Impossible Positivity
Pathways to joy in an uncertain time. Workshop and lecture with Michael Lipson, PhD

Champlain Valley Unitarian Universalist Society, Middlebury, Vermont
For more information contact Jim Emerson: sirjimes@gmail.com
To reserve a spot: bit.ly/impossible-positivity

In the midst of winter, I finally learned that there was within me an invincible summer. ~ Albert Camus

Friday Night Lecture
March 15, 7 - 9pm
In our time, it can seem naïve to speak of positivity, hope, or joy. More people are homeless than ever before in human history; pandemics, nuclear threat, human-caused climate change, war, cybersecurity/AI dangers, and a turn to totalitarianism, all seem to justify perpetual alarm or even perpetual despair.
Tonight's lecture examines cases in history, in spiritual literature, and in my clinical practice, where people thrive in seemingly impossible circumstances and even offer help to others. We'll look at the structure of the human mind that allows for such in-spite-of-everything positivity.

Saturday Workshop
March 16, 9am - 4pm Today's workshop includes meditative and spiritual practices oriented toward joy and effective participation in life, without ignoring the disasters within us, around us, and ahead of us. We will work with the art of attention, with our creative tolerance for uncertainty, and with the variety of relationships – human and non-human – that ground us in a wider reality.

Please come prepared for a day of intense communal practice in all these areas. We will base some of our meditative work in Buddhist texts, some in Christian and Jewish scripture, some in Sufi poetry. The key text, however, is what the natural world around us recites, and what is written in our hearts.

About Michael Lipson
Michael Lipson, PhD is a Clinical Psychologist who leads meditation workshops internationally and maintains a private practice in the Berkshires of Western Massachusetts. Michael studied German literature at Harvard College and comparative literature at Yale University. Winner of a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, he lived and worked with Mother Theresa's Missionaries of Charity in Calcutta, India. For nine years he was the Chief Psychologist for Pediatric AIDS at Harlem Hospital, NYC. A George Soros Faculty Scholar, he developed meditation programs for health professionals who work with the terminally ill. Following 9/11, he appeared for a decade on the NPR call-in show, Vox Pop. His writings have appeared in the Hastings Center Report, the Harvard Business Review, and gratefulness.org. He is the translator of Rudolf Steiner's Intuitive Thinking as a Spiritual Path and has translated numerous books by Georg Kühlewind. His own most recent book, available on Amazon and bookshop.org, is BE: An Alphabet of Astonishment.

Event Info

Jul 6, 2024, 9 AM

Jul 8, 2024, 4:30 to 6:30 PM

Jul 9, 2024, 12 to 3 PM