Haymitch St. Stephen
TUES, DEC 5, 2023 | 7:30-9:00 pm MDT
Practice celebrating the birth of Christ by doing exactly nothing.
IN-PERSON GATHERING:
Bell Hall
389 East 1st Ave.
Salt Lake City, UT 84103
Thanks to Lisa Cannon for sharing her home and historic Danish Lutheran church with us. Parking is found throughout the neighborhood. There is no parking lot for the church. Enter through the main front door of the church at the gate on 1st Ave and up to the top of the steps.
Or join us via Zoom.
Thanks to Tim and Aubrey Chavez and the Faith Matters Foundation for providing the Zoom connection. Scroll down the page for the link to connect virtually. Below that link are some helpful tips for being part of a Zoom convo.
To get email notifications of upcoming conversations go to the bottom of this site’s home page or text or call me at 801-695-5036.
I’m delighted that those who can’t attend in person can join virtually. I’m sorry I can’t give you the same care and attention given to those in person. But if you ever can join us physically in the same space, then I hope you will. Y0u won’t regret it. And if you have suggestions for how this space and these Zoom or in-person conversations can go better, then please contact me.
THE CONVERSATION:
If our Western culture has sped up, busied itself, and aimed for more, then somehow Christmas as our most recognized cultural festival has become the poster child for the same. A Contemplative Christmas, on the other hand, will be a radical practice in just the opposite—that is, doing nothing. We will gather and sit together in contemplative stillness, emptying our vessels of any traces of the small egoic will. From this nothingness, we will then do something, and invite the Light of Christ to fill our souls with a will and luminosity much larger than our own.
ABOUT HAYMITCH:
Haymitch St. Stephen is an artist, writer, and contemplative. He studied advertising and creative writing at BYU before launching a storytelling company and eventually studying the creative process at Stanford. He is an adjunct facilitator in the Stanford Life Design Lab. He studies under contemplative teachers Thomas McConkie and John Kessler, and is a graduate of the Spectra program via Lower Lights School of Wisdom. But he is mostly just a human being trying to enjoy life to the fullest. His successful failures include: a social experiment to be cast as an extra in The Hobbit films, renovation of an historic school building into an immersive art experience for kids, the unofficial world record for the largest tabletop Dickens village, several children’s books you’ve never heard of (and 1 you might have), and being Utah’s most-prolific (read: only) Japanese mud ball maker. He is the author of the forthcoming book Friend of the Devil: A Story of Mental Health, Mistakes, and Self Forgiveness, and the founder of Still Point School of Mystical Design through which he supports people asking the question: What should I do with my life? He is 35 years old and single, and recently moved out of his parents’ basement onto their main floor.
EXPLORE BEFORE WE MEET:
- Click on the Zoom link above for either last month’s recorded conversation (if the event date has passed) or the live conversation now. If you are participating in the live conversation keep reading.
- When you are connected you will either be waiting in a lobby and will let be in shortly or you will immediately be able to see other participants. Please make sure that you are muted and that your video is on if you choose to have it on. (Love to see and hear you live, but we’ll take curious lurkers also.)
- If you can’t hear the host, me, or others, find your settings and make sure you have a working microphone and speaker selected. OR maybe the problem is on my end so please let me know if it is.
ZOOM ETIQUETTE:
- Please mute your microphone before entering and when you are not speaking so noises are not heard by everyone else.
- If you are going to multitask—not recommended—or wander around a lot, please turn off your video and make sure you are muted. No one wants to be distracted by you eating or using the loo.
