The Wayne E. Oates Institute is a Connected Learning Community exploring spirituality and health as a way to advance integrative care for the whole person. The Oates Institute is a non-profit educational organization made up of caregivers from the medical, spiritual and counseling communities providing a forum for joining together as an interdisciplinary dialogue toward understanding the relationship between spirituality and the healing process.

• Exploring Celtic Spirituality

In today’s culture there is a renewed interest in Celtic Spirituality. Popular forms of music, art, and spirituality are attracted to and seeking conversation with this ancient religious and cultural tradition. Is there something that Celtic Christian spirituality possesses that a modern approach to life and faith lack? Why are people drawn to the Celtic tradition and how can it play a purposeful part in informing and fulfilling the spiritual lives of those who are seeking greater wholeness and sensitivity to creation and the world around us?

• Art as Centering Prayer (Explorations for Non-Artists and Artists)

Before we human beings had words, we had images and symbols. We were (and still are) moved by sunsets, mountains, rain and our own reflections in still water. Many of us – including many who don’t know it – are visual learners, better able to receive wisdom when it comes in the form of images and symbols.

Art as Centering Prayer is a seminar for non-artists and artists alike. We will use both familiar and unfamiliar images, including images drawn from the great works of the Divine Artist in whose art we are free to walk, sit, and stand every day of our lives.  Each of these explorations will open up ways of drawing us into our own spiritual center, drawing us closer to God and deepening our awareness that God is at hand.

• Hope and Wholeness

We have learned that hope can contribute significantly to one's sense of wholeness and well-being. Myron Madden writes:

Hope lifts the human frame to tiptoe in expectation. It sets the imagination ablaze with anticipation. It stretches the mind to conjure up manifold possibilities. It crowds out the negative feelings of dread, fear and anxiety. Hope chooses light over darkness, order over confusion, health over sickness, peace over conflict.

This seminar provides the opportunity to participate in an interdisciplinary collaborative learning experience. Using email, members of the seminar group explore the role of hope through reflective dialogue around presentations by Myron Madden, Howard Clinebell, and Kay Shurden in light of their own experience and context. Through this process the group benefits by learning from one another as well as from the presentations.

• Care of Self: The Care Giver's Mental Health

In the process of giving care to others, care givers often overlook tending to their own self-care. For example, in the face of a growing concern about clergy health -- physical, emotional, social, and spiritual -- recent research shows that while clergy depression is only slightly higher than the general population, there is a significantly higher percentage reporting periods when they feel depressed and "worn out" some or most of the time.

Continuing Education Credit
Each of the February seminars is approved for CEUs by the National Board of Certified Counselors and is accepted as approved continuing professional education for chaplains, pastoral counselors, pastors, and social workers.  Participants may earn 12 contact hours

Registration
Registration for members of the Oates Institute is free and only $60 for non-members.

Click here for more information and to register

Or call the Oates Institute: 502-459-2370