Workshop Leader, Carol Hohle, MA, is an educator, environmentalist and spiritual activist.  She speaks, leads workshops and retreats on spiritual practices and eco-spirituality.  Carol has taught Deep River classes and been trained by the book’s author, Abby Seixas, to teach courses based on her book.

Sunday, February 12, 2012, 3:00 – 5:30 p.m.

Fee:  $35.

To REGISTER, visit The Awakening Center’s website.  The Awakening Center is located at 3523 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL.

Please note:  In addition to this introductory workshop, Carol will be leading, beginning February 26, a seven-week woman’s group in the art of slowing down at The Awakening Center.  For more information about the woman’s group CLICK HERE.

“Finding the Deep River Within: A woman’s group in the art of slowing down” is a new program being offered at The Awakening Center in Chicago, IL.  Over the course of seven meetings we will experience what slowing down can do to bring balance back into our lives!  With the help of readings and meditative exercises from Abby Seixas’ book, Finding the Deep River Within — A Woman’s Guide to Recovering Balance & Meaning in Everyday Life, along with discussion, creative expression, humor, and each other, we will explore ways to free ourselves from the tyranny of our “to do” lists, and so to rest with in our deeper selves, while embracing the gift of life.

Group Facilitator, Carol Hohle, MA, is an educator, environmentalist and spiritual activist.  She speaks, leads workshops and retreats on spiritual practices and eco-spirituality.  Carol has taught Deep River classes and been trained by the book’s author, Abby Seixas, to teach courses based on her book.

Sunday afternoons, 3:00 – 5:30 pm
Seven classes convening weekly between February 26 – April 15, 2012
February 26; March 4, 11, 18 & 25; April 1 & 15.  (No class on Easter 4/8.)

Fee:  $250.

To REGISTER, visit The Awakening Center’s website. The Awakening Center is located at 3523 N. Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL.

For more information about this group please CONTACT Carol.

The Spiritual Eco-Practice Group at Inspiration House provides an opportunity to deepen one’s own eco-practice, stay current with eco-news and find support with others who are endeavoring to live more lightly and lovingly on the Earth.

This winter/spring we’ll pick one seven-day practice each month, explore it individually on our own timetable, and check in with each other via conference calls to share and appreciate one another’s insights and good works!

Past Eco-Practices have included:

• Soul work – “Developing a New Sense of Ourselves”
• Reconnecting with the natural world – “Lightening Up”
• Rethinking Trash – “Discovering There is NO Away!”
• “For the love of water”

This third season for the Eco-Practice begins in February 2012 and includes four conference calls – a launch call in early February and then one later in February, at the end of March, and end of April to debrief after each month’s practice. Group determines convenient conference call day/times.

Fee: $35.

Contact Us to register.

Facilitated by Carol Hohle. Carol is the Founder & Executive Director of Inspiration House. She is an educator, environmentalist & spiritual activist. She speaks, lead workshops & retreats on spiritual practices and eco-spirituality.

Thank you Louie Schwartzberg for creating this presentation, and thanks to Margaret Imrie for sharing it with Inspiration House.

What a thing it is to sit absolutely alone, in the forest, at night, cherished by this wonderful, unintelligible, perfectly innocent speech, the most comforting speech in the world, the talk that rain makes by itself all over the ridges, and the talk of the watercourses everywhere in the hollows!

Nobody started it, nobody is going to stop it. It will talk as long as it wants, the rain. As long as it talks, I am going to listen.” — Thomas Merton from “Rain and the Rhinoceros”

To learn more about the relationship between materialism and well-being, read this interview with Tim Kasser, “Consumerism, Values, and What Really Matters.”

]]> http://www.inspirationhouse.org/2012/01/05/the-high-price-of-materialism/feed/ 0 http://www.inspirationhouse.org/2012/01/03/living-green-books-for-2012/ http://www.inspirationhouse.org/2012/01/03/living-green-books-for-2012/#comments Tue, 03 Jan 2012 16:13:20 +0000 Carol Hohle http://www.inspirationhouse.org/?p=941 Thanks Hollister for sending along a great link recommending several good books for the new year.  The website, Simple Organic – Green Living for Real Families, offers a list of 12 worthy books – a little something for everyone from tips for raising a baby in an eco-friendly way, to backyard gardening, to keeping a house clean with green cleansers, to theological musings on creation care.  Be sure to check out “12 Green Living Books For Your 2012 Reading List.”

Another book on my list is from the National Council of Churches, God’s Earth is Sacred – Essays on Eco-Justice. It includes 13 essays by leading eco-theologians and an open letter to church and society in the U.S. from the Council.  God’s Earth is Sacred calls us to deep reflection on “our responsibilities as those who live within the USA - the part of the human family that represents five percent of the worlds population and consumes 25 percent of the Earth’s riches.”  It insists that our new understanding needs to be integrated “into our core beliefs and practices surrounding what it means to be ‘church,’ to be ‘human,’ to be ‘children of God.”  At its conclusion, we are urged to coherent and consistent action within the church community’s life and in the broader world “in restoring God’s Earth-the greatest healing work and moral assignment of our time.”

What eco books are on your reading list for 2012?  Please share them in “leave a reply” below and let’s grow the list begun here.