FRIDAY | JAN 26, 2018 | 7:30-9:30 pm
Robert A. Rees & Gloria Gardner Murdock
This Think Again event is in association with the Utah Citizen Summit, Village Square, and Living Room Conversations
One of the main reasons for the deterioration or public discourse is that we have forgotten how to listen to one another with our hearts, what Rumi calls “the deep ear inside our chests.” This discussion focuses on cultivating such listening by learning how to attune our ears to hear the hearts of others before we judge and speak.
GATHERING AT:
Home of Ed and Kristen Iversen
3582 Oak Rim Way Salt Lake City, UT 84109
Those who are able, please park in the “park & ride” lot on the NW corner of 3900 South and Wasatch Blvd. Oak Rim Way is just east of the intersection on the north side. There is little parking available near their home.
Seat & Eat:
You’re invited to bring a light folding chair and some food to share.
THE DISCUSSION:
Before the 17th century people made sense of the world through a harmonious interaction of both logos and mythos, the heart and mind working in concert to both find and make meaning. With the advent of modern medical science, the intellect gained primacy over the heart. Since that time, we have tended to see the heart either as a pump or a valentine, both images which rob the heart of its complexity, mystery and power.
To paraphrase J. V. Cunningham’s epithet for the humanist, Sir Thomas More:
Friend, on this scaffold Thomas More lies dead Who would not cut the Heart from the Head.
With severing, we have been cut off from our hearts and lost in our heads. But the heart has reasserted itself in the past few decades as more and more people have felt a heart awakening and have begun to listen not only to the rhythmic beating of the heart but also to its wisdom.
Scientists at the Institute of HeartMath and elsewhere have established the existence of complex, highly sophisticated neural pathways that connect the human heart and brain, confirming that the activity of the heart directly influences the activity of higher brain centers involved in perceptual and cognitive processing, and in the creation of emotional experience.
Drawing on such research, this session examines the role of the heart in human experience and activity, including communication, interactions and relationships, with the primary objective of considering how such new discoveries can facilitate greater and deeper understanding between and among people, groups, tribes and communities—and specifically within the arena of political and social discourse.
ABOUT BOB:
Robert A. “Bob” Rees, Ph.D., is a scholar, teacher, and humanitarian. He has taught at UCLA, UC Santa Cruz and and UC Berkeley and currently teaches at Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where he serves as Director of Mormon Studies. For a dozen years (1996-2008), Rees was Director of Education and Humanities at the Institute of HeartMath, a research and education center in the Santa Cruz Mountains focusing on the heart. He is the author/co-author of numerous studies in religion, education, psychology, politics, cultural studies and the arts and humanities. He is the co-author of “New Perspectives On the Role of the Heart in Positive Emotions, Intuition, and Social Coherence” ( The Oxford Handbook of Positive Psychology, 3rd Edition, 2017). His book of poetry, Waiting for Morning, has just been published (Zarahemla Press, 2017).
ABOUT GLORIA:
Gloria Gardner Murdock studied Cultural Communication (looking at the fringe edges of society) at the University of Utah and taught there as well. She has taught English as a foreign language in Jinan, China and southern India, and has since spent well over a decade teaching ESL to adults who have come to SLC from various countries. Currently, she uses bio-feedback methods with Hospice patients, and works with an integrative health coalition. Her training with John Kesler’s ground-breaking Integral Polarity Practice have primed her for Stages of Adult Development study at Pacific Integral, where Thomas McConkie is on the faculty.
