My Spiritual Quest

My life is an extension of the spiritual quests of my ancestors, who include many ministers, teachers, and Quaker activists. I developed my spiritual foundation growing up in an extraordinarily creative and vibrant United Methodist Church in Berkeley, California. I received a strong foundation for asking spiritual questions. As a young adult, I no longer found what I needed in worship but put my faith in action by working for faith-based organizations for 14 years.

I grew up acutely feeling the shadow of the turmoil in the early 20th century. Every teary family toast contains the shadows of the losses my family felt in the Great Depression. My childhood best friend’s alcoholic father was a holocaust survivor. My ailing pastor was a survivor of the bombing of Nagasaki. The wounding of the world was personal and acutely present.

One of the biggest spiritual questions I have carried through my life is how to heal the grief and despair that comes with such a broken world. The desire for transformation drove me to activism and to a Peace and Conflict Studies major in college.

For over thirty years I have been working for transformation - for a world that reflects our interdependence. My mediation training, experience teaching nonviolence in prisons, advocating for public policy and building interfaith and intercultural relationships influence how I understand movement and meditation as powerful tools for healing ourselves and the world.

Only when I had to face my own intense brokenness in a health crisis did I surprise myself by finding a deep well of resilience and healing. This shift was facilitated in large part by working with qigong healers and practicing qigong myself. It is such a relief to be so much more at peace with the universe! Becoming a Spring Forest Qigong Certified Healer and Instructor has at last fulfilled my lifelong longing to bring healing, hope, and transformation to the world. I love teaching qigong courses to empower others with skills to put their compassion in action.

Our interconnection with all of life is truly a gift to be celebrated. Today it’s a joy to know myself as part of the ever renewing, ever transforming, dance of life. I have grounded this insight by reconnecting with the perennial wisdom tradition, including the religion of my birth. The overwhelm I felt earlier in life at all the suffering in the world was only the beginning of this interconnected awareness. With enough tools and resources, our interconnection is a joy, and that is why joy is fundamental to how I approach transformation.

Sometimes people ask me why water is such a big theme in my work. Hang around me for a while and I‘ll share some of the big spiritual reasons. But I thought I‘d pay tribute here to some of the significant waters in my life. I grew up anchored by an amazing view of the San Francisco Bay and a poster in our house that said “Water is Life.” At my wedding in 2005, we symbolically merged together our families with water from Lake Hiawatha, the Mississippi River, Miranda Canyon, Strawberry Creek, the Oakland Estuary, Biscayne Bay, Lake Piseco, and the Hudson River. In 2014 I started participating in Nibi Walk, Indigenous-led walking ceremonies for the water, and I was on the editorial team for the Nibi Walk 10 year anniversary exhibit and catalog “Ninga Izhichige Nibi Onji / I Will Do It For The Water.”