Interfaith Chant for Peace

Note from Rabbi Kaya Stern-Kaufman:

Dear Friends,

After the tragic and horrific events in Norway this summer, I have felt ever more provoked to do something to express our spiritual connectedness and unity as one humanity with many diverse and beautiful spiritual voices.

I envision an interfaith group, meeting monthly to share chants and prayers for peace from all traditions.

I have spoken to several local spiritual leaders from different faith traditions and they have enthusiastically agreed to join in this vision. Thus far, Rev. Natalie Shiras from The Church on the Hill, Rev. Yaqin Aubert from the Abode of the Message,  Native American Healer Mikka Barkman, the Quaker community and others will be joining me in our first monthly gathering.

Interfaith Chant for Peace 

Wednesday, August 31st,  5-6 PM 

at The Quaker Meeting House in Great Barrington

 280 State Road-Rt. 23.

Please join us as we share the sounds of Peace from all faith traditions.

Everyone is welcome.

B'shalom,

Rabbi Kaya Stern-Kaufman

Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony

The Women's Interfaith  

                Institute presents . . .

"Journey to the Birthplace of Women's Rights "

The Women's Interfaith Institute in the Berkshires invites you to take part in a journey to Seneca Falls, New York where the first Women's Rights Convention took place in July 1848.   Every year this memorable event is celebrated as part of "Convention Days" at the Women's Rights National Historic Park.

In July 1848, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott and several other women gathered for tea at a mutual friend's home in the small upstate New York village of Seneca Falls.  Elizabeth and Lucretia had met several years before at an anti-slavery convention.  At this meeting they determined to bring the disenfranchisement of women to public attention.  Within 5 days, and without phones, faxes, twitter or facebook, the group called a convention that drew 300 people!  Resolutions were formulated that outlined the rights of women, including the right to vote, and were passed.  This year's commemoration is special because the site of the original convention will be re-dedicated.  

           

Ani Nadler Grosser, Board Member of Women's Interfaith, is organizing this trip.  She is excited to bring a group of Berkshire women to Seneca Falls.  "We stand on the shoulders of these courageous women, many of whom went to jail and sacrificed so that we have rights, including the right to vote" says Grosser.  She adds "this is a trip that will ground us in history and be a source of inspiration for today's challenges.  It is also a wonderful opportunity to share with daughters, sisters, mothers, and friends.  An added bonus is that Seneca Falls, along the Erie Canal, is in the scenic wine country of the Finger Lakes."

            Highlights of the trip include:

• Attending the re-enactment of a famous lecture with contemporary themes by Anna Howard Shaw, suffragist, clergywoman and physician.

• Walk in the Annual Parade from Elizabeth Cady Stanton's home to Women's Rights National Park and witness the ceremony to re-dedicate Convention Hall.

• Saturday lunch with Allison Stokes, founder of Women's Interfaith in the Berkshires and Finger Lakes, and historian of women's rights.

• Tour of Women's Hall of Fame, Women's Rights National Historic Park, and Seneca Falls Museum

Logistics: We'll leave Lenox at 10 am on Friday, July 15, sharing cars or a van.  We have reserved a limited number of non-smoking double rooms at a nearby Holiday Inn.  Cost for a shared room is $95. per person.  Costs for gas, tolls, and meals are additional.  We will return at 8 pm on Saturday evening.

For more information, please contact Ani Grosser at

413-637-2868 or anigrosser@earthlink.net

Link to Susan B. Anthony and other biographies:

 women warriors

June 14, 2011

June 14, 2011

Partnership in Life and Music: If Music Be the Food of Love, Play On

The Women’s Interfaith Institute in the Berkshires will host songwriters and WBCR-lp radio hosts Graham and Barbara Dean perform some of the songs they have written together, and talk about how the process of writing, arranging and singing songs together has its complement in their marriage and life partnership.  We will learn about the elements of collaboration and synergy, which Barbara describes as “the whole being greater than the sum of its parts.”

Graham and Barbara Dean have been married for 34 years and have raised 4 children. They met in Sherborne, England in 1975 during a 10-month course in spiritual development, based on the teachings of George Gurdjieff, a Russian mystic. One of the things that attracted Barbara to Graham was his guitar-playing and singing. Barbara started singing with him in the 80's and then started playing the electric bass about 10 years ago. Attending songwriting/music camps together for the past 11 years has stimulated and supported their ability to make music together. 

Their CD "Tom Paine's Blues" debuted in 2004 and they host a political/folk music radio show on WBCR-lp on Wednesday nights from 8 to 10 pm.

http://www.commonsensesongs.com/

May 12, 2011

"An Embodied History of Women"  

          

In this multimedia presentation on Thursday, May 12th, Sylvia Smetana of EnlightenNext will present the evolution of women's consciousness to better understand where we are today.

