute at our SDI Conference in Santa Fe in April 2020. Learn more at www.sdievents.org
The things Mary was sharing were so good, we asked her to just keep going. So we’ll release that part of our conversation in next week’s episode. You can learn more about Mary’s work at her website, www.waymarkers.net
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Support for this podcast comes from SDI’s upcoming one night event with Mirabai Starr and Ann Holmes Redding – A Fierce and Tender Wisdom: Reclaiming the Feminine Across Spiritual Traditions. The event is happening in Bellevue, Washington, USA on November 12, 2019 at 7pm. In this extraordinary SDI event, we will gather and explore and model cooperative feminine leadership in these turbulent times. Join us for an interactive sacred celebration that reclaims and centers women’s voices in spiritual spaces. Together we will step up to the call for prophetic feminine wisdom and take refuge in the sanctuary of community. Register now at our website.

EP035 - The Universal Christ - Fr Richard Rohr (from 2018 SDI Conference) - Part 2

 
Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he also serves as Academic Dean of the Living School for Action and Contemplation. Fr. Richard's teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy--practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.
This recording comes from the keynote talk that Fr. Richard gave at SDI’s Seeking Connection conference in April of 2018, where he shared on the concepts presented in his recently released book, The Universal Christ. This is part 1 of Fr. Richard’s keynote, with part 2 coming out in our next episode.
Fr. Richard will be presenting at our 2020 conference, coming up in Santa Fe, New Mexico in April 2020. We hope to see you there - Learn more at sdievents.org.
Also you may note that Fr. Richard mentions Rev. angel Kyodo Williams and Mirabai Starr, who also gave keynote presentations at our 2018 Conference. We offer these as a complete keynote DVD, which can be purchased on our website.
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Support for this podcast comes from:
THE SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE TRAINING INSTITUTE
BEGINNING JANUARY 2020, “INTERFAITH AND INTERSPIRITUAL WISDOM TRAINING, ”A UNIQUE, ONLINE PROGRAM WITH AN OPTIONAL URBAN PILGRIMAGE IN CHICAGO. IF YOU’RE DRAWN TO COMPANION PEOPLE OF OTHER TRADITIONS, INCLUDING THE EVER-GROWING TIDE OF SPIRITUAL INDEPENDENTS, THIS PROGRAM IS FOR YOU! IDEAL FOR SPIRITUAL AND SECULAR COMMUNITY LEADERS, EDUCATORS, SOCIAL WORKERS, LIFE COACHES, THERAPISTS, CHAPLAINS AND MORE. VISIT WWW.SPIRITUALGUIDANCETRAINING.COM TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THIS INNOVATIVE OFFERING. 

EP034 - The Universal Christ - Fr Richard Rohr (from 2018 SDI Conference) - Part 1

Fr. Richard Rohr is a globally recognized ecumenical teacher bearing witness to the universal awakening within Christian mysticism and the Perennial Tradition. He is a Franciscan priest of the New Mexico Province and founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where he also serves as Academic Dean of the Living School for Action and Contemplation. Fr. Richard's teaching is grounded in the Franciscan alternative orthodoxy--practices of contemplation and self-emptying, expressing itself in radical compassion, particularly for the socially marginalized.
This recording comes from the keynote talk that Fr. Richard gave at SDI’s Seeking Connection conference in April of 2018, where he shared on the concepts presented in his recently released book, The Universal Christ. This is part 1 of Fr. Richard’s keynote, with part 2 coming out in our next episode.
Fr. Richard will be presenting at our 2020 conference, coming up in Santa Fe, New Mexico in April 2020. We hope to see you there - Learn more at sdievents.org.
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Support for this podcast comes from SDI’s upcoming one night event with Mirabai Starr and Ann Holmes Redding – A Fierce and Tender Wisdom: Reclaiming the Feminine Across Spiritual Traditions. The event is happening in Bellevue, Washington, USA on November 12, 2019 at 7pm. In this extraordinary SDI event, we will gather and explore and model cooperative feminine leadership in these turbulent times. Join us for an interactive sacred celebration that reclaims and centers women’s voices in spiritual spaces. Together we will step up to the call for prophetic feminine wisdom and take refuge in the sanctuary of community. Register now at our website.

EP033 - Cultivating the Spirituality of Children - Kristen Hobby

We thought that spiritual companionship for children, and finding ways to cultivate children’s spirituality, would make an excellent podcast conversation.
Kristen Hobby is SDI’s Australia and SE Asia Coordinator, and just completed her PhD work on the topic of young children’s spirituality. We listen to her wisdom on how to companion and create safe and open space for children to explore their own spiritual journeys.
But the conversation wouldn’t be complete without trying out some companionship with actual children. So this week's episode features conversations with a few of our own kids - Grey Whitney, Juniper Helmiere, and Charis Helmiere.
If you're interested, Kristen recommends the set of questions posted on this website: 
https://campfire.org/blog/article/reflection-thriving-questions-you-can-ask-kids-teens/
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Support for this podcast comes from Spiritual Companionship For Our Times, SDI’s annual gathering of spiritual companions happening in Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 23 – 26 2020. Registrations are now open, with Super Early Bird pricing through September 15th. We’ll be celebrating SDI’s 30th Anniversary, and charting the road ahead as we seek to welcome more and more people to the transformational gifts of spiritual companionship, and to make this healing modality available to every person on the planet. 
Learn more now about our annual conference at www.sdievents.org.