November 2021
Dear facilitators,
When I gaze back at my life, I marvel at its surprising unfolding. In my younger years I never imagined how the Spirit would stir and inspire the founding and development of a program centered on compassion. I look with wonder at how it has expanded and enriched many because of how you joined with me in this endeavor. Minds and hearts such as yours awakened and responded to the invitation to not only live compassionately, but to also give yourself generously to facilitating ways for others to grow in being compassionate.
At the threshold of my life today, I recognize another significant call. At age 78 it is time to freely pass on the leadership of Boundless Compassion to other leaders who are gifted and ready to carry on what I deeply value. So it is with immense joy and confidence that I announce Bobbi Bussan, OSB and Wendy Mospan as the new co-directors of Boundless Compassion. When I invited them to accept this leadership role, each of them immediately responded “yes” with enthusiasm. I have complete trust in how their personal gifts, life experience, and attentiveness to compassion, will carry on what has been developed. Already they are at work, designing a website that will be solely focused on Boundless Compassion, and planning for a BCF Conference next fall.
No, I will not be abandoning the BC program. Yes, I am moving out of the leadership position, but I will be continuing to be present in these ways: as a member of the Core Team, a consultant for Bobbi and Wendy, preparing the resource section of the BCF monthly newsletter, and serving as leader for the BCF Group with which I am associated.
More information about Bobbi and Wendy will be shared when the transfer of leadership takes place during the first week of January, 2022. Bobbi and Wendy also plan to visit each BCF Group in the new year so there can be a mutual acquaintance between you and them.
I have every assurance that Boundless Compassion will move forward with even greater energy and an ability to serve the public with dedication. This transition will gift my life with more time to do what is a passion of mine: to write what dances around inside and yearns to be birthed into words.
As Thanksgiving nears here in the USA, I am filled with gratitude for your generous response in being a part of Boundless Compassion. You have made this program what it is today. I join you with all my heart in continuing to bring forth greater compassion to alleviate suffering wherever it exists.
Gratefully with you on the journey,
Joyce
BCF Kinship Gathering
Mark your 2222 calendar for a wonderful event.
September 12 – 14, 2022
Christ the King Retreat Center
Buffalo, MN (near Minneapolis)
Keynote speaker: Diane Millis, PhD,
Author of The Sacred Art of Conversation, Re-creating a Life, etc.
Details will be available in January.
Please plan on joining us for this great venture, our first national BCF gathering!
Boundless Compassion Resources
Video “Getting Called Out: How to Apologize”
(Could be used for compassion and marginalization) Jan Evans wrote about this video: “I found this to be very helpful around living in this time where we are certain to make mistakes and need to apologize. So many apologies these days are non-apologies. To inhabit compassion I’m learning I must learn to apologize well.”
Film Convergence: Courage in Crisis
Author Kathy Coffey commented: “One critic called “Convergence: Courage in Crisis,” free on Netflix, the “best documentary of 2021.” It shows the extraordinary bravery of ordinary people all over the world, from a doctor in Peru to a researcher at Oxford, working on the vaccine.” (read more about the film on Kathy’s blog.)
Articles
“Compassion and Wisdom,” Venerable Khandro Rinpoche (Oct. 25, 2021, Lions Roar)
“Finding a Better Balance,” by Christiane Wolf, (Lions Roar, Oct. 8, 2021) “
What is equanimity, and how can we invite more of it into our lives? Equanimity is being willing and able to accept things as they are in this moment—whether they’re challenging, boring, exciting, disappointing, painful, or exactly what we want. Equanimity brings calmness and balance to moments of joy as well as difficulty. It protects us from an emotional overreaction, allows us to rest in a bigger perspective, and contains a basic trust in the course of things.”
“Econoeisis: A New Contemplative Paradigm,” Illia Delio. (Center for Christogenesis, July 20, 2021)
This article contains a new view regarding compassion for creation. It is one of the excellent resources that Wendy Mospan and Colleen Shepard used in their three session enrichment program. I highly recommend that you read it if you have not already done so. Ilia Delio is one of the “great minds” of our time and her approach to compassion for creation is one that I hope we will all come to know and integrate into our thinking and acting.
