SDI Encounters

EP046 - Roleplaying Games as Spiritual Companionship - Rabbi Menachem Cohen

 
On this podcast we share a diverse range of stories and practices that involve spiritual companionship, and where I really get excited is when people are inventive and creative with the ways in which spiritual companionship is expressed and practiced. So it is with deep joy that I present this episode to you – the intersections of spiritual companionship and roleplaying games!
Frederica Helmiere talks with Rabbi Menachen Cohen, whose work and research involves the use of role playing games (of which the best known is Dungeons and Dragons) can be utilized as a medium for spiritual companionship. Rather than playing a mythical character, the player is actually able to put something of themselves into the character, or even test out some characteristics of one’s True nature that perhaps have been repressed or hidden in one’s everyday life. The roleplaying game becomes a safe space for trying out the traits and ethics that one might desire to live out in their actual lives.
Rabbi Menachem is presenting a workshop on this topic at our 2020 Conference in Santa Fe, which you can check out by registering for our conference at sdievents.org.
Rabbi Menachem’s own website is whatmakesyoucomealive.net.

EP045 - My Boss is a Zen Priest - On Metamorphosis

This week I’m running the lastest episode of a series I’m calling “My Boss is a Zen Priest” –  so my boss is SDI’s Executive Director, Reverend Seifu Anil Singh-Molares. He’s my manager and he provides oversight on the things I’m working on, and he’s also an ordained priest in the Zen Buddhist tradition. We have weekly one-on-one check in meetings, where I tell him about the things I’m working on, and he provides feedback and insight. And because we work at SDI and my boss is a zen priest, that feedback and insight often delves into deep dives around spirituality.
In this conversation we talk about our most recent publication of Listen – a digital publication that you can read on our website, sdiworld.org – and the inspiration for Rev. Seifu’s article, and my illustrations, on the concept of metamorphosis.
As you listen to this conversation, and all the metaphors we contemplate as descriptors for the spiritual journey, I invite you to reflect on this point in your own journey, and how you might define it.
As you reflect on your own sacred story, and yes your own story is indeed sacred, what are some metaphors you would use to tell this story? What’s in that cocoon of yours right now, being combusted? I invite you to journal on these questions, and share with a spiritual companion.
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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.

Ep044 - Finding Agency in Brokenness and Embracing Change - Bayo Akomolafe and Jiordi Rosales - Part 2

The next two podcasts revolve around a conversation between SDI staff and two curators of The Emergence Network -learn more about their work at emergencenetwork.org. Bayo Akomolafe will be familiar to some of you – he was a keynote speaker at our Annual Conference in March 2019, and recently facilitated an SDI Webinar. He was joined by co-curator Jiordi Rosales, our executive director Rev Seifu Anil Singh-Molares, and Director of Events and Programs Frederica Helmiere.
This conversation came out of a retreat space, and they’re driving in the car, so there’s automobile noise. I also debriefed their conversation with Frederica, which we hope will frame the conversation they are having around seeing, openness, and brokenness. It’s an invitation to explore  how we interact with one-another, some of the sacred assumptions we operate out of, and what it means to companion during these troubled times.
Last week’s episode was about grief – accepting that things die – not just people but systems, institutions, and ecologies. Grief is real and we learn to experience it well, but we also, in finding that death is a normal and natural part of everything, learn how to work with it, be in relationship with it, and to practice hope and resilience.
This episode contains Part 2 of our dialog. Please check out Part 1 of this episode here.
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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.

EP043 - An Invitation to Brokenness - Bayo Akomolafe and Jiordi Rosales - Part 1

The next two podcasts revolve around a conversation between SDI staff and two curators of The Emergence Network -learn more about their work at emergencenetwork.org. Bayo Akomolafe will be familiar to some of you – he was a keynote speaker at our Annual Conference in March 2019, and recently facilitated an SDI Webinar. He was joined by co-curator Jiordi Rosales, our executive director Rev Seifu Anil Singh-Molares, and Director of Events and Programs Frederica Helmiere.
This conversation came out of a retreat space, and they’re driving in the car, so there’s automobile noise. I also debriefed their conversation with Frederica, which we hope will frame the conversation they are having around seeing, openness, and brokenness. It’s an invitation to explore  how we interact with one-another, some of the sacred assumptions we operate out of, and what it means to companion during these troubled times. Having listened to these conversations I contemplate an exploration of the boundaries of spiritual companionship, and finding new avenues for being in the world – how to live, how to die, and allow for things to die well.
This episode contains Part 1 of our dialog. In next week's episode, we'll publish Part 2.
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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.

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
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