Instructor: Rev. Tandi Rogers
The Spiritual Direction Formation & Certification equips and forms lay leaders, ordained clergy, and spiritual seekers toward the orientations and skills necessary to be compassionate, creative, and certified spiritual directors. Liberation is the heart of Spiritual Direction and is realized through deep, radical listening practices that reconnect and remember people to their authentic selves and the God of their understanding.
Under the direction of Rev. Tandi Rogers, learners will participate in a program of formation, learn and apply skills, work directly with spiritual direction clients through a practicum, and prepare to launch their spiritual direction ministries. Learners gather virtually every other week for 2-hour sessions of deep listening, spiritual practices, and instruction and engage asynchronously in study and reflection in alternating weeks. Terms are 17 weeks long and meet in Fall (mid-August – December) and Spring (January – May) for two years.
Listed below by date are the titles for 2024-25 season of the Monthly UU Spiritual Directors Book Discussion.
Love at the Center: Unitarian Universalist Theologies by
This title is not currently available in print. A print edition will be available in early 2025 with updates from General Assembly 2024.
Real Self-Care by
National Bestseller featured by Good Morning America, NPR's Code Switch, The New York Times, and The Guardian NPR's "Books We Love for 2023" Forbes' "Greatest Self-Help Books of All Time" "Realistic and trustworthy" -- InStyle "This isn't just another self-help book. It gives us a clear-eyed look at the way social systems drain our energy, and a concrete set of principles to rely on as we declare independence from these systems." --Martha Beck, New York Times bestselling author of The Way of Integrity "This book is for anyone who's ever removed a 'relaxing' sheet mask only to realize it hasn't transformed you so much as your trash can." --Jessica DeFino, The Unpublishable From women's mental health specialist and New York Times contributor Pooja Lakshmin, MD, comes a long-overdue reckoning with the contradictions of the wellness industry and a paradigm-shifting program for practicing real self-care that will empower, uplift, and maybe even start a revolution. You may have noticed that it's nearly impossible to go even a couple days without coming across the term self-care. A word that encompasses any number of lifestyle choices and products--from juice cleanses to yoga workshops to luxury bamboo sheets--self-care has exploded in our collective consciousness as a panacea for practically all of women's problems. Board-certified psychiatrist Dr. Pooja Lakshmin finds this cultural embrace of self-care incomplete at best and manipulative at worst. Fixing your troubles isn't simple as buying a new day planner or signing up for a meditation class. These faux self-care practices keep us looking outward--comparing ourselves with others or striving for a certain type of perfection. Even worse, they exonerate an oppressive social system that has betrayed women and minorities. Real self-care, in contrast, is an internal, self-reflective process that involves making difficult decisions in line with our values, and when we practice it, we shift our relationships, our workplaces, and even our broken systems. In Real Self-Care, Lakshmin helps readers understand what a real practice of caring for yourself could--and does--look like. Using case studies from her practice, clinical research, and the down-to-earth style that she's become known for, Lakshmin provides a step-by-step program for real and sustainable change and solace. Packed with actionable strategies to deal with common problems, Real Self-Care is a complete roadmap for women to set boundaries and move past guilt, treat themselves with compassion, get closer to themselves, and assert their power. The result--having ownership over one's own life-- is nothing less than a personal and social revolution.
The Enneagram Letters by
Through her poetry and personal essays, Enneagram expert Sarajane Case encourages her readers to embrace all nine personality types within themselves in The Enneagram Letters. From the writer of the popular self-help book The Honest Enneagram comes a deeper dive into all nine types of the enneagram personality structure and what they can teach us about ourselves. With poetry and essays for each type, The Enneagram Letters teaches its readers to embrace the full range of the human experience. "When we live inside of the constraints of our enneagram type, we are settling for a life in a cocoon. Safe, purposeful, and limited." Sarajane's thoughtful insights and beautiful words inspire her readers to feel less alone and encouraged on their own journeys to personal expansion. Divided into nine chapters that address the following feelings or fears for each Enneagram type: Chapter 1: To the part of you that feels it must be perfect. Chapter 2: To the part of you that fears being unlovable. Chapter 3: To the part of you that feels you are only as worthy as your achievements. Chapter 4: To the part of you that fears being average. Chapter 5: To the part of you that fears depletion. Chapter 6: To the part of you that fears letting others down. Chapter 7: To the part of you that fears being trapped in painful emotions. Chapter 8: To the part of you that feels it must be strong. Chapter 9: To the part of you that feels it must be easy to get along with.
