Time is a fundamental dimension of well-being, and the various forms of “hurry sickness” and “time poverty” in today’s world are manifestations of individual and collective mindlessness and malaise. “Free time” (Greek: schole) is the core of the ancient idea of liberal education and the root of the modern word “school,” but the lives of students, faculty, and staff in colleges are more and more affected by the experience of time as “time pressure”—a pressure that we suffer from, but that we also inflict upon ourselves and on each other. At a larger social level, time is as inequitably distributed between races, classes, and genders as is money; at a global level, climate change shows the devastating effects of endangering the long-term future for short-term financial gain. This workshop will explore ways to cultivate contemplative and activist alternatives to the dominant temporal regimes in the academy and beyond: how can we befriend and liberate time to care for ourselves, for each other, and for the world?
Students at Florida International University, the nation’s largest four-year Hispanic Serving Institution, face chronic duress from living in an age of precarity. Recognizing this health crisis, and inspired by Lisa Napora’s call for systems-based institutionalization of contemplative practices, an interdisciplinary group of faculty is taking a “community organizing” approach to building institutional support. We have established a monthly workshop series where revolving facilitators practice and discuss contemplative pedagogies they have used. In a related weekly “contemplative practices laboratory,” facilitators share practices to support our own wellbeing and to consider what might be used in courses. Through these inclusive spaces, allies in other departments have emerged as “organizers” who can promote “buy in” among department colleagues.
After introducing our approach to participants, we will collectively explore the benefits and challenges of a community organizing approach to institutionalization.
We present our contemplative and community-connected course, The Perennial Turn in Ag and Culture, part of the New Perennials Project (NPP). Inspired by The Land Institute’s work developing a natural systems agriculture, NPP investigates education and community engagement to promote foundational change in human consciousness and ways of being, for repair of human and planetary health. Readings, discussions and contemplative practices introduce multiple perspectives and ways of knowing. Community-connected learning helps us generate understanding of frameworks, strategies and challenges of change organizations in education, creative and healing arts, food systems and faith communities. The course inspires deep questioning from ontological/epistemological levels to methods utilized in community action. We explore Western science, multiple philosophies and numerous pathways of knowledge-development. Each session incorporates contemplative movement plus connection and awareness with/of the more-than-human world.
