Serving Wilmington, DE and the Mid- Atlantic
It is the vision of the Community for Integrative Learning (CIL) that through thought-provoking programs and activities, those we touch experience greater harmony, expanded creativity and enriched purpose along with increased connectedness and well-being.
"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it's the only thing that ever has." ~ Margaret Mead
Programs for 2024 at CIL
"Personal Narrative: Transforming Haunting Ghosts into Healing Guests"
with Dr. Dennis Slattery
Thursday, January 2, 2025
via Zoom
Rather than conceptualize the power of ghosts that haunt us, I offer a personal narrative of ghost energies that have shaped my life for decades. In the creation of this story, I discovered the single most central archetype that has given this ghostly presence its unlimited energy.
James Hollis's illuminating text, Hauntings: Dispelling the Ghosts Who Run Our Lives (2013/2015), has been a major inspiration for these reflections. They led me to consider an alternative to dispelling our ghosts: inviting them in as guests. The shift from haunting ghosts to healing guests can offer a new story to live by, one that constructs our identity more fully and generously on our individuation pilgrimage.
Dennis Patrick, Ph.D. is currently Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Pacifica Graduate Institute, a Fellow of the Dallas Institute and faculty member of The Jung Platform, directed by therapist Machiel Klerk. He has also taught student inmates in a major California prison using the thought of Joseph Campbell on personal myth.
This is a Zoom event.
Thursday, January 2, 2025
7-9 PM EST
$17 CIL members
$20 Non members
"The Art of Faith, The Faith of Art"
With Christian Wiman
Tuesday, February 4, 2025
Via Zoom
Using poems and prose, both his own and others', Christian Wiman will discuss what faith looks like in our times, and what an engagement with art has to do with that.
Christian Wiman is the author, editor, or translator of fourteen books, including Zero at the Bone: Fifty Entries Against Despair and My Bright Abyss: Meditation of a Modern Believer. Of his work as a whole, Marilynne Robinson writes, "His poetry and scholarship have a purifying urgency that is rare in this world. This puts him at the very source of theology, and enables him to say new things in timeless language, so that the reader's surprise and assent are one and the same."
Christian has been a Jones Lecturer in Poetry at Stanford and a visiting assistant professor of English at Northwestern, and for three years he served as Visiting Scholar at Lynchburg College in Virginia. From 2003 until 2013 he was the editor of Poetry magazine, the premiere magazine for poetry in the English-speaking world.
Christian is currently Clement-Muehl Professor of Communication Arts at Yale Divinity School.
This is a Zoom event.
Tuesday, February 2, 2025
7:00 - 9:00Pm EST
$22 - CIL members
$25 - non members
"Sacred Earth, Sacred Soul Retreat"
Westminster Presbyterian Church
1502 W 13th St, Wilmington, DE 19806
Saturday May 17
3:00pm to 6:30pm - retreat plus book signing
Sunday May 18
Worship Sermon - 9:30am to 10:30am
Dialogue with John Philip Newell - 10:40am to 12 noon
An Afternoon Retreat and Morning Conversation
with John Philip Newell and Cami Twilling
In which the wisdom teachings of John Philip Newell and the spiritual practices of Cami Twilling call us to be aware of the sacredness of Earth and every human being as key to the way of transformation and healing in our lives and world.
This is a free, in-person event, but registration is required.
Donations are gladly accepted should you wish to support CIL.