Practicing Compassion by
Praise for Practicing Compassion Everybody believes in compassion, but nobody tells you how to practice it. Until now. Frank Rogers turns compassion into a doable, daily practice--as simple as catching your breath and taking your pulse. If you want to read a book that actually has the capacity to change your life (and the world), beginning today, this is the book to read. --Brian D. McLaren Author/speaker/blogger/activist (brianmclaren.net) If you want clear, practical guidance on how to cultivate the inner resources to become a healing presence and force of good for the world, there is no better book than this and no better guide than Frank Rogers. --John Makransky Professor of Comparative Theology, Boston College Author of Awakening through Love Compassion is more than a sympathetic feeling--it's the bond of human connection. Most religions lift up compassion, yet few people actually teach how to practice it. Through rich and moving stories of people from various faiths, Frank Rogers shows ways to incorporate compassion in our daily lives. His interfaith perspective on mercy, kindness, and caring for one another trains us to Pay attention, Understand empathically, Love with connection, Sense the sacredness, and Embody new life (PULSE).
Regenerative Business by
What kind of impact could your business make if you integrated the most powerful systems on Earth: THE SYSTEMS OF NATURE? Since the Industrial Revolution, much of human history has revolved around conquering Nature. But just as species have been hunted to extinction and forests have been leveled to create farmland and factories, the wildness inside you, too, has been suppressed.You've been taught that your wildness is unsafe. You've distanced yourself from the untamed parts of your soul: your creativity, your prolific ideas, your truest life. But to become the business owner you long to be, you need to unleash your wildness.Regenerative business creates fertile ground within you to unearth and express your soul purpose. It stewards a version of you that's fully in bloom. It's creative, healing, and intentional, and it births a better world for future generations. This book will not only help you get in touch with your truest, unrestrained self. It will also help you use the principles of Nature to realign your business with your unique essence for all the abundance, fulfillment, and impact you crave.
Didn't See It Coming: Overcoming the 7 Greatest Challenges that No One Expects and Everyone Experiences by
An influential pastor, podcaster, and thought leader believes it's not only possible to predict life's hardest moments, but also to alter outcomes, overcome challenges, and defeat your fiercest adversaries. Founding Pastor of one of North America's most influential churches, Carey Nieuwhof wants to help you avoid and overcome life's seven hardest and most crippling challenges: cynicism, compromise, disconnectedness, irrelevance, pride, burnout, and emptiness. These are challenges that few of us expect but that we all experience at some point. If you have yet to confront these obstacles, Carey provides clear tools and guidelines for anticipation and avoidance. On the other hand, if you already feel stuck in a painful experience or are wrestling with one of these challenges, he provides the steps you need to find a way out and a way forward into a more powerful and vibrant future.