“Waging Non-Violence,” (People Powered News & Analysis, October 5, 2021)
Actions termed non-violent are actually violent; the use of harsh language, shaming, etc.
“In Our Nature,” by Kelly Barron (in Mindful, August 2021)
This article is such a hope-filled one. The author presents the resiliency of nature as an analogy for the resiliency of the human spirit. Here are some excerpts in case you do not have time to read the entire article:
The natural world and its processes have much to teach us about the flexibility, creativity, and resilience that’s already within us, just waiting to unfurl.
…..
The lodgepole pine cone is a curious thing. Squat and egg-shaped, the pine cone seals its symmetrical scales shut with a sticky resin, protecting precious seeds within. Such a design appears to disadvantage the lodgepole. Survival seems slim when your seeds are locked in a botanical safe. And, yet, lodgepoles dot landscapes as wide-ranging as the wild, sparsely populated Yukon and the balmy coasts of Baja, California—growing in cold, wet winters and dry, hot summers.
…
Extreme heat such as that produced in wildfires, it turns out, is one of the magical keys that unlock the lodgepole’s seeds, scattering them to the ground. … Lodgepoles don’t just survive catastrophes. They thrive in their aftermath.
…
In the aftermath of a wildfire, lodgepole seedlings can be so numerous they cover the ground like a lime-green carpet. Ash-infused soil—rich with nutrients such as carbon, nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium—nourishes plants such as the aptly named fireweed. Sunlight flooding onto forest floors once darkened by tree canopies feeds the fireweed’s pink flowers, fueling its spread. And black-backed woodpeckers forage for wood-boring beetles nesting in fallen trees that provide life-long after their own death.
…
We can apply nature’s wisdom to improve our mental, emotional, and physical well-being, learning to adapt, collaborate, and renew ourselves so that we not only live more sustainably on earth, but also—like a towering lodgepole pine—we flourish in the face of adversity. While we’ve learned to handle small, predictable change—taking shelter under umbrellas when it rains, flicking on lights when it’s dark—large, unpredictable events, such as global pandemics, upend us, revealing our reactive inflexibility and exposing our vulnerabilities. We can’t prevent upheaval. But if we look to nature we can learn to become more resilient.
…
We are hardwired to behave like nature because we are nature. Part of our self-protection as humans is to isolate, but we have a primal need for connection. And nature is more connected, collaborative and communal than we realize. Survival of the fittest refers not to the competitive strength of a species but to a species “fitness” to adjust to its changing environment.
Book
Hard Choices for Loving People: CPR, Artificial Feeding, Comfort Care, and the Patient with a Life-Threatening Illness, by Hank Dunn. (Medical Treatments, Emotional and Spiritual Concerns at the End of Life)
Carol Larson led me to this resource. It is a fine resource for anyone in pastoral care, health-care areas, chaplaincy, or ministering as a care-giver to someone with a life-threatening illness: A small book in size, it’s packed with vital information regarding the hard choices and decisions related to medical care and treatment. (Available at Amazon.com)
Boundless Compassion Events
If you are leading a BC event that is open to persons beyond your own area, I am happy to include this information in my regular monthly newsletters and also on the “Events” section of my website. You need to send this info to me at least a month previous to when the newsletter is to come out, and the information must include the following (in this order):
- date(s) of the event and the time (opening/closing)
- title of retreat
- indicate whether it’s virtual or in-person, or both
- place of the event (or who is sponsoring the event if it’s virtual)
- name(s) of presenter(s)
- where to write for Information (email and/or website)
- where to register (website or other…)
Each of us is so much more than we think we are—this body, these sorrows and hopes. We are air exhaled by hemlocks, we are water plowed by whales, we are energy ejected from stars, we are children of deep time. Our ears tremble with wind through treetops. Our eyes flash with sunlight through rain. How can we be fully alive, if we don’t pause to notice, and to celebrate, all the dimensions of our being, its length and its depth and its movement through time?”
(Earth’s Wild Music, Kathleen Dean Moore)
