Seminars & Groups | Shared Journeys

We want community—and need it to achieve our dreams—but it is very hard to achieve.

Shared Journeys groups will strengthen your life and the fabric of your community. The goal is for participants to bring what they learn into their own communities—families, workplaces, congregations, and clubs—to develop new and deepen existing relationships.

There are no mandatory fees. Suggested donations are $10 to $20 per session—more if you have the resources, and less or free, if you do not. Contact Eric Clay for information and to participate.

Ongoing Groups for Support

“Aging Well” is a group of men and women in their 70s and 80s that meets at 10:30 a.m. on Wednesdays. A “Living Well” group is in formation. New groups form upon request, and participants join and leave when it makes sense to them. Topics and issues addressed are determined by the 5-to-10 people around the table. By participating, you will:

Receive feedback and support on current challenges in your life
Practice communication and relational skills (e.g., listening, affirming, challenging, waiting)
Experience and learn from a community of diverse, respectful people

Seminars and Groups

Seminars

Each seminar series focuses on a theme, for example, leadership and participation, politics and public policy, economic well-being, religion and spirituality, personal and public decision-making, conflict in relationships. Seminars meet for two-hour, weekly sessions, for 8 to 10 weeks.

Conversations are personal, like an intergenerational, extended family, with the personal investment and intensity of a graduate seminar. Past participants have been diverse—as young as 22 and as old as 92; some with a high school education, others with a PhD; construction workers, community activists, academic deans, and vice presidents. All are welcome.

Hillbilly Dreams: From nightmares to opportunities

6 to 8pm, Wednesdays, Nov 29, Dec 6, 13, 20

Surviving the Holidays (with your sense of humor intact!)

6 to 8pm, Thursdays, Nov 30, Dec 7, 14, 21

Coming in January

Relationships in Times of Conflict

A multi-part series of classes exploring strategies for overcoming polarization in our personal, professional and political life.

Contact Eric to enroll or to express interest in different times.

607-592-6874 or eric@sharedjourneys.net

What you can expect from
our work in community:

Offer and receive friendship with strangers, who may not be like you, for a moment or for a season in your life.
Experience a deep and satisfying pleasure, even fun, with others while addressing serious topics.
Use the energy behind your ambivalence about yourself and others to engage in honest, direct, feedback.
Identify where yours and others’ intuition, hunches, reactions, and knowledge are grounded in sound scientific, religious, and/or cultural practices, even when we may strongly disagree.
Learn to celebrate and validate others, the personal integrity and virtue of others, whose hopes and aspirations may be different from your own.
Practice listening deeply and empathically to gently point out errors in others’ thinking and to welcome the identification of blind spots in your own vision.