In the past fifty years, women's range of life choices has changed dramatically. We are now free to create lives that our foremothers could barely have dreamed of. Yet as we try to realize our potential, too often we find ourselves living out of the motivations and patterns of the past.

We don't realize that the past-not just our personal history, but all of the history of women-lives within us. 

Sylvia Smetana was born in Austria and studied business administration in Vienna. She met spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen in 1994. Inspired by the integrity, humanity and purposefulness of his teachings, she moved to Germany in 1997 to join the movement. In 2001 she joined EnlightenNext's world center in Lenox, MA as their Finance Director.

For several years she has been working closely with Dr. Elizabeth Debold and other senior teachers to develop a new, spiritual liberation teaching for women with Andrew Cohen, based on Evolutionary Enlightenment..www.andrewcohen.org     www.enlightennext.org  www.evolvewoman.org

 

 

April 12, 2011 

"From Constriction to Freedom - 
A Journey to Our Spiritual Home" 

 

The Women’s Interfaith Institute in the Berkshires will host Rev. Cheryl Ann Luft, MSS, Movement Therapist and Educator, for a universal passover experience. Through words, imagery and music, she will guide participants to move and experience the journey of Exodus which is told in the Passover story. Together, the group will travel this journey creating a deeper and more personal understanding of this timeless and relevant path.  No previous movement experience is needed and all are welcome to participate.

Rev. Cheryl Ann Luft is Jewish and an ordained ecumenical, interfaith minister, specializing in practical spirituality and worship for special populations.  When not donning her robe, she is a movement therapist and educator working with dance in Jewish populations, movement classes for the general public and private work with individuals.


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WBCR-LP   was host to an interview with Jan Hutchinson and JoAnne Spies on Barbara and Graham Dean's show that aired the night before the program.
Thank you, B & G!

"Poetry as Soul Rescue"

 led by poet Jan Hutchinson

 Thursday March 17, 2011

                 

       I crack my mind

          above the page,

          and sunny side up

          it lies there

          looking for God.

As part of the Berkshire Festival of Women Artists, Women's Interfaith Institute will host a poetry reading interwoven with a presentation on how poetry (all art for that matter) can center us, save us, get us beyond ourselves. Jan Hutchinson's poetry is direct, accessible, and quirky. It asks the big questions but dances laughingly away from all dogma and certainty.

Jan Hutchinson studied psychology as an under-graduate and literature and creative writing in graduate school.  She has lived in the Berkshires for thirty-five years, working and raising a family.  In the last decade, her study, inner life and creative work have coalesced into a focus on how the writing of poetry can be a lifeline, rescuing us, and a buoy helping us to float.

          The net of laughter

          waiting beneath

          the nervous highwire

          is Grace.

 

Come join us for this wome's monthly potluck  program and bring a friend. $5-10 Suggested donation (to support our programs) Free for members

International Women’s Day Conference: Women Write the World
on Mar 5 2011, 1:00 PM - 5:30 PM at Bard College at Simon’s Rock (84 Alford Rd. Great Barrington)

This year’s 10th Annual International Women’s Day Conference will celebrate the power of women’s words, both locally and globally. Established and emerging women authors will be invited to share their insights on how they have used writing as a tool for “righting” the world—in other words, how writing is used by women as a creative outlet and a vehicle for social justice. See full program at Women Write the World.

The event is co-sponsored by Bard College at Simon's Rock and Berkshire Women for Women Worldwide. The Women's Interfaith Institute in the Berkshires is a long-time collaborator in supporting International Women's Day.
Keynote speaker will be acclaimed ecologist and cancer survivor Sandra Steingraber, whose trailblazing book, Living Downstream, makes a lyrical, personal and scientific case for banning poisons now pervasive in our air, our food, and our bodies.
( http://steingraber.com/ ) Readings and discussion by women include Native American poet Deborah Miranda, Chicana novelist Demetria Martinez, and journalist Christina Asquith, on Iraqi and American women in the Iraq War. There will also be a panel of women writers from Nigeria, Congo, Cameroon, and Ghana and a special dance choreographed by Anni Crofut on the stories of Berkshire women. Singer/songwriter JoAnne Spies will share her original music.
Registration:  $25 paid in advance; $30 at the door; $10 with student ID; Scholarships available.

The International Women's Day conference will be held in the Daniel Arts Center at Simon’s Rock in Great Barrington, MA. Contact: iwd@simons-rock.edu

Parallel events will be held throughout Berkshire County for the entire month. 

Women's Interfaith Institute in the Berkshires will host poet Jan Hutchinson reading and discussing "Poetry as Soul Rescue" at their Thursday, March 17th potluck program.