A bit more information on the participants, and themes of 2021.
To see any documents referenced, or downloads from 2021, click below.
Thank you to all that joined us and to all our wonderful speakers!
As our invited speaker, Mike Basch pointed out, happiness is sometimes viewed as a frivolous endeavor, but all of our speakers today demonstrated how that's not the case.
Carmen expressed her gratitude for the support she receives from her found "tribe," our community as she navigates her dear sister's illness. John Seeley lead us in a peaceful meditation. Winifred's poem encouraged us to each find our own personal expression of happiness on the inside (poem below).
Tom introduced his best friend and mentor, our invited speaker, Mike Basch. Mike's story of his own experience revealed the origin and effectiveness of his "Courtesy System," (see below). Happiness is a priority, but it's not a thought; it's a feeling. Just as the Australian dentist did, we have to investigate for ourselves, create our own "Happiness Index," familiarize ourselves with our personal "Hierarchy of Horrors," and set happiness as a priority. If we do this and apply the Courtesy System, we're bound to be happier and maybe we'll be packing a small bag for a six week vacation.
Invited Speaker: Michael D. Basch
Mike Basch was a founding officer of FedEx, where he spent 10 years as a Senior Vice President starting seven months prior to beginning operations. He was part of an explosively creative management team that took the company from $0 to $1 billion in revenues. The company was selected by Fortune Magazine as one of the ten best managed companies of the decade. Mike led the teams that set-up their service operations, invented the bar code tracing system, built the Memphis SuperHub and founded the FedEx Logistics Division. Prior to FedEx, he spent 8 years at UPS in various capacities and 3 years in consulting.
He has been involved in numerous start-ups since leaving FedEx in 1982 and has consulted with Harley-Davidson, Lincoln National Insurance and many other companies.
Mike’s book Customer Culture, How FedEx And Other Great Companies Put The Customer First Every Day was published in 2002. The book provides practical ways to move a company from internal focus to customer focus. He also wrote: Intuition: Your Sacred Gift published in 2019.
While at FedEx, Mike led a community job creation effort to achieve grass-roots support for promoting Memphis, TN as "America's Distribution Center." This effort led to the creation of over 50,000 jobs and was written up in Fortune Magazine and the National Business Journal as an example of what communities can achieve when people work together. This project showed the power of common people working together to accomplish uncommon goals with no motivation other than their passion to make a difference.
Speakers for November include: host Nadine de Jong, Anna Zimmerman, Yella Werder, and invited speaker John J. Hruby.
Invited Speaker: John J.Hruby
John J. Hruby is an author, comedian, and professional life coach. He “switched over” from religious to spiritual when he was a teen to the great dismay of his parents. In his early twenties, he experimented with being agnostic … but he couldn’t decide if that was for him. In his mid-twenties, he stumbled upon a meditation group in his hometown, Cleveland, Ohio … and he’s never been the same. In his late twenties, he moved to Los Angeles and worked in film production. He met a few of his childhood hero’s including Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) and T-1000 (The bad-guy-liquid Terminator, Robert Patrick). John earned a 3-year master’s degree in Spiritual Psychology with an Emphasis in Consciousness, Health, and Healing. John combined his love of sci-fi, action-adventure, romance, and spirituality into his epic novel, Space Spiders on Prom Day. “The most fun & outrageous transformational novel ever written about Prom.” Since 2005, John has been assisting successful men, women, and teens with creating more of what they REALLY want. His online writing and creativity group, Let’s Create Tuesday! assists men and women worldwide with starting and deepening their writing and creativity habits. John lives in L.A. with Amy, his wife of 24+ years, their two teenage sons, their big dog, Meesha, and Oreo, their regular-sized cat.
Poems ready by Yella Werder
WE HAVE COME TO BE DANCED
By Jewel Mathieson
We have come to be danced.
Not the pretty dance
Not the pretty pretty, pick me, pick me dance,
But the claw our way back into the belly of the sacred, sensual animal dance.
The unhinged, unplugged, cat is out of its box dance.
The holding the precious moment in the palms of our hands and feet dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the jiffy booby, shake your booty for him dance,
But the wring the sadness from our skin dance
The blow the chip off our shoulder dance.
The slap the apology from our posture dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the monkey see, monkey do dance,
One two dance like you, One two three, dance like me dance,
But the grave robber, tomb stalker, tearing scabs and scars open dance.
