Working with communities in the greater Springfield, Missouri area
Our aspirations to encounter life with curiosity, openness, kindness, and joy are too often countered by a reality that reveals the world as a threatening, unwelcoming place.
And reflecting on just how many challenges there are to building equality in community can leave us feeling helpless; the issues are many and overwhelming. What can we do?
Our goal at Welcoming Path is to support one another in disrupting and subverting injustice while we create and sustain practices, resources, and connections that help us flourish as human beings in sustainable and just communities.
Our Approach
At the heart of our approach is a commitment to continuous and experiential learning. Reflective Practice invites us to join action and attention, so that we can both better understand our social realities and choose appropriate strategies for bringing about change.
In the process, we often uncover many obstacles that have made this kind of change difficult, especially for those of us within marginalized and oppressed communities. Mindful Compassion emphasizes the cultivation of a healthy, kind, and wise relationship with our selves and our experiences while we identify and heal from internalized oppression and internalized dominance. Critical Theory gives us more tools to understand how that oppression has worked historically, systemically, and culturally in our personal lives and in society at large.
Conflict Transformation and Peacemaking Practices help us recover and reclaim our role in creating relationships and communities that are regenerative and safe, able to support one another in gladness and in grief, and work for mutual healing when difficult and stressful times arise.
And a Capabilities-Centered approach provides a framework we can use to evaluate our actions, think through our goals, and renew and co-create communities where everyone's voice is heard and needs are met.
Our Activities
Developing and growing at a sustainable pace is hard work!
Currently, David is available each month to provide a small number of consultations and training events, including facilitated dialog, mindfulness and self-compassion practices, conflict and communication tools, and critical social theory and practices.
Our other activities are chosen and adapted according to our availability and partner needs. We look forward to working together for change!
