Healing Our City: 30 Days of Silent Prayer. Parts I & II
/
Essential Conversations
Purposeful Leadership in Transformational Times
7/27: Healing the Heart of Our City PART I: Prayers for a New Future
8/17: Healing Our City PART II: Lessons learned from 30 days of silent prayer to hold space for transformation in the midst of unimaginable disruption.
Don Samuels, Executive Director, Microgrants.net
Sondra Samuels, President and CEO, Northside Achievement Zone
with Brian Mogren, Executive Director, Alafia Foundation
Healing Our City (information and videos)
Healing Our City Facebook page
Healing Our City presentation
I’m grieving …
Vision for the future …
49 of us gathered to hear from Sondra and Don Samuels: A vision for a positive future. Lessons learned from 30 days of silent prayer, in community, in the heart of the city still in the midst of unimaginable disruption. Don asked: "How to do something unprecedented in our nation’s history? Leave the matrix, out of the orbit. Create a new way of being."
One next step articulated is to continue the daily prayer/meditation practiced in the Healing Our City tent.
"Meditation practice deepens us to be and take action. The act itself is a step to opening to what is possible." So we paused for 8 MINUTES 46 SECONDS.
Many thanks to Sondra and Don for the fierce love, intention and commitment to a powerful conversations and committed action.
A vision for a model to heal our cities
Healing Our City: 30 Days of Silent Prayer was a month-long, African American-led collaborative conceived to add a vital spiritual factor to all the strategic thinking, policy proposals and investments being considered.
JULY 1-10: Grieving for our city and our own complicity
JULY 11-20: Openness to change
JULY 21-30: Prayers for a new future
They created a shared public ritual where people of all faiths and goodwill came together throughout the day for 8 minutes and 46 seconds of silent prayer/meditation. These ongoing prayer sessions took place under a tent located in the Hawthorne Crossings parking lot at the corner of West Broadway Ave. and Bryant Ave. N. in North Minneapolis. Over the course of 30 days, those who gathered collectively grieved our losses, opened ourselves to change, and prayed for a new future.
A synthesis of the chat transcription
Notes:
-What moves you beyond hopelessness?
- Change air into your life breath
-Pain, not transmuted, is transmitted
-Create a new currency: the currency of love
-Dream-Act-Pray
-To listen and act with openness
-Not knowing is a spiritual exercise
-Trust the stillness
-The goal is the center. moving towards the center
-To trust our shared actions out of our being will transform our cities
Solutions, Dreams, Action.
How could this be alive in your community? Bring people together in a collective heart space to consider the big questions of our collective future.
Here are three practices to be present to what is needed around you:
1. Listening FIRST. LISTEN. A natural respect for all voices emerges when we listen with respect for everyone’s voice without fixing, problem-solving or advice-giving.
The practice: next time you are with someone, listen as if your life depended upon it. Because their life might depend on it.
2. Speak from the HeartTake a chance to speak about what has meaning and purpose for you. It will most likely be meaningful for the person you are with. Speaking honestly and simply from the heart is compelling and authentic.
The practice: Pause, take a deep breath, put your hand on your heart. Ask yourself, “what is at the heart of the matter, right now?”
3. Slow Down the ConversationBeing interested. Follow the other person’s lead. The tendency to have a quick response, or talk over someone with excitement, isn’t the same as deep listening.
The practice: Allow pauses between the speakers, for connection to occur and to allow something new to emerge.
#purpose #artofconvening #convening #listening #leadership #practice #authenticengagement
Essential Conversations:
Purposeful Leadership through Transformative Times
A weekly Zoom gathering to set your purpose and intention as a leader in these times
Free. Mondays, 8:00 - 9:00 am CDT
The intent of each session: What is a positive response in times of extreme disruption? Our proposal for collaborative action: to activate us in response to this great disruption as conveners of transformation.