The rub the rhythm raw against our soul dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the nice, invisible, self-conscious shuffle,
But the matted hair flying, voodoo mama, Shaman shakin’ ancient bones dance.
The strip us from our casings, return our wings,
Sharpen our claws and tongues dance.
The shed dead cells and slip into the skin of love dance.
We have come to be danced.
Not the hold our breath and wallow in the shallow end of the floor dance,
But the meeting of the trinity: the body, breath and beat dance.
The shout hallelujah from the top of our thighs dance.
The mother may I? Yes, you may take ten giant leaps dance.
The olly, olly oxen free free free dance.
The everyone can come to our heaven dance.
We have come to be danced.
Where the kingdoms collide in the cathedral of flesh to burn back into the light,
To unravel, to play, to fly, to pray, to root in skin sanctuary.
We have come to be danced.
We have come.
THE PAST
It is a large and unintelligent
Dog: slobbering, lunging
Into furniture, disturbing
The environment, getting lost
Periodically so that you must drive
For twelve hours to reclaim it – it
Is wearing your tags, and someone
Always tracks you down: “We have found
Your dog.” And just
When the present has begun to seem
Like home, just when it’s bearable,
The Past, its fur feet tracking sludge,
Shakes its enormous head, straining
The leash, frothing.
And it is always hungry, staring
In the morning from the foot
Of your bed, its huge eyes starving,
Begging its portion of your bread.
It is the kind of dog that never
Rolls over, will not fetch,
It’s a barker, a nipper, a crotch sniffer.
--It’s no consolation to you
That everyone has such a creature—
You keep it penned up, tied,
Muzzled, bribed, anything
To keep it from your lap. Sometimes you even
Pay to board it out (try finding a person to take it!)
And then, you must go back for it—with the cash—
How it whines and cries for you!
Somehow you have earned its total
Devotion! Somehow it’s yours.
How hard you must work to believe
You deserve it.
Invited Speakers–Dayna Dunbar and Julia Padawar
Title of talk: Make the Leap: The tipping point toward a new consciousness
Dayna Dunbar’s latest novel, Awake: The Legacy of Akara, is the untold story of why the world didn’t end on December 21, 2012 according to the Mayan prophecy. And how we were saved by an alien civilization far more evolved than our own. Mixed in with the fun, fast-paced plot are messages of hope for our future imparted by the characters from Akara, an awakened race of beings from a planet that has gone through its own journey of evolution. The novel was inspired by Dayna’s encounter with a profoundly loving, light-filled extraterrestrial being while she was camping in Sedona, Arizona in 1994. She will share that incredible true story and some of the teachings that were given to her from Spirit that made it into this novel that #1 New York Times bestselling author and OWN Network TV host, Iyanla Vanzant, calls “A visionary page-turner!”
Trailer for book: https://youtu.be/uIJi4NMFWZw
Website: www.awakethenovel.com
About our invited speakers:DAYNA DUNBAR is an award-winning novelist published by Ballantine Books. Her two prior novels—The Saints and Sinners of Okay County and The Wings that Fly Us Home—were selected for the exclusive Ballantine Reader’s Circle. Fannie Flagg, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Café, described her first book as: “Beautifully written.… A funny and poignant story.” A longtime meditation practitioner, Dayna has a master’s degree in spiritual psychology from the University of Santa Monica. With Awake, which has received incredible testimonials from spiritual luminaries like #1 New York Times bestselling authors Iyanla Vanzant and Marci Shimoff as well as Jean Houston and Rick Archer, she has fulfilled her lifelong desire to write a spiritual, science-fiction thriller.
JULIA NADINE PADAWER is a former award-winning Madison Avenue advertising executive. She is currently spiritual and life purpose coach and intuitive. She is also a writer and creative consultant and collaborator. In partnering on Awake, she brought together her passion for science-fiction and her own awakening experiences along her spiritual journey, which have included spending a year in an ashram, living for three months in a Buddhist retreat center, and regularly attending 10-day silent meditation retreats in a Trappist monastery. She holds a Master's Degree in Spiritual Psychology from the University of Santa Monica where she and her writing partner, Dayna Dunbar, met and began their creative partnership.
Thank you to all that joined us!
