Gatherings
 
What is Celebration of the Good?
Celebration of the Good is an experiment in entertainment, a new way to pass the time with strangers and friends. It is an introduction to amazing things, people, places, events, a way to celebrate beauty and truth. It can be also be part of our lifelong learning pathway, and a way to cultivate relationship with friends and strangers.

Join us for evening gatherings to read or perform any thoughtful, inspiring works of any kind. We will also have time for reflection and we will have free snacks! They can take place in any public venue, or at the homes of participants.

The celebration includes informal readings or performances of anything that make you think, reaches your heart or lifts your spirit. Simply reading insightful works together – even very short ones – can perhaps be a sacred experience. It corresponds to prayer in religion.

Conventional entertainment is mostly distraction. Is there another kind of entertainment, one that exists at a deeper level? One the celebrates beauty and truth? One that fortifies personal qualities such as integrity, humility, purity, integrity?

Some works are path to a great mystery. They are too powerful to simply read by onself. They are so inspirational, beautiful and penetrating they deserve to be read aloud, mulled over, celebrated. They are so inspirational, provoking or subtle they deserve to be read aloud, mulled over, celebrated. Not only in our centers, but in various public and private spaces.

 
How it works
Feel free to come simply to listen, watch, and respond. Active participation is optional. If you like, you may read, perform or play anything you want for up to 5 – 10 minutes. Bring any the following: – Inspiring written documents.
– Great historical documents.
– Something from or about an inspiring person.
– Direct heart-to-heart statements.
– Something amazing you have seen.
– Video clips.

On my list are writers such as J. Krishnamurti, Abraham Heschel, Feodor Dostoyevsky, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Rumi, Plato, Pericles. I’m interested in humanist psychology. Select anything, no matter how recent, unknown, or unconventional, as long as it is edifying and uplifting (two words that are now obsolete, but which we can resurrect).

 
Quotes
“When night came and a man wanted to pass away time, he did not hasten to a tavern to take a drink, but went to pour over a book or joined a group which – either with or without a teacher – indulged in the enjoyment of studying revered books.”
Abraham Heschel, The Earth is the Lord’s

"Our utter loss of spiritual tradition and trust in ancient principles of ethics and laws of conscience... A society lost in materialism and technological change in which the lower nature has been sated again and again, a society in which the ancient traces of higher feelings are vanishing like so many fragile life species... It is in thinking together, under strong conditions of serious search, that a new understanding can be approached. Group communication, group pondering, is the real art form of our time."
Jacob Needleman, Money and the Meaning of Life