Join Father Adam Bucko and Bayo Akomolafe for a conversation about courage, myth, masculinity and more.
This is an online event. Ticket holders will receive the zoom link shortly before the event. Times: 3pm – 5pm BST, 10am – 12pm EDT.
Dr. Bayo Akomolafe is an author, celebrated speaker, teacher, and self-styled trans-public intellectual whose vocation goes beyond justice and speaking truth to power to opening up other spaces of power-with, and queering fond formulations and configurations of hope. As Visionary Founder and Elder of The Emergence Network and Chief Host of the widely popular online-offline course/festival series, We Will Dance with Mountains, Bayo curates an earth-wide project for the re-calibration of our ability to respond to civilizational crisis – a project framed within a material feminist/posthumanist/postactivist ethos and inspired by Yoruba indigenous cosmologies.
Father Adam Bucko has been a committed voice in the movement for the renewal of Christian Contemplative Spirituality and the growing New Monastic movement. He has taught engaged contemplative spirituality in Europe and the United States, and has authored a number of books. Committed to an integration of contemplation and just practice, he cofounded an award-winning non-profit, the Reciprocity Foundation, where he spent 15 years working with homeless youth living on the streets of New York City, providing spiritual care, developing programs to end youth homelessness, and articulating a vision for spiritual mentoring in a post-religious world.
In the 1950s, Joseph Campbell popularised the motif of the hero’s journey, drawing on archetypal stories from across cultural traditions.
We want to explore: What does it mean to engage the concept of the hero’s journey in an age of overwhelming moral demands? What are competing narratives about the hero’s journey that are on offer, and how can we assess their value? Are there qualities of courage that we want to celebrate in our time, that might be counterintuitive? What does it look like, to take seriously the importance of symbolic imagination in personal and collective formation, and to live from that place with a quality of courage – and with our eyes open to the severity of the crises that we collectively face? What heroic stories of masculinity do we need to uplift?
This is the second event in St Ethelburga’s year-long enquiry into the theme of courage. Where does extraordinary courage come from? What can we learn from people who’ve risked everything to live up to their values? What forms of courage are especially needed in our age of unravelling, uncertainty and risk? How can we inspire ourselves and each other to grow our capacity to brave our limits? Are there simple practices that can help with this? Are there insights from the world’s spiritual and faith traditions that can help us grow our courage?
Bayo Akomolafe has been Visiting Professor at Middlebury College, has taught at Sonoma State University (CA, USA), Simon Fraser University (Vancouver, Canada), and Schumacher College (Totnes, England) – among other universities around the world. He currently lectures at Pacifica Graduate Institute, California and University of Vermont, Burlington, Vermont. He sits on the Board of many organizations including Science and Non-Duality, Unashay Sanctuary, and more. Bayo Akomolafe is the grateful life-partner to ‘EJ’, father to Alethea Aanya and Kyah Jayden Abayomi, son of Olufunmilayo Ibidapo Akomolafe and Ignatius Abayomi Akomolafe, and descendant of Yoruba fields of archetypal becomings and mythopoeic landscapes.
Adam Bucko currently serves as a director of The Center for Spiritual Imagination at the Episcopal Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden City, New York, and is a member of “The Community of the Incarnation,” a ‘new monastic’ community dedicated to democratizing the gifts of monastic spirituality and teaching contemplative spirituality, in the context of hearing and responding to the cry of the poor and the cry of the earth. He lives in New York with his wife, Kaira Jewel Lingo, a Buddhist teacher and former nun in the community of Thich Nhat Hanh. Together they lead The Buddhist-Christian Community for Meditation and Action.
Clare is Co-Director of St Ethelburga’s. Previously Development Director, Clare created and led on the Radical Resilience programme and went on to be the strategic lead on our viewpoint diversity work, before stepping up to co-lead the centre alongside Tarot Couzyn. She brings more than 20 years’ experience facilitating groups for the sake of inner enquiry and outer change, and is interested in how contemplative practices can play a role in cultural repair. She has has worked on numerous interfaith projects, most notably for Nisa Nashim, the Jewish Muslim Women’s Network. Prior to this, Clare worked as a communications consultant in the corporate and charitable sector. Currently she runs a community garden on her Hackney housing estate, where she lives with her husband and 9-year old daughter. Raised a Christian, Clare has also studied Buddhism and Sufism. You can read her thoughts on the role of visionary imagination in resilience building here, and here is a short piece about contemplation as an antidote to conflict.
This event supported by:
