Monday December 16, 6:30-9:30pm

Session 10: Train
Rhonda V. Magee, MA, JD
Mindfulness and Racial Justice: A Path for All of Us

Rhonda V. Magee is an internationally recognized thought and practice leader focused on integrating mindfulness into higher education, law, and social justice. In this moving conversation and training session, Rhonda speaks with Kriste Peoples in the wake of yet another fatal mass shooting in the United States. Rhonda helps us explore ways to engage with the feelings of outrage, exhaustion, and fearfulness that often peak after such events and guides listeners through a powerful guided practice for healing. Topics include:

• Meeting all of life with “friendly awareness”—not as bypassing or denial, but as cultivating a capacity to be with what is
• Awareness practices as keys to personal, interpersonal, and collective transformation in the face of challenge and opportunity
• Disrupting the harm done by our biases and building multicultural communities
• Reckoning with the suffering caused by bias in general, and creating a pathway to healing and redemption

For Third Monday, on December 16, 2019 the plan is 6:30p potluck, 7p viewing of a session of “Sounds True –  Waking Up in the World”, 8:30p Discussion – in Sunnyvale.

To ask any questions, please contact Victoria varmigo@earthlink.net

Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Oooh, another Scare Faire is coming your way, full of spooky goodness – on Sunday, October 20th, 1-3pm at the Museum of American Heritage. 

Old costumes lurking? Send them packing to possess a new home in our Costume Swap. Bring your adult and child costumes in good condition (as well as Halloween decorations) right at 1pm, get a number, and start choosing costumes at 1:20!

Bring your old costumes at 1:00.  We’ll give you a sequential number.  At 1:20, we’ll call numbers, starting with 1, to let people in to look for new costumes.  Every few minutes we’ll let in people with the next few numbers. When all of the numbers are exhausted, we’ll open the room to share the remaining costumes with whomever is the

While you’re waiting, check out our Scare Faire – a traditional Transition Palo Alto Share Faire with some Halloween twists.  Learn a skill, find something in need of a home, meet your neighbors, have some fun.

We’ll once again haunt the bewitching Museum of American Heritage with our Halloween and Holiday Scare Faire, a chance to get to know your ghastly neighbors, scare, and share.

You’ll be under the spell of our Series on Eating your values as well:

• Peter Ruddock will share thoughts on Eating Transition Values
• Kim Acker will demonstrate how to cook from the Farmer’s Market (and Cooking your values!)
• Diane Ruddle will teach us how to save and use up our food and scraps (without Wasting your values!)

If your ghostly appetite is still not appeased by all that food talk, you can also:

• Bedevil yourself, having your face painted by Nimita
• Exorcise your laptop or computer, thanks to Bart Anderson‘s technology expertise
• Materialize a Halloween craft, in the expert hands of Hamsa Rajaram

As always, we’ll have goods to share, including garden, clothing, household, books and more. So scare up your own to bring!

And we’ll share each other’s good company while building a BOOtiful, stronger community.

Please plan to join us.  If you’d like to volunteer as a greeter, for set-up or clean-up, or for whatever, please sign up at https://bit.ly/scarefairevol

Free, donations appreciated. RSVP here. 

Want to learn more about our Sharing Events? More info here. 

Session 9: Engage Adyashanti

Sounds True – Waking up in the World

For Third Monday, on October 21, 2019 the plan is 6:30p potluck, 7p viewing of a session of “Sounds True –  Waking Up in the World”, 8:00p Discussion – in Sunnyvale.. We’ll continue this month with Session 9: Engage

Adyashanti

Embracing Our Totality

“Waking up,” reflects Adyashanti, “is a fundamental alteration in the way we perceive ourselves—in who and what we take ourselves to be.” And this shift can make all the difference in how we bring our truest beliefs into action. Join Adyashanti to explore:

• Moving from “goodness” to “wholeness”—why we need to question our abstract, utopian visions and stay focused on helping others in our actions
• How vulnerability and undiluted clarity help us embrace our shadow dimensions, such as rage and despair
• Bringing our higher “soul values”—including truth and love—to the real-world problems that surround us

To RSVP or ask any questions, please feel free to contact Victoria varmigo at earth link dot net.

6:30pm Monday, October 21. 6:30pm potluck, 7pm viewing, 8:15 discussion. Check email for details.

Session 8: Engage Joanna Macy

Sounds True – Waking up in the World

For Third Monday, on September 16, 2019 the plan is 6:30p potluck, 7p viewing of a session of “Sounds True –  Waking Up in the World”, 8:00p Discussion. Location TBD in Sunnyvale or Los Altos. We’ll continue this month with Session 8: Engage

Joanna Macy, PhD

We Belong: Hope, Choice, and Our Relationship with the Earth
In this interview, Sounds True founder Tami Simon speaks with leading eco-philosopher, activist, and Buddhist scholar Joanna Macy. They discuss the need for hope in times of chaos and dissolution, as well as how hope is something we do rather than just feel. They consider apathy as a refusal to face the inevitability of suffering and why the state of the environment can be especially heartbreaking. Finally, Tami and Joanna talk about our relationship with the earth as a natural birthright—one that is actually the source of all our energy and joy. Highlights include:

• The earth as not just alive, but an extension of our bodies
• “The Great Turning”—which way will we go?
• Hope versus optimism, and choosing to participate in our own evolution

To RSVP or ask any questions, please feel free to contact Victoria varmigo at earth link dot net.

6:30pm Monday, September 16. 6:30pm potluck, 7pm viewing, 8:15 discussion. Check email for details.

