Cougar Annie's Garden Trip 2008

Spotlight on Green Learning...

Date: Thursday, October 8, 2009
Time: 7pm - 9pm
Location: The Grant building - Quarterdeck Cost: $15.00 + GST
Course Code: GLEL1769-Y08

The Hidden Promise of Our Dark Age: The Wisdom, Strength & Beauty We Are Discovering - an evening talk with Joanna Macy

"As we free ourselves from the delusions and dependencies bred by the industrial growth society, something wonderful can happen to us. If we manage to steer clear of panic, we may well find at last the wild power of our creativity and solidarity."

The ecological and social crises we face are inflamed by an economic system dependent on accelerating growth. This self-destructing political economy sets its goals and measures its performance in terms of ever-increasing corporate profits--in other words by how fast materials can be extracted from Earth and turned into consumer products, weapons, and waste. A revolution is underway because people are realizing that our needs can be met without destroying our world. To see this as the larger context of our lives clears our vision and summons our courage. Joanna Macy provides this context in an inspirational evening talk, The Hidden Promise of Our Dark Age.

This is a precious and hope-filled opportunity …please join us!

MORE on Joanna Macy and Her Work...

Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy, Ph.D., is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. She is also a leading voice in movements for peace, justice, and a safe environment. Interweaving her scholarship and four decades of activism, she has created both a ground-breaking theoretical framework for a new paradigm of personal and social change, and a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science.

This work is described in her books Despair and Empowerment in the Nuclear Age (New Society Publishers, 1983), Dharma and Development (Kumarian Press, 1985), Thinking Like a Mountain (co-edited with John Seed, Pat Fleming, and Arne Naess; New Society Publishers, 1988), Mutual Causality in Buddhism and General Systems Theory (SUNY Press, 1991), Rilke’s Book of Hours (with Anita Barrows, Riverhead, 1996), Coming Back to Life: Practices to Reconnect Our Lives, Our World (with Molly Young Brown, New Society Publishers, 1998); Widening Circles: A Memoir, (New Society Publishers, 2000); and World as Lover, World as Self: Courage for Global Justice and Ecological Renewal (Parallax Press, 2007).

Over the past twenty-five years many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna’s workshops and trainings, while her methods have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.

Joanna travels widely giving lectures, workshops, and trainings in North America, Europe and Asia. She lives in Berkeley, California near her children and grandchildren.

Joanna will continue on to The Haven on Gabriola Island for a long weekend retreat October 9 through 12, 2009 . For more information please visit the Haven website: http://www.haven.ca/programs/the-work-that-reconnects.html

RRU Continuing Studies calendar distributed in today's Times Colonist

More than 250 learning opportunities are unveiled in the new Continuing Studies Calendar distributed today in the Victoria Times Colonist. The vision for this year's ambitious continuing studies calendar . . . comes from this question; 'What life wants to be lived through you?'" said Hilary Leighton, director of Continuing Studies at Royal Roads University. "Perhaps together we can find the answer."

See the new continuing calendar online. Hard copies are also available at libraries, recreation centres and other locations on and off campus.

Has it been a long time or a short time since we last met?

While we carefully designed and co-created this year with our brilliant facilitators and learning partners, we imagined you here on this lifelong path exploring with us over 270 trans-disciplinary (non-degree) educational opportunities and events that promise to be extraordinary!

Join futurist Meg Wheatley (Sept 30th), eco-philosopher Joanna Macy (Oct 8th), and social justice poet Drew Dellinger (May 1st) in one of the most magnificent places on earth - where Edwardian gardens, a 1908 castle and ancient forests meet the ocean and the snow-capped Olympia’s beyond.

And we're bringing back favourites such as the Professional and Applied Communications Skills Certificate, the three Professional Management Skills Certificates and NEW this year -- an Eco-Literacy Certificate with competency areas that cover: systems thinking, social and environmental responsibility, designing with the earth in mind, community-building and collaboration, and more. Not least of all, for those alumni who “learn until they know” instead of when the program ends, we offer a 5 day post-graduate in residency certificate – Foundations in Innovation and Transformation - beginning in January.

