The Burkhart Center

Registration coming soon.

In this issue:

Save the Date November 5-6: Fall Spiritual Searcher Weekend
Living from a Sense of Connection: Why Brain Hemispheres Matter to Counter-balance the Culture
It's Not the End of the World
Native American Spirituality
The Burkhart Center Weekly/Monthly Offerings
Much Matters Book Discussion Group
To the Nines an article on The Burkhart Center and The Enneagram Institute of Ohio
Sustaining The Burkhart Center
Going Back to the Roots by Rev. David Hett
Outside Partner Recommended Resources

Living from a Sense of Connection: Why Brain Hemispheres Matter to Counter-balance the Culture

Facilitator John Schuster explores the work of Iain McGilchrist: the prophet of whole-brain thinking, and author of The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World.

John will use video each week of Iain McGilchrist to introduce his work on The Divided Brain, and then give ample time for group discussion of the themes of what we think we know and perceive and how we know it. If you’ve been in a class with John Schuster before, you know you are in for an interesting learning experience and a rich process.

Registration and More Information

Thursdays, September 23 – October 7

7 – 8:30 pm

on Zoom

John is a leadership and life transition coach and teacher in many areas, including leadership development in business, Jungian psychology, and Celtic spirituality, and conscious aging. He is author of several books, including Answering Your Call: A Guide for Living Your Deepest Purpose and The Power of Your Past: The Art of Recalling, Reclaiming, and Recasting.

It's Not the End of the World

Revolution Road

Tuesdays

beginning September 28

7 pm Grace Hall

How do you explain the book of Revelation? Senior Minister Glen Miles will offer a 4-week bible study exploring some of the complicated themes found in this book. Join in-person or online Tuesday, September 28, as this series begins.

Native American Spirituality

Wednesdays

September 29 – November 3

7 – 8:30 pm

on Zoom

Presenter: Rainbow Eagle, Okla-Choctaw American Indian

This 6-week series will provide background and overview of Native American spirituality and tradition in preparation for our November Spiritual Searcher weekend with Pat McCabe/Woman Stands Shining.

Rainbow Eagle (Rolland J. Williston), author of Native American Spirituality: A Walk in the Woods and two other books, is a revered storyteller and teacher who has shared his knowledge and both traditional and non-traditional Native American understandings and practices with many communities across North America and through Europe.

Rainbow Eagle has been entrusted and honored to offer the teachings of an ancient Anishinabe Peace Shield of truth to the human family. His newest book is The Ancient Roots of Christianity: A Native American’s Look Through Christianity.

Registration and More Information

Women Living the Questions

Wednesdays

9:30 -11 am

First Community North,

Room 101

3777 Dublin Rd.

Columbus, OH 43221

Deep and lively discussions of ways to live a spiritual life, usually with readings and/or video from master contemporary spiritual teachers like Eckhart Tolle, James Finley, Mirabai Starr, and others.

Email Linda Baldeck for more information or register below.

WLTQ Registration

Contemplative Way Group

Sacred Reading & Meditation

Thursdays

beginning September 9

11:45 am – 1 pm

On Zoom

Program year weekly Zoom gatherings begin September 9 with “sacred reading and discussion” of spiritual texts from past to present, followed by 30-minute silent meditation practice.

Hosted normally by Rev. David Hett, or by other group leaders.

Contemplative Way Registration

Tuesday at Ten

Weekly beginning September 14

10 – 11:30 am

First Community South

Weist Room

1320 Cambridge Blvd.

Columbus, OH 43212

Brian McLaren’s important new book serves as our first 6-week study this fall program year. Only doubt, he proposes can save the world and your faith, and proposes a model of faith development that could lead to a “Harmony Way” for peoples who want to create revived communities where “faith expresses itself in love.”

Discussions facilitated by Connie Johnston and the Rev. David Hett.

Tuesday at Ten Registration

Progressing Spirit

Saturday, September 18

9:30 am – 12 pm

First Community South

Guild Room

1320 Cambridge Blvd.

Columbus, OH 43212

Discussions based on weekly columns by various new and veteran spiritual thinkers on topics relating to religion, spirituality, psychology, and science, all interacting with contemporary life and issues from racism to climate change to conflict resolution to “living fully, loving wastefully, and being all that you can be,” the mantra of Bishop John Shelby Spong who inspired this class and this website where you are asked to subscribe for the weekly columns: www.progressingspirit.com.