It had been five years since we last had a Crafts-only swap – and we were back at Opal’z Soap and Scents, but in a new location. A hot, sunny Saturday midday brought out bags and boxes of everyone’s craft discards, but also lots was taken home to be newly repurposed.

There was such a range of things – papers, potpourri items, soap-making, candle-making, fabrics, containers, bottles, stickers, kits for kids, paints and colors, small supplies, and a few things that would need some creativity to be repurposed!

We had a steady trickle of people come in, and TPA is also the owner of a new tent canopy for events.

Thanks to our dedicated few volunteers (notably Kenneth Meng and Barbara Weinstein), and our demoers Suzanne Fouche, who showed lace-making and kumihimo, Amanda Kovattana, who displayed and discussed various types of shoes she had made, and William Mutch who showed different types of bracelet weaving, plus the several kind people who dropped off some fruit from their gardens, we had a lively event filled with community and crafty kindness.

Thank you also to Annie of Opal’z, Zero Waste Palo Alto, and everyone who came to share and participate!

Our very own Peter Ruddock will be participating in a panel hosted by Kim Acker on Thursday, August 15th, 7pm entitled “Eating Your Values” at the Los Altos Library. A second panel will be held the following week as well on the Future of Food.

https://www.losaltoshistory.org/events/eating-your-values-panel-discussion/

https://www.losaltoshistory.org/events/food-for-the-future-panel-discussion/

Session 7: Engage Jack Kornfield

Sounds True – Waking up in the World

For Third Monday, on August 19, 2019 the plan is 6:30p potluck, 7p viewing of a session of “Sounds True –  Waking Up in the World”, 8:15p Discussion. Location TBD in Sunnyvale or Los Altos. We’ll continue this month with Session 7: Engage.

Jack Kornfield, PhD

Tending the Heart in Uncertain Times

We live in uncertain times. How can we keep our hearts open and wise without being lost in the confusion and fears presented to us daily? How can we serve our community and our world with loving awareness and act with the gracious spirit of the bodhisattva? Join Jack Kornfield, bestselling author and cofounder of the Insight Meditation Society, for an important and nourishing conversation. Jack will explore:

• Practices for tending the heart and setting our inner compass
• The power of our highest intention and the joy of the bodhisattva
• Skills for peace amidst all that is happening

To RSVP or ask any questions, please feel free to contact Victoria varmigo at earthlink dot net

6:30pm Monday, August 19th. 6:30pm potluck, 7pm viewing, 8:15 discussion. Check email for details.

We return this month (and year!) with our first Craft swap in a long time. We will have this event at our old haunt Opal’z – but in a new, larger location.

Join us to trade arts and crafts supplies, beads, baubles, paper, yarn, sewing needs, instruction books,  and other crafty items in good condition. Bring supplies you won’t use, and take home something new to you. A light lunch will be available.

Would you like to demonstrate a craft? Contact us at bacraftswap at gmail dot com

Where: Opal’z Soap, 897 Independence Avenue, Mountain View building 3, suite C (behind Costco)

When: Saturday, August 10th, 12-2pm (note new time, day, and date!)

A few guidelines:

• Due to the presence of needles and soap supplies, babies and toddlers should not be unattended indoors.
• Take home anything left unclaimed at the end.
• If you have a large amount of one type of item (an entire box or more), please remember to take them home if they are left at the end. Please contact us if you have more than this.
• Opal’z is a soap-making business with fragrances – if you are sensitive to fragrance, you may wish to take precautions or contact us.

Free and open to all – RSVP not required, but please check in here.

Let’s have fun sharing and creating!

Session 6: Engage Seane Corn

The Revolution from Within
Sounds True – Waking up in the World

Join Seane in this lively and inspired conversation on what it means to advocate for social change from the inside out, our role as conscious leaders, and how to engage our communities during these complicated times with awareness, compassion, and mindful action. Because stress and trauma live in the body, yoga practice is a perfect opportunity to confront and change some of the patterns that keep us stuck and suffering. When we change on an individual level, we are changing the collective level. If you’re interested in seeing the world become a more healed and integrated place, curious about your own personal contribution, or overwhelmed by the state of the world, this session will offer insights and practices that can provide guidance, lead toward purpose, and ultimately inspire you to be the change you wish to see.

• How to bridge the gap between yoga, transformation, social justice, and action
• Understanding the mind-body connection and the impact of trauma on our health, wellness, and reactivity to crisis and conflict
• What it means to be a conscious leader and ally in the world today

To RSVP or ask any questions, please feel free to contact Victoria varmigo at earthlink dot net

6:30pm Monday, July 15th. 6:30pm potluck, 7pm viewing, 8:15 discussion. Check email for details. Facebook event link. 

Friday July 26, 7:30-9:30pm 
Fireside Room, Unitarian Universalist Church of Palo Alto, 505 E. Charleston, Palo Alto

In this beautifully photographed tour de force of original thinking, Academy Award winner Jeff Bridges shares the screen with scientists, profound thinkers and a dazzling array of Earth’s living creatures to reveal eye-opening concepts about ourselves and our past, providing fresh insights into our subconscious motivations and their unintended consequences.

Living in the Future’s Past shows how no one can predict how major changes might emerge from the spontaneous actions of the many.  How energy takes many forms as it moves through and animates everything.  How, as we come to understand our true connection to all there is, we will need to redefine our expectations, not as what we will lose, but what we might gain by preparing for something different.

Director Susan Kucera’s documentary “Living in The Future’s Past” brings together scientists, philosophers and politicians to share fresh insights on our subconscious motivations and their unintended consequences. See the trailer…

FREE, Donations appreciated. RSVP here.

Sponsored by Transition Palo Alto.