Registration is now open for 2024 Heart of Higher Education

Join the conversation with: Parker J. Palmer, Robin Wall Kimmerer and Belden Lane.

The Heart of Higher Education 2024
Monday June 10 – Wednesday June 12, 2024

Moving Toward Enough
e·nough /iˈnəf/. in or to a degree or quantity that satisfies or that is
sufficient or necessary for satisfaction.

Talk with your colleagues, and eventually, someone will mention feeling as if they can’t keep up with the tidal wave of challenges and changes in their lives. We find ourselves within a higher education culture that values stimulus, newness, more, bigger, and better. The frustrating part of this is our own collusion in this culture of too-muchness: if we keep running, pushing, producing, and saying yes, surely no one will see us as deficient or indolent.

Sometimes we function on auto-pilot, moving right past the richness of life, missing what is hidden in plain sight: how nature models beautifully for us what healthy limits look like. We miss the opportunity to engage as partners in the “great conversation.”

Contentment is life living through you.
Joy is life living through you.
Satisfaction and strength
are life living through you.
Peace is life living through you.

Excerpt from Hokusai Says, a poem by Roger Keyes.
Text as posted on Joan Spear’s Authentic Adventure (7/12/2010).

Join us as we listen to wise voices – those of our bodies, our spirits,  the earth, and our wise conversation partners,
Robin Wall Kimmerer, Belden Lane, and Parker J. Palmer – as they call us to a more satisfying way of being.
Together, we will explore themes such as:

• Learning from healthy limitations.
• Avoiding rope burn: how blistered we can become when driven by anxiety and dehumanizing expectations.
• Looking to nature as our example of a different way.
• The juxtaposition of rest and movement: how joy and creativity can come out of honoring a fallow time, wherever and whenever we can find it.
• Creatively holding the tensions inherent in this conversation, allowing for “not perfect” and “messy.”
• What “success” looks like in the context of moving toward enough.

What you can expect:
We will spend time in conversation with self and others, inspired through poetry, music, movement, and the wise words of elders, exploring questions together.

Participants will rediscover ways to sustain ourselves as we foster our ability to enhance the common good on our campuses – connecting with those purposes for which we originally sought this vibrant vocation, and becoming more present, whether in the classroom, meetings, the hallway, or in residential life.

Being naturalized to place means to live as if this is the land that feeds you,
as if these are the streams from which you drink, that build your body and fill your spirit.
To become naturalized is to know that your ancestors lie in this ground.
Here you will give your gifts and meet your responsibilities.
To become naturalized is to live as if your children’s future matters,
to take care of the land as if our lives and the lives of all our relatives depend on it. Because they do.

― Robin Wall Kimmerer, Braiding Sweetgrass

Details and Registration:

• Event is Monday- Wednesday, 10 am- 2 pm CT,
  To find the time of the event for you: https://www.thetimezoneconverter.com/
• Costs: $210   
• Scholarships are available and the process for applying is built into the registration process- please follow the instructions there and note that while we hope to help people attend, scholarship funds are limited so please apply early
• Group Rate: $150 (per person for three or more participants from the same campus, you’ll need the names of two other colleagues when you register).
• You can help us provide scholarships by donating during the registration process.  Thank you for considering this partnership with us.
• Registrations closes June 5 , 2024, midnight CT USA
• Cancellations must be received in writing at heartof@couragerenewal.org 30 days before the event is scheduled to begin and are subject to a $25 administrative fee. Between 30 days and 14 days prior to the start date you will receive a 50% refund for your registration. Refunds will not be granted within 2 weeks of the program start date. Extraordinary circumstances will be considered on a case-by-case basis. All refund requests must be made by the registrant.