Program:Host - Nadine de Jong
Welcome and Opening Remarks - Rose Lee
Meditation - Nadine de Jong
Short Talk - Tom Werder
Introduction of Invited Speaker - Doug Rye
Invited Speaker- Freeman Michaels
For over 30 years Freeman Michaels has been a student of leadership, personal growth and human potential, attending countless workshops and consuming everything he could get his hands on regarding these topics. As a published author, speaker, former radio talk show host, and corporate trainer, Freeman has become a prominent voice in the field. Freeman brings a distinct background and perspective to his work as an executive coach, culture consultant and corporate trainer. He is a former partner in a real estate development company, managing half a billion dollars in real estate development projects. He is also a former actor and high school teacher, with a knack for getting his message across in a meaningful and engaging way.
Freeman is the co-founder of Group to TEAM Leadership Solutions, an international training, coaching and consulting firm that helps organizations develop and sustain a culture of TEAM. Freeman has worked with top leaders at major organizations, including The North Face, Jansport, Canada Goose Clothing, The VA, The FDA, Citi-Banamex, Stanford Medical School and many other prominent companies and organizations across the United States, Canada, Mexico and Europe. Freeman’s most important success is as a devoted husband and father of three terrific human beings.
Thank you for joining us! And thank you to our speakers, Doug Rye, Leslie Brockett, Tom Werder and Yella Werder.
To find out more about Yella, visit her website, https://love-yella.squarespace.com/ or contact her by email at yellawerder@gmail.com
To contact Leslie Brockett about her yoga classes and schedule, visit her Facebook page: Kundalini yoga in Baja https://www.facebook.com/kundibaja
Thank you for joining us!
We are so fortunate to live in a community of expression, creativity, and service! At the next Not Church, hear from individuals that have created an impact, and contributed to what makes our home so unique and welcoming.
To contact Sunny for information on our community Bomberos, or other projects: sunima8@mac.com, Facebook Messenger: sunny crowley or
(619) 779-1274—Texting is great!
Resource Center is below.
Martina's book: Dust In My Sandals https://www.amazon.com/Dust-My-Sandals-Tales-Traveler/dp/B092CHCJF3
God and Mr. Gomez by Jack Smith: (from $3.89 on ABE.com) https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-home-_-Results&an=Smith&tn=God+and+Mr.+Gomez&kn=&isbn=
Invited Speaker: Bodhi Martina, author of the newly published, soon to be Baja Classic, "Dust In My Sandals." Martina moved permanently to Baja in 2000, having published her first book, “Call from the Heart” in 1992, which records her life-changing move from Alta California to Mexico. The Call reveals a deep spiritual process combined with independent studies into the evolution of humanity. Martina now resides in La Misión working as a freelance writer, storyteller and intuitive consultant supporting women and men in finding their own authentic voice and non-traditional living beyond the old programs which do not serve humanity rising to its true potential.
Program:
Host-Nadine de Jong
Welcome: Tom Werder
Meditation-Mary Lyans
Remarks on June’s theme-Lance Ozier
Invited Speaker Introduction-Maria Rosales
Invited Speaker-Rafael Jesús González
Discussion, Q&A, and announcements
About Rafael Jesús González
Blog: http://rjgonzalez.blogspot.com/
Born in the bicultural/bilingual setting of El Paso, Texas/Cd. Juárez, Chihuahua, Rafael attended the University of Texas El Paso, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, & the University of Oregon. Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing & Literature, he taught at the University of Oregon, Western State College of Colorado, Central Washington State University, the University of Texas El Paso, and Laney College, Oakland where he founded the Mexican and Latin American Studies Dept. He was Poet in Residence at the Oakland Museum of California and the Oakland Public Library under a "Writers on Site Award" from Poets & Writers, Inc. in 1996. Four times nominated for a Pushcart Prize, he was honored by the National Council of Teachers of English for his writing 2003. In 2013 he received the César E. Chávez Lifetime Award and in 2015 the City of Berkeley also honored him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2017 he was named the first Poet Laureate of Berkeley.
Program: Host: Nadine de Jong
Welcome: Carmen Dominguez
Meditation: Irene Webb
Short Readings: Yella Werder
Speaker: Tom Werder who will spoke on The Possibility of Love and Relationship. Tom is a valued member of the Tranquilo Leadership Team, a seasoned speaker and workshop leader. He is certified teacher of Robert Holden's Happiness Project; he's led numerous Landmark seminars; he is the leader of our Enneagram Group .
