Finding Our Way: Developing practice of contemplation with land to reckon with trauma

Led by the Rev. Rita Powell, Episcopal Chaplain at Harvard, in ‘Finding our Way’, the goal is to connect to the land around us, and the history of that land, in prayerful, healing and transformative ways. Attendees will be able to take the ideas explored in the course back to their own parishes and landscapes.

Here is Rita’s description of this exciting program:

If we are Christians and we are in America, we need spiritual help and healing. The ongoing living legacies of slavery, colonization, and greed are entwined in our own tradition, poisoning our culture. It is the call of the prophets to help us lament and understand this, and, with God’s help, be transformed by examining our past.

Building on the “Landscape of Slavery at Harvard Tours,” this course will draw from the wisdom of the Christian desert tradition. Theology and practice which recognizes the Land around us as pastoral teacher, living source of wisdom, can offer us a way to live and move and have our being in the face of all the challenges we face. We will learn from women, black activists, and poets as we imagine new ways to be faithful to the promise of the Incarnation.

Each session will be made of three parts: storytelling, examination of a text, and creative writing. The methodology for the course is inspired by visionary leader Adrienne Marie Brown’s Emergent Strategy, practices for collective transformation. The storytelling draws on moments of hope and possibility happening in our own time, in and through and with the Episcopal church and others. The course is an invitation to develop a practice or experience within your own context.

World Around Us As God’s Letter to Us (April 2nd)

Egypt: Sacred Ground–Divine Presence (April 9th)

The Living Mountain: Prayer of Paying Attention (April 16th)

Bodies as part of Land: Word Made Flesh (April 23rd)

Honoring what can not be named: God of the Visible and Invisible (April 30th)

The course was held on Zoom, Tuesdays in April 2024, 6-7pm. The online component of the course may be followed by an optional ‘pilgrimage’ together, or an in-person weekend workshop on this theme, to walk the land and explore how to put the ideas into practice.

You can find the handouts for the course here: