Centering Black Contemplative Wisdom
Hello Dear Friends,
Join us this evening at 7:00 PM EST for a spiritual care workshop co-facilitated by me and Therese Taylor Stinson. Our time will begin with a casual interview in which Therese will orient us all to the rich tradition of Black & African-American mystics and contemplatives. Following this interview, Therese is going to lead us in a contemplative practice that is similar to both lectio divina and group spiritual direction.
You can read Therese’s bio below.
I hope you will join us. Zoom link is accessible here.
With anticipation,
Bethaney
This spiritual care workshop is for members of The Garden Contemplative Community. Join by subscribing here.
About Therese Taylor-Stinson
Therese Taylor-Stinson, a native of Washington DC, is an ordained deacon and ruling elder in the Presbyterian Church (USA), a certified lay pastoral caregiver, a spiritual director, and the founding managing member of the Spiritual Directors of Color Network, Ltd., a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.
A graduate of the Shalem Institute for Spiritual Formation, she has served on the board of directors, is a member of the Shalem Society for Contemplative Leadership, and was commissioned associate faculty to offer Shalem’s Personal Spiritual Deepening Program in her local community. In her private spiritual direction practice, she companions people from various walks of life, and all over the U.S. and beyond, who seek a closer relationship with the Divine, clarity about their life callings, and healing from life’s traumas. She served on the Coordinating Council of Spiritual Directors International (SDI) and is currently a member of SDI’s Editorial Review Panel for Presence: An International Journal of Spiritual Direction.
Her articles “Black Spirituality and the Art of Spiritual Direction” (December 2009), “Spiritual Direction as Sacred Activism” (March 2014), and “Cross-Cultural Considerations with Interpathy in Spiritual Direction and Antiracism” (June 2023) are published in Presence. Therese is also an editor, contributor, and award-winner for three books from members of the Spiritual Directors of Color Network: Embodied Spirits: Stories of Spiritual Directors of Color; Ain’t Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around: Stories of Contemplation and Justice, for which she was solo editor and won an Indie Author Legacy Award for social awareness; and Kaleidoscope: Broadening the Palette in the Art of Spiritual Direction, a book that took a few years to develop, was edited by former Board Member Ineda Adesanya with the help of family and other authors, a Foreword written by Taylor-Stinson, and chapter 8 “Internal Liberation,” a wonderfully collaborative effort between Taylor-Stinson and current Board Member Paula Owens Parker. Hopefully, another collaboration will come with continued diversity among the various ethnicities, hues, shapes, and ways of being among people of color and of the land.
Therese’s first solo authorship Walking the Way of Harriet Tubman: Public Mystic and Freedom Fighter, published on Valentine’s Day 2023, is a love letter to Black, Indigenous, and people of different hues and ways of being everywhere. She is married to Bernard Stinson for almost 45 years. They live in the DMV, and they have a daughter and two granddaughters who currently live further south.