Thank you to our wonderful community for participating in our May Not Church on the topic of Possibilities. Below are Yella's quotes and Gary Marks' poem.
QUOTES
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” — Albert Einstein
“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.”
— Pablo Picasso
“Whatever you do, or dream you can do, begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.” — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe
“You know you’re in love when you can’t fall asleep because reality is finally better than your dreams.” — Dr Seuss
“The minute I heard my first love story, I started looking for you, not knowing how blind that was. Lovers don’t finally meet somewhere. They’re in each other all along.”
— Rumi
“Heroes are ordinary men and women who dare to see and meet the call of a possibility bigger than themselves. Breakthroughs are created by such heroes, by men and women who will stand for the result while it is only a possibility - people who will act to make possibility real. We discover that as human beings we can live in a possibility instead of in what we have inherited.” — Werner Erhard
Mortal Lessons: Notes on the Art of Surgery - by Richard Selzer
I stand by the bed where a young woman lies, her face post-operative, her mouth twisted in palsy, clownish. A tiny twig of the facial nerve, the one to the muscles of her mouth, has been severed. She will be thus from now on. The surgeon had followed with religious fervor the curve of her flesh; I promise you that. Nevertheless, to remove the tumor in her cheek, I had to cut the little nerve.
Her young husband is in the room. He stands on the opposite side of the bed, and together they seem to dwell in the evening lamplight, isolated from me, private. Who are they, I ask myself, he and this wry-mouth I have made, who gaze at and touch each other so generously, greedily? The young woman speaks.
“Will my mouth always be like this?” she asks.
“Yes,” I say, “it will. It is because the nerve was cut.”
She nods and is silent. But the young man smiles.
“I like it,” he says. “It’s kind of cute.”
All at once, I know who he is. I understand and I lower my gaze. One is not bold in an encounter with a god. Unmindful, he bends to kiss her crooked mouth, and I so close that I can see how he twists his own lips to accommodate hers, to show that their kiss still works.
GARY'S POEM (author unknown)
I know that I know and that I don't know, but sometimes I forget
I see the blinding light in everything, but sometimes I am blind.
But this is the way that it should be because at the end of every forget... I remember!
Program: Host: Nadine De Jong
Special Remarks and Welcome: John DiCecco
Short Reading: Sandy Stadelmann reading from The Little Book of Big Lies
Meditation: Mary Beth DiCecco
Introduction to the speaker: Kath Batesole
Invited Speaker: Tina Lifford
Learn more about Tina’s work at The Inner Fitness Project. You can find the tools to navigate your Surviving Self; Thriving Self and Infinite Self to “to nurture the inner you and move beyond the past….” in Tina’s book, “The Big Book of Little Lies” is available on Amazon.
Here's the excerpt from Tina's book read by Sandy Stadelmann:
“A dear friend and I have a joke between us. We say we wish that we could make the bed and clean the house just once, and then never have to do so again. It’s a lovely thought. But living life requires cleaning; otherwise, the mess will bury us.
“Life requires sorting things out, cleaning things up, moving things around—over and over. There’s no overnight success when it comes to navigating life. There’s no pill that transforms life’s sticky mess.
“If we aim to craft a fulfilling life, there’s no getting around putting in a Self-centered effort. No matter how silver the spoon you may have been born with, or how loving the family you were born into, or how beautiful your body is, lies come crashing in. We all experience the hurts, dramas, traumas, upsets, disappointments, and fears that come with life. It’s part of being human.
“Successfully navigating this “stuff” takes work. It takes developing a thriving inner Self that can stand up to the lies. That Self lives within everyone. The job of those of us who want it is to go after this idea. Pursue it with passion. Be determined to uncover something truly beautiful from it.”
ABOUT TINA:
Author, actor, spiritual leader, Tina Lifford has visited the La Misión area many times and last spoke at Not Church in 2013, when her first book was just out. The Little Book of Big Lies is in it’s second edition by publisher Harper Collins. We’re excited to have Tina back at Not Church for her talk, “Rising Above the Surviving Self."
Hollywood veteran Tina Lifford plays the vivacious breakout character Aunt Vi on the critically acclaimed television drama Queen Sugar. She has played over 100 characters in her long-standing career, including notable roles on Scandal and Parenthood.
