Even before getting her Master’s degree in Counseling psychology at Pacifica, Adriana Attento was working in the field of psychology. During that same period, she was also doing a lot of writing—meeting with a friend to free write next to the ocean every morning for an hour—and she was also meditating as a regular spiritual practice. Somehow, she now believes, the combination of these two practices opened something up for her, creating a “flow, and abundance of images that images that felt very
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The first thing Courtney McCubbin did when she landed in Cameroon for the Peace Corps was start a tree nursery, which then required her to build a fence around it to protect it from rodents. Once she began getting interest from farmers, she gave them seedlings to plant to help improve soil fertility and to prevent erosion on their lands. She also created a demonstration farm to show native farmers techniques they could use.
While a volunteer in the Peace Corps, McCubbin connected in profound ways
In his senior year of college, Minh Tran, a “first and a half” generation Vietnamese immigrant who moved to the U.S. as a child, started volunteering community organizations doing lay counseling work. When Tran began to pay attention, he realized he was ready to make the leap from working with community-based organizations to formally pursuing a counseling degree with a depth psychological orientation.
From a psychological perspective, there's always some part of the therapist that's also being w
Variation On A Theme By Rilke
by Denise Levertov
(The Book of Hours, Book I, Poem 1, Stanza 1)
A certain day became a presence to me;
there it was, confronting me — a sky, air, light:
a being. And before it started to descend
from the height of noon, it leaned over
and struck my shoulder as if with
the flat of a sword, granting me
honor and a task. The day’s blow
rang out, metallic — or it was I, a bell awakened,
and what I heard was my whole self
saying and singing what it knew: I can.
For weeks,
Wendell Berry: "To Know the Dark"
To go in the dark with a light is to know the light.
To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,
and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,
and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings.
I have spoken these lines, penned by poet, philosopher, farmer and social activist, Wendell Berry, in Solstice celebrations at the church where I ministered for thirteen years. Every year, the doors would open into the candle lit sanctuary.