Progressing Spirit group normally meets third Saturday of each month, unless otherwise notified.

Progressing Spirit Registration

Much Matters

Book Discussion

Thursday, September 16

6 – 8 pm

Via Zoom

"The memoir, out this week, is a meditation on Trethewey's own life as well as those of her mother and grandmother — an interrogation of the self and of family history haunted, in large part, by the abuse Trethewey and her mother both suffered at the hands of her stepfather. It ended, ultimately, in the murder of Trethewey's mother by her step-father when Trethewey was 19."

Valerie Zielinski facilitates this month’s discussion.

Much Matters Registration

Much Matters Book Discussion

Cycle 10 Selections

October 21 Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty (2021) by Patrick Raddon Keefe Diane Sturges, facilitator

November 18 Homeland Elegies: A Novel (2021) by Ayad Akhtar Facilitator Awaiting Confirmation

Burkhart Center & Enneagram Institute

Featured in Columbus Dispatch Article

Rev. David Hett, Dean of The Burkhart Center, and Burkhart Center members Connie Frecker and Lisa Bueche, respectively, director and spiritual director of The Enneagram Institute of Ohio were featured in religion reporter Danae King’s August 9 website article about how this personality styles system can be used for personal and spiritual growth and work with couples. (The article also appeared in the Sunday, August 29, 2021 print edition of the Dispatch.)

You can access a PDF version of this article (including Lisa, left, and Connie, right, pictured) HERE.

SUSTAINING THE BURKHART CENTER

We would like to share with you how some of our active participants feel about The Burkhart Center. Barb Davis says: “I value The Burkhart Center for the numerous opportunities to stretch and enrich my spiritual and emotional growth. The many choices of contemplative practice exploration such as the indoor and outdoor labyrinth, several spiritual retreats at Camp Akita facilitated by wise women and men, the annual presence of amazing wise speakers of international repute from many religious traditions, the small group educational classes on topical issues such as antiracism and the church, have been important and valued resources for me. In short, The Burkhart Center has been my number one choice for spiritual exploration and nurturance in our community."

The Burkhart Center has some exciting programs coming up, such as Pat McCabe and Rabbi Rami, and many others, so we would encourage you to give generously to The Burkhart Center in order to support its mission of spiritual growth and such programs. You can easily and safely donate by clicking on the Donate button below. Thank you for your support in sustaining The Burkhart Center.

Donate

Going Back to the Roots

Rev. David Hett, Dean, The Burkhart Center

I feel that [my ancestors] do watch and guide, and I also feel that they join me in the hope that this story of our people can help alleviate the legacies of the fact that preponderantly the histories have been written by the winners.

--Alex Haley, from the conclusion of Roots, as quoted by Marian Wright Edelman, The Children’s Defense Fund, in her honoring of the centennial of his birth this August.

Until we have the courage to ask questions about our spiritual roots, whether they are from a Christian, Native American or other traditions, we will remain separated from our true spiritual identity.

--Rainbow Eagle, author of The Ancient Roots of Christianity: A Native American’s Look Through Christianity

During my one sabbatical summer in 2009 I toured what I considered to be my “spiritual roots,” taking me from what I consider the most ancient traditions influencing my religious/spiritual journey to the most recent. This might be an interesting exercise for anyone to consider.

The oldest for me is the Celtic tradition with its ancient religio-pagan roots of the Gauls in northern Europe and Turkey (the city Galatia, the community Paul wrote his letter to Galatians too, was of ancient Celtic/Gallic origin), and of course which moved into the British Isles. So I began with a passage through Scotland, a retreat with John Philip Newell, and a pilgrimage to the sacred island of Iona. Next came a quick trip to my primary ethnic homeland of Germany, where I consider German Pietism to be part of my spiritual heritage. Briefly, pietism was a reaction against scholastic Lutheranism, which made over-emphasized right belief and defending doctrinal statements, whereas the German pietists were concerned with the heart and spiritual nourishment, later with increasing concern with social issues and the value of education.

Then, it was back to the United States, where I spent a three-week solo “retreat” in a cabin in Maine to tap into the roots of our one “immigrant American” spiritual tradition, Transcendentalism, characterized by Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Margaret Fuller. I concluded with two consecutive “Diamond Approach” retreats in California, the modern psychological-spiritual work school I’ve been engaged with for 21 years, synthesizing numerous ancient spiritual traditions along with modern depth psychology.

Sadly, what I neglected in my sabbatical grant proposal was the one true, and “natural,” American spiritual tradition, the way of our indigenous peoples. (Hence, describing Transcendentalism as an “immigrant American” spirituality.) For the spirituality of our First Nation peoples is the literal ground we walk upon anywhere in the United States from our city streets, to metro and national parks, to golf courses, to rivers, streams, and lakes—as the patriotic song goes, “from the mountains to the prairies to the oceans white with foam.”

But, of course, this spirituality was not only ignored by the immigrant colonialists, but actively scorned and repressed, along with Native American bodies and traditions. Fortunately, although slowly, the value of indigenous spirituality and wisdom has begun to make impact, particularly in the wake of climate change. For instance in another recent book I’ve read, Brian McLaren’s Faith after Doubt, McLaren bases his hopes for a revived Christianity on the indigenous concept of “The Harmony Way,” which he credits to the Cherokee notion of harmony way taught and practiced by Native American, Randy Woodley.

The past year, The Burkhart Center has been focused on presenting voices of certain marginalized groups of people, with various studies of racial injustices, a virtual event with Father Gregory Boyle of Homeboy Industries projecting the voice of ex-gang members with transformed lives, and a recent study highlighting the transgendered in our “Theology and Gender Beyond the Binary” series.

This fall, then, we look more extensively at the wisdom and spirituality of the indigenous peoples of America, primarily through a 6-week series on “Native American Spirituality” led by Rainbow Eagle, Okla-Choctaw American Indian, and author of Native American Spirituality: A Walk in the Woods.

Rainbow Eagle’s study leads up to our Fall Burkhart Center Spiritual Searcher weekend November 5-6 with Pat McCabe/Weyakpa Najin Win—Woman Stands Shining—Diné (Navajo) mother, grandmother, activist, artist, writer, ceremonial leader, and international speaker. She will present the wisdom of an indigenous “Thriving Life Paradigm” in contrast to the “modern world” paradigm under which most of us live. In her weekend lecture and workshop, Pat will give an indigenous perspective on being human at this time of history, and ways we might become a human presence that causes all other life to thrive, “opening our hearts and bodies, touching our wise spirits and relieving our minds” that we might open to other possibilities—possibilities that align with the thriving life paradigm that is our Mother Earth.

In The Mystic Heart, Brother Wayne Teasdale talks about the need for a new paradigm that accommodates all human experience, knowledge, and capacities. “It must be based on the recognition that we are intimately connected with the earth, other species, and the cosmos.” Many mystics understand this as the “perennial philosophy.”

Author and speaker on perennial wisdom Rabbi Rami Shapiro, who will be joining us for an event next March, describes the four points of Perennial Wisdom “at the mystic heart of every religion: (1) all beings are manifestings of the singular Reality we call God, Brahman, Allah, Nature, Universe, et cetera; (2) we humans have an innate capacity to know ourselves and all life as a manifesting of Reality; (3) knowing this gives rise to an ethic of universal compassion and justice; and (4) knowing this and living this ethic is the highest calling of every human being.”

This is wisdom we need to heed in our minds and follow with our hearts and hands.

Additional Recommended Resources

Soulful Conversations

A past Spiritual Searcher at The Burkhart Center, Thomas Moore will provide ideas and suggestions on how to listen closely, have a caring attitude, and see beneath the surface. How can you have deeply satisfying conversations—conversations that nurture the soul of both persons—with your friends, colleagues, and patients? Thomas Moore shows the way in this free live lecture.

Registration and More Information

The Final CONSPIRE

Join thousands of spiritual seekers from across the world for the final CONSPIRE conference, an interactive online event featuring James Finley, Barbara Holmes, Jacqui Lewis, Brian McLaren, Richard Rohr, and Mirabai Starr.

A Global Online Conference

Presented by the Center for Action and Contemplation

Friday, Sept. 24 – Sunday, Sept. 26