PRESENTERS FOR BCIC 2008
For more information, please visit http://www.meditate08.org/Presenters.aspx.
Rev. Dr. Toni Cook
Reverend Toni Cook is the principal minister at Denver’s St. Paul United Methodist
Church, “an oasis of spiritual seekers and sacred activists.” In 1996,
she co-founded the Buddhist Christian Interfaith Community with Sister
Mary Luke Tobin and Professor Jose Cabezon. Since its inception, a host
of prominent teachers from the Buddhist, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Sufi,
Hindu, and Native American traditions have shared their wisdom and inspiration
through dialogue and contemplative practice. As a spiritual teacher,
Toni's approach is to “invoke -- and evoke -- the sacred in all times
and all places and all faces.” At Meditate08, she will focus on “The
First Beatitude: Finding One's Home in the Breath.”
Email: office@stpauldenver.com
Website: http://www.stpauldenver.com/
Yogacharya Srinidhi Baba
Yogacharya Srinidhi Baba began Kriya Yoga practice in 1988, and met his Guru,
Paramahamsa Hariharananda five years later in New York. He describes
the relationship with Hariharananda as “extremely precious, enlightening
and blissful, filled with immense love and compassion.” He continued
his studies in yoga and meditation at Homestead Ashram in South Florida,
and went on from there to receive a PhD in Computer Science from Southern
Methodist University, Dallas, Texas. Srinidhi and his wife Prathima founded
the Denver Kriya Yoga Center in 1995 and have organized several Mountain
Region Kriya Yoga retreats and fundraisers for Hariharananda Balashram,
a residential school for disadvantaged children.
Email: babaji108@msn.com
Website: http://www.denverkriya.com/
Dr. Lloyd Burton
Dr. Lloyd Burton has practiced meditation in the Theravada Buddhist tradition
since 1975 principally under the tutelage of Joseph Goldstein and Jack
Kornfield at the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts,
and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. He’s been
a teacher of Vipassana Meditation since 1997 and is the founder of Colorado
Insight Meditation Community-Denver. Dr. Burton is professor of law and
public policy in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at the University
of Colorado, and is now serving his third term on the Denver Board of
Environmental Health. He is the author of Worship and Wilderness: Culture,
Religion, and Law in Public Lands Management. (University of Wisconsin
2002.)
Email: lloydburton@cudenver.edu
Website: http://www.insightcolorado.org/
John Congdon
John Congdon is a teacher of Centering Prayer, and a director of Contemplative
Outreach of Colorado. He describes himself as an inter-spiritual
seeker. “Spiritual practices,” he says, “are what lead us into the Mysterium
Tremendum. The longer I’m on the path, the less I know!” A retired
lawyer,
he and his fellow teachers from the Center for Contemplative Living
initiated a Centering Prayer ministry at Englewood Federal Correctional
Institution
near Denver, Colorado. He has made two trips to Europe to offer
training programs on contemplative spirituality and is a frequent guest
at Denver
area churches, particularly those in the Protestant traditions.
Email: jcongdon@att.net
Website: http://www.centeringprayer.com/
Rabbi Tirzah Firestone
Rabbi Firestone is the spiritual leader of Nevei Kodesh Jewish Renewal Community
of Boulder, as well as a renowned spiritual teacher, author and
Jungian therapist. Widely known for her groundbreaking work on the re-integration
of the feminine wisdom tradition within Judaism, Rabbi Firestone
lectures
and teaches throughout the United States on spirituality, meditation,
and the integration of ancient mystical wisdom into contemporary
life. She is the author of With Roots In Heaven: One Woman’s Passionate
Journey
into the Heart of Her Faith (Plume:1998), and The Receiving: Reclaiming
Jewish Women’s Wisdom (Harper San Francisco, 2003)
Email: contact@tirzahfirestone.com
Website: http://www.tirzahfirestone.com/
Danan Henry, Roshi
Danan Henry began his formal spiritual training in 1965 at the Gurdjieff Foundation
in New York City. In 1975, he became a disciple of Philip Kapleau, Roshi,
by whom he was ordained a Buddhist priest in 1986 and sanctioned to teach
in 1989. Since 1990, he has traveled regularly to Honolulu, Hawaii to
continue his formal Zen training under Robert Aitken, Roshi. Danan Henry
is the spiritual director of the Zen Center of Denver, an affiliate of
the Diamond Sangha, a worldwide network of Zen Centers in the Harada-Yasutani
lineage under the direction of Robert Aitken Roshi.