Equally accomplished behind the camera, Tina is the respected playwright of The Circle, a play about how seven diverse women navigate the choppy waters of life together; author of the Little Book of Big Lies, and CEO of the Inner Fitness Project, a wellbeing initiative committed to making the practices and benefits of “Inner Fitness” as familiar, well understood and accessible as those of physical fitness.
Program: Host: Nadine De Jong
Special Remarks: Bev Wilburn honors the passing of Kathleen Dwyer
Short Reading: Doug Rye reads an excerpt of a talk by Adyashanti on the resilience of the human spirit
Meditation: Nadine De Jong
Introduction to the speaker: Maria Rosales
Invited Speaker: Lynne Jones, readings from her new book The Migrant Diaries
About Lynne Jones: Lynne Jones, is a child psychiatrist, relief worker, and writer. She has spent much of the last 25 years establishing and running mental health programs in areas of conflict or natural disaster including the Balkans, East and West Africa, South East Asia, the Middle East, Haiti and Central America. Most recently she has worked in the migrant crisis in Europe and Central America through which she has established a storytelling project for children:
https://migrantchildstorytelling.org.
Stories and pictures from this project are included in her new book: The Migrant Diaries (Fordham University Press 2021). Her other published works include: Then They Started Shooting:Children of the Bosnian War and the Adults They Become, (Bellevue Literary Press 2013) and Outside the Asylum: A Memoir of War, Disaster and Humanitarian Psychiatry (Orion 2017)
Lynne has an MA in human sciences from the University of Oxford. She qualified in medicine before specializing in psychiatry and has a PhD in social psychology and political science. In 2001, she was made an Officer of the British Empire for her work in child psychiatry in conflict-affected areas of Central Europe. She regularly consults for UNICEF and WHO. She is a visiting scientist at the François-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights, Harvard University.
All earnings from her book, The Migrant Diaries, go towards the non-profit, "Choose Love."
Thank you so much to all who participated in the Wisdom of the Heart Not Church event on Valentine's Day!
Melinda Dewey, from HeartMath, shared with us valuable information about our heart and took us through two beautiful guided heart meditations. These we can use any time we need to establish heart coherency to deal with life in a more calm and peaceful way. These techniques do not create a spiritual bypass! They are to help us pause and access that coherency, so that we can deal with all that is going on around us! If you missed it, you can watch the recording here.
The Program:
Host: Nadine De Jong
Welcome: Anna Zimmerman
Short Reading: Lisa Rath
Lisa read an extract from the book, Wisdom of the Heart: Inspiration for a life worth living, by Alan Cohen. To view this book on Amazon. Click here!
Introduction to the speaker: Tom Werder
Invited Speaker: Melinda Dewey, from HeartMath
ABOUT MELINDA DEWEY
Melinda is a speaker, Certified HeartMath Coach and Trainer, workshop and retreat leader, faculty member and mentor. In addition to being Chief Operations Officer and facilitator for the International Heart Ambassadors community and HeartMath’s HeartMastery online learning program, she is a Certified Mindful Change Life Coach and a Transformational Breath® Facilitator. Melinda lives in Orange County, CA and enjoys Nature, hiking, camping, gardening, yoga, the arts, and dear friends and family.
ABOUT HEARTMATH:
HeartMath is passionate and dedicated, steadfast in their commitment to provide solutions for activating the heart of humanity. HeartMath Institute empowers individuals, families, groups and organizations to enhance their life experiences using tools that enable them to better recognize and access their intuitive insight and heart intelligence.
January 10, 2021
Speakers for January include:
Nadine as the host. Community member Royce Page, poetry read by Maria Rosales, Actions through Intentions by Skye McKenzie, a mediation by Connie Castillo-Walsh and our invited speaker, The Power of You by Mónica Chiapa.
Royce set the tone for our gathering on the topic of intentions with the lyrics to “Buenos Dias Señor Sol.” We suggest you check out Juan Gabriel’s version on YouTube if you need a little cheering up: https://youtu.be/cTsisRqQKKU
Maria Rosales’ inspiring, liberating poem, “If This Were My Last Day”
Connie Castillo-Walsh led us in a guided meditation. You can find more of Connie’s meditation and a longer version of the one she shared on her YouTube Channel, Divine Self Hypnosis: https://YouTube.com/c/DivineSelfHypnosis
Skye McKenzie and our invited speaker, Mónica Chiapa gave us a taste of programs they will be offering for the purpose of exploring and expanding our inner life, to get in touch with our intuition and our authentic selves.