A Gathered Meeting is a secular community group model derived from structures that are commonly used in Quaker meetings, and in other community groups such as Parker Palmer’s Circle Groups, 12 step programs, and Talking Stick councils.

This is a once monthly discussion group offered to those who subscribe to the Lectio Essays to consider the themes and texts that have been explored in two essays each month.

These essays are meditations that have emerged as I work my way through my eclectic and idiosyncratic books stacks.

Anyone is welcome to pop in, stay a while, leave when they like,

ask questions about my groups, projects, essays or services,

follow up ideas that emerged in workshops

Converse about community resilience, mysticism, dream work, death work, the polycrisis, or any other bee in your bonnet.

chat, collaborate, connect and brainstorm with other community members.

There is a sort of sleep of the soul and people hope to escape death by sleepwalking or losing themselves in frantic activity

~ Olivier Clement,

“Each feeling does something and means something,

moving the body, informing the mind.”

~ Katherine Peil

Who can walk into unknown woods and head directly for the other side? Wandering for a spell sometimes makes the journey even more exciting.

~Vine Deloria Jr., The Metaphysics of Modern Existence

This propaganda...was capable of almost anything. It could produce the events it fed on... it could also worm its way deep into the innermost spheres of the people to whom it was directed..

~ Charlotte Beradt, The Third Reich of Dreams