Sunday, March 9th - with Rev. Deborah Lee and Cynthia Moe-Lobeda

Engaged Nonduality: Love in Action

9am-11am Pacific, Online

In this action-oriented session of the Engaged Nonduality Series, Lisa will be joined by two speakers who have extensive experience bringing love into action. While the community of nondual contemplatives is informal and emphasizes direct knowing, we can learn a lot from other spiritual communities that have deeply engaged with action and ethics. Rev. Deborah Lee leads the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, whose core value is the sacredness of each person and a commitment to stand in solidarity with those who are not treated as sacred. Dr. Moe-Lobeda carries deep wisdom of understanding and communicating structural sources of harm and leverage points for collective love in action. She compassionately encourages us to wake up to new ways of seeing, and new possibilities of being. We will weave the wisdom of these courageous speakers with the wisdom of the nondual understanding and explore how love is moving us into action.

This session will include meditation, talks, inspiring stories, experiential exercises, and time for participant Q&A.

Rev. Deborah Lee is the Executive Director of the Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, which envisions a world without harm, advocating for a world where every person is considered sacred across bars and borders. With over 30 years dedicated to the intersection of faith and social justice, Rev. Deborah Lee brings expertise in various realms, including popular education, community organizing, and advocacy. Her commitment is evident in her multifaceted engagement with issues such as race, gender, economic justice, anti-militarism, LGBTQ inclusion, and immigrant rights and abolition.
Under Rev. Lee’s leadership, IM4HI’s accomplishments range from closing detention centers and preventing deportations to responding to the needs of arriving immigrant youth and families. They’ve also established Sanctuary congregations and initiated efforts to divest from prisons and other carceral systems of harm, investing instead in thriving and healthy communities.

Cynthia Moe-Lobeda (she/her), is Founding Director of the Center for Climate Justice and Faith, and is a co-founder of Seattle University’s Center for Environmental Justice and Sustainability. She is a Professor of Theological and Social Ethics, who has lectured or consulted around the world on ethics, agency and hope, climate justice as related to race and class, economic globalization, faith-based resistance to systemic injustice, and eco-feminism. She is author or co-author of six volumes and over 50 articles and chapters. Her Resisting Structural Evil: Love as Ecological-Economic Vocation won a Nautilus Book Award. Her most recent book, Building a Moral Economy: Pathways for People of Courage, is an invitation to courageous creativity, and to explore economic life as spiritual practice.

Hosted by Lisa Ferguson

Lisa Ferguson, Ph.D., has initiated an exploration of Engaged Nonduality: how the recognition of non-separation moves in response to our planetary crises. This includes themes of personal and collective awakening and action. Engaged Nonduality as a practice explores how love and truth moves through us, as well as how we can compassionately tend to our conditioned parts and intense reactions – such as terror, despair, rage and numbness – that may emerge as we face the enormity of our Metacrisis. We could define Metacrisis as the underlying sense of separation that gives rise to the fragmentation, suffering, and harm in our world today. Thus, the understanding of our shared Beingness is foundational to responding to our personal suffering and collective crises.

Lisa has worked closely with John Prendergast as a mentee and co-facilitator of Engaged Nonduality offerings.  She has facilitated a meditative inquiry group based on John Prendergast’s work since 2022. Other nondual or “direct path” teachers who have had a significant impact are Adyashanti, Loch Kelly, Riyaz Motan, and Tsoknyi Rinpoche.