May
Joy Gaertner is an advanced loss and grief recovery specialist and is a long-time SOS participant. Her presentation will wove together:
- “End of Life” experiences (different from Death Experiences)
- A Toolbox of Grief Meditation practices
- Ways to honor our loved ones on Mother’s and Father’s Day
Joy Gaertner founded Walking With Joy to transform pain into peace. She has been involved with ministry roles since 1974, but in 2005 she decided to focus specifically on trauma-related recovery.
She has received awards from the Knoxville Urban League and won the Paradigm Challenge. She was also accepted to the Consortium for Social Enterprise Effectiveness at the University of Tennessee.
Joy has received certifications from The Grief Recovery Institute, Love Thinks, LLC, and Darkness to Light (End Child Sexual Abuse) Organization.
Her website www.walkingwithjoy.com contains more information.
April
When God Speaks, Are We Listening?
Leoma Gilley, author of several books including “Launching Into the Unknown: Discovering the beautiful and bewildering world of the Sudanese (The “Not How I Planned It” Memoirs Book 1),” will discuss Lectio Divina and lead the group in a Lectio exercise in the first part of the meeting and “share ways of hearing God, some of her stories, and group sharing” in the second half.
Leoma, originally from Chattanooga, lived in the Sudan for more than 20 years and traveled widely in Africa and Europe.
Her adventures, she says, also led to exploring her inner life as well as the external oneand that through deep reflections on the Scriptures she found a richer relationship with God and gained a better understanding of the value of prayer.
Other books include “The Still Small Voice of Love,” “Praying for Big Things,” “Prayers of Confessions for Lent,” and “Prayers of Faith and Hope.”
March
Our March meeting, led by Liesl Bold featured a discussion on contemplative living based on the Lenten prayers and readings of Thomas Merton and other spiritual masters.
SOS participant Liesl Bold has had years of experience with contemplative practices and suggested this month’s topic.
February
Biblical scholar Jacob Love, Ph.D., led our February discussion on “Notes from the Field of Battle on the Road to Peace,” a look at some of the complexities, as he puts it, “that make it impossible to render simple judgments of the recent events in Israel and Gaza.”
In the program at the Buckingham Clubhouse Jacob described the deep religious roots of the conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians going back to biblical times. It was a well balanced and well informed presentation based on his years in Israel, including his time as a graduate student and his service in the Israeli Defense Force, and also his studies as a historian.
During the presentation he offered a quotation that several attendees ask us to share. Here it is:
The post from Jordan Friedman reads:
The vast, vast majority of Israeli and diaspora Jewry, in their grief, shock, trauma, sadness, and justified anger in the wake of the October 7 terrorist attacks and rising antisemitism worldwide, have committed the nearly-unforgivable sin of callousness toward innocent suffering and death in Gaza. Not only do they not vocally support policy alternatives (not just the trendy, unrealistic, pacifist total ceasefire) that would dramatically reduce civilian casualties and suffering, but they cannot bring themselves even to mention this suffering and death in prayers, religious and secular ceremonies and vigils, or even everyday life and discussion of the situation. They have committed the hideous, almost-unforgivable sin of viewing some kinds of lives as disposable and worth significantly less than others. Though it doesn’t lead to the same behaviors, this is not entirely unlike the disgustingly warped worldview of Hamas and other hate and terror groups.
If you are Jewish (or anything else), and you know you have been guilty of this sin, I propose a way to begin redeeming yourself. Make a donation to an organization like Gisha—an Israeli non-profit that tries to get humanitarian aid into Gaza responsibly, without letting it fall into the wrong hands:
Jacob, who spoke to SOS In October 2017 on “The Language of Jesus” and again in October 2018 on “Paul Robeson’s Jewish Fellowship,” retired last year after having been responsible for University of Tennessee’s Hebrew program, teaching the Hebrew Bible in English, Introduction to Judaism, and Survey of Early Rabbinic Literature. He also has taught Early Jewish History for the History Department. He currently teaches a course in Talmud online. In addition to Hebrew, Jacob knows Aramaic and can read ancient Greek. And His wife, Theresa Lee, is former dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and a professor of Psychology.
January
Mary Jane Keim and Michael O’Connell led our group discussion at our January meeting on the question: “Are you an everyday mystic?”
The discussion was designed to bring forward participants’ answers to the question. After Mary Jane gave a definition of “mystic,” each participant was asked to bow before commenting and to bow again to show the comment had ended.
The facilitators have practiced psychotherapy in Knoxville for more than 50 years and they have practiced meditation for the last 20 years as faithful members of Seekers of Silence.