Prayers of Honoring Grief by
Prayers of Honoring Grief is the third book of prayers by Earth Medicine Educator, Pixie Lighthorse.Prayer is a means of connecting to our elevated natures during times of transition. It is during hardship that we can look both deep within and to the cosmic outskirts for guidance and wisdom. Prayer can connect us immediately and intimately to what we feel, what is current, and where the challenges are. It allows us the secure and quiet space to be able to honor what we value.To honor is to acknowledge and celebrate. While it may feel counter-intuitive to celebrate pain, what you can celebrate is your ability to access your feelings. Your feelings function is a sense that is like a muscle, asking you to consciously exercise it. The brain is a complex, plastic organ, and it is becoming ever more apparent how it can become hyper-vigilant, triggered by trauma, confused, disorganized, and overwhelmed. To thicken the plot even more, our nervous systems are operating at warp speed, and we are not yet fully equipped with the tools being modern requires in order to navigate through the obstacles of life.Numbing out feelings due to overwhelm turns them off, and we become accustomed to moving through the world unconsciously, detached, and dissociated from them. As natural feelings of suffering and pain are acknowledged, your body will rejoice at its ability to be in the world as it is. The body is a magnificent thing. When its systems come back online, it can bring a feeling of relief as it begins again to do its job as nature intended. The task is to create space for the deeper processes to take place.We are routinely cultured to "get on with it" from an early age, instructed not to waste time lingering in negativity. When the alternative is avoidance we actually become more fragile, though we are taught to believe the opposite. Grief remains in the systems of the body, informing our lives in subtle and subversive ways in the form of fear, anxiety, and depression. The whole map of our lives changes when grief is stored away silently. It directs our decisions, impairs or inflates our willingness to take risks, and continues to have its way with us. Toxic, amputated, dishonest, denied, neglected, mutated grief causes disharmony in the body and spirit.Grief doesn't bite. It is a natural and normal way of dispersing energy through the body's systems. It is not dangerous unless it is acted out in harmful and neglectful ways. Our thoughts around what grief should look like are the most surprising thing of all. How could it possibly be harmful to be honest about how one is feeling? It is simply the confession of what it was really like then and what it feels like now. It is not the plague of darkness it is made out to be. What a relief Prayers of Honoring Grief walks the reader around the compass of life through 28 distinctive modes of suffering to help the reader gracefully navigate the inner territory of what life is really like, rather than what it is idealized to be.The book includes: Foreword written by Jennifer HoustonSuggestions for how to use the book as a personal companion for healing grief as well as ways to bring it into your classes and curriculumAn introduction to each of the Four Directions and properties associated with grief28 prayers, 7 for each of the Four DirectionsBlank pages on the left side of each prayer for note-taking, collaging, and making the book your ownOne page of journal questions for each sectionLined pages at the end of each section for recording your thoughts, personal prayers, and notes about your own spiritual awakenings
Trauma Stewardship: An Everyday Guide to Caring for Self While Caring for Others by
This beloved bestseller-over 180,000 copies sold-has helped caregivers worldwide keep themselves emotionally, psychologically, spiritually, and physically healthy in the face of the sometimes overwhelmingtraumas they confront every day. A longtime trauma worker, Laura van Dernoot Lipsky offers a deep and empathetic survey of the often-unrecognized toll taken on those working to make the world a better place. We may feel tired, cynical, or numb or like we can never do enough. These, and other symptoms, affect us individually and collectively, sapping the energy and effectiveness we so desperately need if we are to benefit humankind, other living things, and the planet itself. InTrauma Stewardship, we are called to meet these challenges in an intentional way. Lipsky offers a variety of simple and profound practices, drawn from modern psychology and a range of spiritual traditions, that enable us to look carefully at our reactions and motivations and discover new sources of energy and renewal. She includes interviews with successful trauma stewards from different walks of life and even uses New Yorker cartoons to illustrate her points. "We can do meaningful work in a way that works for us and for those we serve," Lipsky writes. "Taking care of ourselves while taking care of others allows us to contribute to our societies with such impact that we will leave a legacy informed by our deepest wisdom and greatest gifts instead of burdened by our struggles and despair.
An Open Place by
Written from an ecumenical standpoint as a practical aid for moving those experienced in individual spiritual direction toward group practices This book responds to the movement to expand spiritual direction beyond the classic on-with-one model. Group spiritual direction has the potential to offer the rich experience of individual spiritual direction to a much wider audience, yet very little has been written to provide guidance for starting such groups. This book responds to that challenge. It outlines ways that a diverse and ecumenical group of spiritual directors worked to initiate groups in multiple contexts. It examines the many variables-among directors, directees, even meeting spaces-that affect and enliven this ministry. And it summarizes pitfalls, success, and discoveries.
Each term, Wiggin Library staff put at least one copy of every required and recommended textbook on reserve. In some cases, we have extra copies of books that are assigned for courses and those copies are available in the general circulating collection.
Course reserve books circulate like main collection Wiggin Library books, for 4 weeks at a time with the option to renew up to 4 months. Students should request course reserve books only from the courses they are enrolled in.
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