The Mandorla Project: Five-Year Plan 2011-2016
The Mandorla Project
We began The Mandorla Project as a vehicle for exploring the liminal spaces. To bring together the world’s wisdom, teachings, stories, and practices around key questions and disseminate them in accessible media forms. And to offer classes and workshops to bring these teachings into our personal lives and our service to others.
We begin with our first project, Standing on the Edge of Magic.
Standing On The Edge of Magic
In this project we explore the threshold of dying.
Our Purpose is to reduce the fear of dying by sharing the stories of the dying, their loved ones, and the professionals, who serve them. To disseminate the teachings and practices of the world’s wisdom traditions as they speak to the transition of dying and unveil the mysteries of who we are if we can die. To honor the power and efficacy of spiritual care by remembering and teaching the ancient wisdom of spiritual midwifery to the dying as practiced in a modern age. And, to encourage compassionate care for the dying and their loved ones.
We have created four areas of focus, each with projects to enable us to achieve our purpose.
Storytelling Project
Our goal with the storytelling project is to reduce the fear of dying, by sharing the beauty, wisdom, healing, intimacy and transformation of the dying process. We tell the stories, teachings and practices of the dying, their loved ones, and the professionals, who serve them, bringing personal and professional experience, questions, and wisdom into an open forum, that we may listen to and learn from one another. We share stories about spiritual care to the dying, how death changes us, and what death teaches us about life. We tell what dying looks and feels like, offering a spiritual view of the dying process. We bridge personal spiritual experiences with the dying process, generating inclusivity and spaciousness for exploration regardless of religious affiliation. We encourage conversations and the healing such conversations often initiate.
In five years, the storytelling project will have:
- Created storytelling project for lay persons, professionals, and world’s wisdom sages, teachers and practitioners.
- Offered online interviews, and possibly film, and a radio program to share stories and teachings in multi-media formats.
- Collected the stories for, edited, and published five volumes of the Standing on the Edge of Magic.
- Volume 1, Stories of the dying, as seen bedside by Connee.
- Volume 2, Stories from loved ones and family members from the bedside.
- Volume 3, Stories and interviews with professionals, who serve the dying.
- Volume 4, Stories and interviews with world wisdom sages and practitioners.
- Volume 5, Stories of the afterlife, as told by loved ones and professionals.
Wisdom of the World.
Our goal with the Wisdom of the World project is to disseminate the stories, teachings, and practices of the world’s wisdom traditions, their sages and practitioners. We cultivate the essences we all can learn from, while honoring the individual nature of each tradition. We encourage peacemaking by learning a spiritual language we all can share, finding ways to communicate with one another about death, and discovering what we share in common. We face the truth that each of us will one day die, regardless of our cultural or religious preference, and explore how this ties us together. We ask questions relevant to each of us, regardless of background and share the world’s wisdom to encourage contemplation, healing, understanding, and kindness.
In five years, the World Wisdom project will have:
- Published, What the World Wisdom Traditions and Their Sages Say About Death and Dying, commensurate with Standing on the Edge of Magic, Volume 4.
- Published, No Death, commensurate with Standing on the Edge of Magic, Volume 5.
- Taught on-line courses about the teachings, texts, stories, and practices of all the world’s wisdom traditions.
- Offered tours to different sacred sites associated with each of the world’s wisdom traditions.
- Interviewed, recorded, and offered in appropriate media such as radio, film and writing the stories and teachings of wisdom sages, teachers and practitioners.
Spiritual Midwifery to the Dying.
Our goal is to train spiritual midwives that can work both independently or within established professional mileaus. We teach midwives to work within their individual communities, recognizing the sacred bond between a midwife and those she serves, and thus we offer community based training, with a goal to support spiritual midwives in multiple communities. We offer in-depth understanding of a spiritual, or consciousness view of the dying process and train how to recognize the subtle developments of the dissolution process and the spiritual skills for greeting each stage. We also teach appropriate spiritual language skills, that enables midwives to offer care to anyone, regardless of religious or cultural background. And we encourage the spiritual and professional development of individual midwives, with a special eye to supporting independent midwives, who provide care from the time of terminal diagnosis, regardless of whether or not, clients seek curative or palliative care. We provide speakers, courses, and links to teaching programs for the necessary skills of spiritual midwifery to the dying, recognizing the wide array of healing and spiritual practices available for midwives to learn and master.
To further support spiritual midwives to the dying, we will also offer a foundational understanding of the field of spiritual midwifery, providing a unified theory and practice for offering spiritual care to the dying. We will teach how spiritual care serves all individuals, regardless of religious affiliation. We will bring professionals from all aspects of this field together to learn from one another and ask how we can serve the dying.
At the end of five years, we will have:
- Created and implemented a fully developed training program for spiritual midwives to the dying.
- Published Making of a Spiritual Midwife.
- Published Art of Spiritual Midwifery to the Dying textbook.
Neighbor to Neighbor.
Our goal is to bring spiritual care into every home and environment, that individuals can offer spiritual care to their loved ones, neighbors, and communities with kindness, confidence, and respect. We support neighborhoods, organizations, churches and other spiritual gatherings, as they learn to bridge personal spiritual practices with care for the dying. We also recognize the large numbers of people, who do not practice within a formal tradition, and offer accessible teachings about the dying process and spiritual skills that can be used by anyone regardless of background. We also offer online resources, free videos and downloads, a referral system, and prayer services to support the dying and their loved ones, so that all can receive spiritual encouragement and support. We encourage compassionate spiritual care to all individuals, regardless of religious or cultural affiliation or circumstance.
End of five years, we will have:
- Created a prayer program and world community of prayer for the dying and the deceased.
- Created a grassroots outreach and training program to teach essential spiritual skills and spiritual perspectives of the dying process and reached out across the U.S.
- Offered an extensive, accessible, and often free videos and downloads for immediate support and teaching.
- Offered an extensive online resource guide.
- Offered a referral system to qualified spiritual midwives.
Collectively, it is our prayer that these endeavors, reduce our fear about dying, encourage kindness and compassion in our treatment of the dying and their loved ones, encourage peacemaking and bridges between religions, professionals, and lay persons; empower, encourage, and inspire individuals and professionals to offer spiritual midwifery to the dying, and invite reevaluation of our medical practices and perceptions.
May we all discover what death teaches us about life, live this wisdom, and serve all sentient beings with the kindness and compassion such truths implore.
Filed under: The Mandorla Project