Off campus Continuing Studies is proud to co-sponsor an innovative leadership event designed to ignite social change and foster communities of practice called The Art of Hosting Conversations that Matter October 15-18, 2009 at the Tamawaga Campus, on Vancouver Island, just south of Nanaimo. These 3 days will explore how to apply the practices of courageously inviting, designing and hosting conversations that matter (such as Open Space Technology, World Cafe, Circle, and Appreciative Inquiry) during times of uncertainty. Visit www.berkana.org/aoh for registration.

Now is the perfect time to collaborate, participate and learn together!

See you soon…

The Continuing Studies team

Ask yourself, “What life wants to be lived through me?”

“In wildness is the preservation of the world” ~ Henry David Thoreau

Brilliant physicist and cosmologist, Brian Swimme recently suggested we simply substitute the word ‘resource’ for ‘relative’ to remind ourselves of our kinship with all living things. The salmon, for example would no longer be reduced to something for our use but rather become a relative to know and care for. This clever word exchange elegantly reveals our intrinsic interconnectedness with all of life. We would no sooner think of selling off our natural resources than selling our own mothers! A shift in perspective, indeed.

The time is ripe for shifting into new and fresh ways of knowing, being, and thinking. But perhaps there are clues in the not so new. If we look to the instruction-filled ecological systems of the natural world we see age old, ubiquitous examples of innovation, cooperation and community, or to the 14 billion year old story of the universe tellung us of an evolutionary push toward unstoppable creativity since the beginning, or to healthy, life-enhancing tribal cultures that supported each person to discover his or her particular and deeply fulfilling way of belonging to the world… then we can see the world as interactive and recognize that we come from this place (instead of own or control it) -- that we’re all in this together especially when we participate! By spending more time outside in nature, especially with our children, we are readily reminded that the changes we seek are actually well within our reach.

Learning together can also be a catalyst for such transformations through the relational and living inquiry of trans-disciplinary practices that further the conditions that invite: multiple intelligences; originality; creative ignition; critical thought; and personal, social and environmental responsibility. In dialogue and open exchange, we learn to become more ourselves, deeply understanding of the unique ways in which we are each meant to serve this world. It is both a personal and a planetary act of grace (and salvation) to develop ourselves in this way, to grow up rather than simply age, and take responsibility of how we can best serve in our place of belonging. This in turn contributes to the likelihood of keeping the world’s diversity of possibility alive and well and increasing exponentially.

Here is your invitation to learn about: sustainable and eco-systems based living; transition towns; hand-sculpted houses; and energy and emissions through the new Eco-Literacy Certificate. Grow organic food and healthy children, bee-keep, forage for mushrooms, explore ethnobotany. Become water smart, put your passion to work, change the world by telling a different story and just listen for a change. Find expression in art, music, drumming, and writing. Seek renewable leadership, lead as mensch, or lead from the inside out. Develop compassion from ecopsychology, draw from body-held wisdom in meditative practice. Journey to the wilds of Cougar Annie’s Garden or the far reaches of Mongolia to learn more about the mystery and spirit of the people, the land and the history of place.

Inspire by learning, stay awake and listen deeply for eloquence and unexpected teachers everywhere ...like futurist Meg Wheatley (Sept 30th), eco-philosopher Joanna Macy (Oct 8th), and social justice poet Drew Dellinger (May 1st). And not least of all, for those alumni who “learn until they know” instead of when the program ends, a 5 day post graduate residency certificate (Jan).

Ask yourself, “What life wants to be lived through me?” And perhaps, when we all participate in rich, wide-ranging opportunities for experiential and emergent life-long learning (here and elsewhere), we will all one fine day live into the answers.

Hilary Leighton,
Director, Continuing Studies