Email: office@zencenterofdenver.org
Website: http://www.zencenterofdenver.org/
Imam Ibrahim Kazerooni
Ibrahim Kazerooni was born in 1958 in the holy city of Al-Najaf, Southern Iraq
to a family of prominent Shiite clerics. At the age of 15, he was
arrested and tortured by Saddam Hussein’s secret police. He fled to Iran
where
he completed his theological studies. He has taught Comparative
Mysticism, Introduction to Islamic Law & Theology, Qur’anic Exegeses, Islamic History, and the History of Hadith. Kazerooni
serves as imam at the Islamic Center. He was elected
Director of the Abrahamic Initiative Program at St. John’s Cathedral
and is a member of the Board of Religious Advisers to the Denver
Chief of Police.
Email: mkazerooni@hotmail.com
Sister Rose Annette Liddell
Sister Liddell is a Catholic nun in the Loretto order, a student of Thomas Merton,
and a spiritual seeker. She is the director of the Thomas Merton Center
for Creative Exchange and a teacher of Christian meditation who adapts
various spiritual practices to meet the needs of the individual. Her
theme for Meditate 08 will be a "Lectio Divina Meditation on the Prayer of St.Francis." Address: Thomas Merton Center for Creative Exchange 2832 S. Vrain Street, Denver
CO 80236
Dr. Bob Mischke
Dr. Mischke is a longtime teacher of Christian Centering Prayer. He works with
Father Thomas Keating, and is Co-Director of the Center for Spiritual
Transformation. Retired early from the medical profession, he helped
establish a mountain retreat center near Echo Lake in the Colorado Rockies.
“I’m working,” he says, “to discover ways to open the heart, consciously
evolve, integrate spiritual principles into daily life, and support others
on their journey.” He’s inspired by complimentary teachings from both
the Eastern and Western traditions, and believes that transformation
occurs through an authentic daily practice of mindfulness and prayer.
Website: http://www.centerforspiritual.com/
Opalanga Pugh
Opalanga Pugh is resident “griot,” storyteller and facilitator in the International
Career Advancement Program (ICAP) at University of Denver Graduate School
of International Studies. She’s a master storyteller, “urban griot,”
and spiritual teacher. A Denver native, she has shared her sacred storytelling
throughout the United States, Canada, West Africa, and the Caribbean.
Ms. Pugh uses story as a tool for personal/spiritual transformation.
In her own spiritual practice she merges West African spirituality, Christianity,
and Buddhist meditation. Through storytelling, music, chanting, and silent
contemplation, she leads her listeners into profound states of spiritual
unfolding.
Email: jalimuso@opalangastoryteller.com
Website: http://www.opalangastoryteller.com/
Coly Vulpiani
Coly Vulpiani worked for over thirty years as a master craftsman specializing
in fine wood-finishing, an activity that he says fostered “attention,
patience, and a particular kind of awareness that gave rise to a spiritual
awakening.” This in turn lead him to years of Zen meditation and intensive
training as a spiritual counselor and facilitator of western psycho-spiritual
methodologies. “Parallel Realities Practice,” a system of training that
enables one to embrace without judgment the paradoxical realities of
ones life, was inspired and informed by Coly’s training with Roshis Genpo
Merzel and John Daido Loori; and by his study of Voice Dialogue with
its developers, Doctors Hal and Sidra Stone.
Email: coly@parallelrealitiespractice.com
Website: http://www.parallelrealitiespractice.com/
David Atekpatzin Young
David Atekpatzin Young is an Apache curandero (traditional healer) and spiritual
leader of the Iglesia de Aztlan, a Native People’s Community Church.
He is the founder and organizer of the annual International Wenakuo Traditional
Spiritual Retreat, and the National Two Spirit Society. He also founded
Kalmeka Aztlan, a school specializing in indigenous traditional medicine.
Mr. Young has taught courses at Naropa University, and has been a guest
lecturer at the University of Colorado, Denver Metropolitan State College,
Denver University, the University of Washington and at conferences throughout
North America and Spain.
Email: atekpatzin@gmail.com