First Congregational Church of Berkeley

with Berkeley Arts & Letters Presents

A Two-Part BENEFIT FOR A NETWORK FOR GRATEFUL LIVING (ANG*L)

A SPIRITED LIFE IN THE SECULAR WORLD

with BROTHER DAVID STEINDL-RAST and SAM KEEN

Friday, July 30 and Saturday, July 31

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

2345 Channing Way at Dana, Berkeley

Tickets: Brown Paper Tickets (or by phone: 800-838-3006)

What does it mean to get beyond the veneer of gratitude in popular culture and live a spirited life? Join Brother David Steindl-Rast and Sam Keen for a weekend exploring the many facets of this question.

Tickets for Friday evening are $20 ($10 students with ID).

Tickets for Saturday’s workshop, including morning and afternoon coffee and teas, and a boxed lunch, are $99 (with a limited number of student tickets available at $65)

The entire weekend benefits A Network for Grateful Living (ANG*L). Best known for its interactive website, gratefulness.org, ANG*L is dedicated to providing education and support for the practice of grateful living as a global ethic, based on the teachings of Brother David and colleagues.

Brother David Steindl-Rast, O.S.B., was born in 1926 in Vienna, and received a Ph.D. from the University of Vienna. Since 1953 he has been a monk of Mount Saviour Benedictine monastery in New York State. He was one of the first Roman Catholics to receive Zen training and to participate in Buddhist-Christian dialog.

For decades, Brother David divided his time between periods of a hermit’s life and extensive lecture tours. His audiences included starving students in Zaire and faculty at Harvard and Columbia, Buddhist monks and Sufi retreatants, New Age commune residents and naval cadets, Green Berets and participants at international peace conferences.

He has contributed to books and periodicals from Encyclopedia Americana to the New Age Journal. He wrote Gratefulness, the Heart of Prayer, and A Listening Heart. Brother David co-authored Belonging to the Universe with physicist Fritjof Capra, and The Ground We Share, on Buddhist and Christian practice, with Robert Aitken Roshi. His most recent book is Deeper Than Words: Living the Apostles’ Creed.

Sam Keen was, in his words, “over-educated at Harvard and Princeton” and was a professor of philosophy and religion at “various legitimate institutions” and a contributing editor of Psychology Today for 20 years before becoming a free-lance thinker, lecturer, seminar leader and consultant. He is the author of a baker’s dozen books, including Fire in the Belly, Sightings, and In the Absence of God. He was co-producer of an award winning PBS documentary, Faces of the Enemy. His work was the subject of a PBS special with Bill Moyers -- Your Mythic Journey with Sam Keen.

When not writing or traveling around the world lecturing and doing seminars on a wide range of topics on which he claims he is “not necessarily an expert but a skilled explorer,” he cuts wood, tends to his farm in the hills above Sonoma, takes long hikes and practices the flying trapeze.

This weekend is hosted by Patricia De Jong, senior minister, FCCB.

First Congregational Church of Berkeley

info@fccb.org, 510-848-3696

Map, parking, public transportation