This seminar is the Guild's basic sixteen-day introduction to the life and teachings of Jesus. The focus of this seminar is the life experience of you the participant. Through an historical-critical and psychological approach to the figure of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels, we attempt to begin with no Christian assumptions about Jesus. We seek the universal spiritual and psychological truths that make life worth living, and learn how to apply these truths to our daily lives.

The all-encompassing split from Nature we experience today reflects a deeper reality, one that longs for healing and wholeness.  The work of reconnecting will take place during the full bloom of spring in the natural beauty of Four Springs.  Our experience of Earth is the text we use to reconnect to the Source.  For each of us, the deepest place within is part of the River of Being that flows into the vast ocean of life.  How we long to live where the deep inner core of the Self merges with the Source of all. N. Scott Momaday reminds us that “what moves on that archaic force, was wild and welling at the Source.” This is the eternal return of Self to Source, a journey all of us must take.

We meet each spring, near Easter, to celebrate the season and ourselves by playing with those great human toys: art, music, and story.  Our species is not only defined by thinking, but also by playing, not only homo sapiens, but homo ludens, as Huizinga has suggested. The theme of each seminar is usually derived from a literary work, such as a Shakespeare play, a novel, or the work of a poet.

For more information, see the Guild website www.guildsf.org or contact George Stenger at gastenger@comcast.net

This seminar meets the qualifications for 4 hours of continuing education credit for MFTs and/or LCSWs as required by the California Board of Behavioral Sciences.

“You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert…
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -…”

                                                         - Mary Oliver

In each of us there lives a powerful creative force that calls to be recognized and experienced.  It calls from the darkest wilderness within our being - that place in our Self that is unknown, impenetrable, barren.  Wilderness is often a place we fear, avoid, even despise, yet in it we may find the very essence of life. 

Health and sickness, knowledge and ignorance, power and weakness: as individuals in the helping professions we know too well the eternally opposing serpents entwined around the mythical staff of Asclepius. Turning their gaze toward us, they compel us to encounter in ourselves the oppositions that constitute the archetype of the healer. Intuitive hunches, physical sensations, even our own dreams prod us to face the wider landscape of the healer/healing relationship.  Jung issues a similar challenge: "We have learned to place in the foreground the personality of the healer as the curative or harmful factor; what is now demanded is the self-education of the educator." (C.G. Jung, 1929A, p. 74)  The numinous staff of Asclepius leads us into more conscious relationship with both sides of the healer's power.  Light and Shadow demand to be acknowledged and honored in the Work, and in our Self.  We begin to discover why our profession has called to us, and what healing it asks for and offers us.