Dear College of Education Community,
The Mindfulness and Compassion Summit of the last week included wonderful presenters sharing how mindfulness and compassion can help us with work in dealing with practices in our world that are doing harm, such as racial injustice, global warming, and lack of equitable access for corona virus vaccines within economically disadvantaged communities. Practices that get in the way for us in choosing wisely, thriving as a communities of humankind, and moving us to a better place. One of the presenters, Dr. Rhonda V. Magee, M.A., J.D., is a Professor of Law at the University of San Francisco, and has spent more than twenty years exploring the intersections of anti-racist education, social justice, and contemplative practices. She is an international public speaker, mindfulness teacher, and thought leader on integrating Mindfulness into Higher Education, Law and Social Justice. She discussed “how ‘othering’ can get in the way of recognizing our radical interconnection; why infusing compassion into our daily practices is essential to facing injustice; channeling compassion to recognize and appreciate our radical inter-connectedness; grounding ‘compassion practice’ to connect more deeply to the embodied presence of our true spirit.” Dr. Magee stated that mindfulness practices can reinforce efforts to deal with social injustice and global healing, and offered the acronym L.O.V.E.as a guide to our work in the world. L stands for listening to ourselves and others. O stands for opening up to a sense of belonging for ourselves and bringing others into belongingness as well. V stands for vulnerability and exploring new ways of seeing even though feeling uncertain and uncomfortable. E stands for exploration and a willingness to move towards learning about others and greater wisdom.
To find out more about Dr. Magee and her work, check out her award-winning book, The Inner Work of Racial Justice: Healing Ourselves and Transforming Our Communities Through Mindfulness. Her website is rhondavmagee.com.
For a list of self-care options, please see our COE self-care website for resources for faculty, staff, students, and the community at:
https://www.csun.edu/eisner-education/self-care/articles-information-self-care
Self-care practices, like mindfulness and compassion, can help to open us to learning that addresses social justices in our world.
Warmly,
Shari