Use Your Words

Cultivating Interracial Community within Movements for Change

Mindfulness teacher and justice innovator Rhonda Magee led this EcoDharma Exploration on February 25, 2024. A recording is available below. We welcome your support for this program.

Cross-cultural communication, or connecting across our constructed in-group/out-group lines, can bring us together… or tear us apart. Our aspirations to work across lines of diversity and difference in our movements for systems change often go astray for lack of authentic connection, and as a result of distress in the face of predictable conflicts.

Here is opportunity for rich practice: how we speak, the views we bring, the words we choose, and how much we say have deep implications for fragmentation or true meeting. Likewise, how we listen, the presence of flexibility, patience, curiosity or their absence, these too dramatically shape the conditions for our collaboration. Misunderstandings and even conflict can reveal our unconscious views, habits, and needs. When regarded in the frame of practice – of transforming reactivity to response-ability – their transformation holds the potential for so much more than accomplishing the task at hand.

This conversation between Rhonda Magee and Kristin Barker explored challenges and opportunities for building true Sangha as we work together for environmental justice.

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An internationally-sought-after mindfulness teacher and keynote speaker, and a thought and practice innovator of mindfulness-based social justice principles, concepts and practices, Rhonda V. Magee, M.A., J.D., is Professor of Law and Director of the Center for Contemplative Law and Ethics at the University of San Francisco. The author and teacher of The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness, Rhonda’s work explores the inner-to-outer practices that support us in meeting and transforming all forms of suffering and injustice. To learn more visit RhondaVMagee.com.

     Pieces on One Earth Sangha

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One Earth Sangha and our featured speakers offer these explorations on a donation basis, with no required registration fee. We invite you to participate in the tradition of offering dana, or generosity. Your support makes these gatherings possible, and any amount offered is greatly appreciated.

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Recording

Additional Resources

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