"The mind is like a river - a flowing continuum of moments of mere knowing, each leading to another moment of knowing. The stream of such moments of consciousness goes from hour to hour, from day to day, from year to year, and even, according to the Buddhist view, from lifetime to lifetime. Though our body cannot accompany us once our life force is exhausted, the moments of consciousness continue. Each of us possesses such a stream of consciousness. And it is both beginningless and endless. Nothing can stop it."
The Dalai Lama, Spiritual Leader of the Tibetan People, An Open Heart: Practicing Compassion in Everyday Life, 2001.
The Vision & Mission of Forest Streams Retreats & Workshops
For me, this work is a call to ministry and is a form of ministry. For over 20 years, I have acknowledged the lived experiences and emergent needs of people in communities. Through my work and volunteer experiences in community settings, especially in ministries, I have been brought to recognize the need to develop opportunities, events, and resources for people to experience 'flow' in their lives, to ask questions about personal growth and development, and to follow through on identifying emergent needs in their personal, professional and community lives. People have a strong need to pursue well-being. Forest Streams is a resource, in the form of myself, and others who will journey with me along the way, to respond to those needs for well-being in our personal and communal lives. I will offer events at home and also 'go out', as part of the mission, to be with others in their community settings.
I offer support to those named above, specifically, faith communities, social service communities and non-profit places as well as workplaces. I am passionate about my belief that every person needs to have opportunities for reflection and action. In our faith communities we need to focus especially on how to live this call out in faithfulness to our morals, ethics and call to compassion, social justice and participation in this beautiful world. We need to create 'places' where this nurture can and does happen. Forest Streams Retreats & Workshops is one of those places, a needed one in Halifax, a new kind of adventure in transformative learning that will grow with the needs we encounter! Our lives need to be in touch with the local and global realities, with social issues, and with one another.
I provide retreats, learning events, workshops, and visioning processes for faith communities and community organizations. I also will offer support for those often not included in this kind of life and personal growth opportunity. Here, I am thinking of women who live in transitions who might find themselves in shelters, people in prisons, those who cannot afford to find this kind of reflection as part of their ongoing lives. I want to build this kind of community wherein we have a diversity of voices, backgrounds, cultures and life approaches and experiences. An important dimension of our call to discipleship, as people of any faith tradition or ethical commitment, involves becoming more compassionate and working towards diminishing our own suffering and the suffering of others. In this work, I seek to do the same.
Please join me in this mission. Come. Be. Listen.