In this workshop, Thandeka will use a series of exercises to help you
discover and re-affirm the well-springs of your spiritual life. This process
entails seven steps. First, you will participate in an exercise that allows
you to see the ways in which you have formed, and defend, your most basic
beliefs about yourself and your world. Next, you will learn how to make
sense of these core beliefs by tracing them back to experiences in your
own lives that prompted you to construct these beliefs. Third, these formative
experiences will then be placed in their wider social and historical context.
Fourth, you will collectively reflect upon the links between personal identities
and socially constructed identities. Fifth, this comparison might lead
you to insights about aspects of yourself that do not fit into any of these
constructed identities. Thandeka believes that this space of inquiry and
discovery is sacred because it is the open mind linked to the full heart.
Sixth, if you do indeed catch a glimpse of your true self in this grace-filled
space, you will have created a free space of inquiry in your mind for the
real, embodied you to step forward. Seeing your embodied self emerge is
a celebratory experience. Seventh, this experience of self-celebration
creates a deeper sense of compassion for yourself and others because now
you can see without judgment how constructed identities are frequently
disembodied identities for broken selves. Thandeka's workshop is designed
to encourage and support you as you enter the sacred space in your life
and rediscover the overflowing grace of well-being for yourself and others.
A brilliant and original thinker, Thandeka was given her name, which means "one who is loved by God," by Bishop Desmond Tutu in 1984. Before earning her doctorate in philosophy and theology, Thandeka was an Emmy award-winning television producer and writer for 15 years. Her book The Embodied Self: Friedrich Schleirmacher's Solution to Kant's Problem of the Empirical Self was all the rage as beach reading a few years back. Her new book, Learning to be White, went through four printings its first year and is now out in paperback. After teaching philosophy and religion at Williams, she became Associate Professor of Theology and Culture at Meadville Lombard Theological School at the University of Chicago. We welcome her return.