Rev. Bonnie Tarwater and Dr. John B. Cobb Jr. invite you to join an Earth Crisis Support Group and Potluck Party as outlined in Cobb’s new book, Confessions. Cosponsored with the Home - Living Earth Movement and Our Common Home Counseling Center groups are beginning around the world. There are all sorts of small groups that help people to deal with particular problems. But we know of none that help people to deal with the threat to human survival. Everyone is welcome! There are all sorts of small groups that help people deal with particular problems. ECSG’s are modeled after medical and phycological support groups, Twelve Step Programs and the early house churches that gathered weekly and always shared a meal together. Come to a safe place to share your thoughts and feelings about the worst existential threat humans have ever faced, the 6th extinction of life on earth, the only one created by us humans. Too many of us have nowhere to explore our roller coaster of feelings from denial to grief, and from anxiety to rage. Facilitated local groups gatherings beginning around the world, sharing stories of hope and organizing for meaningful work together. Contact Bonnie Tarwater Our Common Home Counseling Center, www.churchforourcommonhome.com www.churchforourcommonhome.com cosponsored by the Living Earth Movement, www.livingearthmovement.eco. Contact Bonnie (858) 248-5123, revtarwater@yahoo.com. www.churchforourcommonhome.com Our Common Home, a church and counseling center.
Counseling Center services include; Support Groups, Short and long term psychotherapy, Ecologic and World Crisis Issues, Group therapy, Dream work for individuals and groups, Relationships and couple’s counseling, Family and children’s counseling, Trauma and Addiction Counseling, Pastoral Counseling, Spiritual Direction, Aging and Menopause issues, Hospice and Bereavement counseling, Pre-marital counseling, Art workshops and an “Arts Ministry” with an art studio with the animals in the barn, a barn mural project, ecologic building projects, Dance parties and weekly pot lucks, Retreats, Gardening, Social Justice Projects, Career Counseling.
Counseling Center Co-founders: Dr. Walter Rutherford and Rev. Bonnie Tarwater
Our human family is undergoing a spiritual awakening as we experience interconnected oneness and the sacredness of all life.
Bridging head and heart, male and female, science and religion, East and West, right and left brain, body and spirit…. It is time to be innovative, create community and learn how to do inner work for personal and collective healing and transformation.Hope is alive because every crisis offers the invitation for psycho-spiritual growth. Our human family is undergoing a spiritual awakening as we experience interconnected oneness and the sacredness of all life. We will not find solutions to our individual or global crisis with the same means we used to create our crisis. Too often we "disable the fire alarm" in our psyches or souls and go into denial and unconsciousness. We are in a psycho-spiritual crisis as a human family with an escalating global ecologic crisis and moral crisis with escalation wars, violence, greed and narcissism. Our Common Home Counseling Center asks what really matters and offers support and encourages truth telling personally and collectively as we seek meaningful work and service. Walt and Bonnie began doing counseling work together in 2015, beginning Our Common Home as a non-profit organization with a home church and counseling center.
Rev. Bonnie Tarwater believes that loving, caring and devoted relationships heal and provide the deepest of all psycho-spiritual practices. As a dream worker, counselor and spiritual director she encourages raising of consciousness, truth telling as we create meaningful lives of purpose. The modern world is lonely and we need support to create community. As a wife, mother, grandmother, global citizen, social justice advocate, minister, artist and retreat leader she encourages passionate love of God, the natural world and one another for healing, transformation and creating meaningful lives.
Bonnie worked in the professional theater, as an actress, theater director and drama teacher. A personal crisis led to a religious search that unexpectedly turning into her new vocation as a parish minister and counselor. She has led weekly dream groups for many years. Using storytelling, ritual, and the visual and performing arts in her work she was ordained as a Unitarian Universalist in 1999 offering an Arts Ministry. She has led many different kinds of support and counseling groups and served as a hospital and hospice chaplain.
Along with Dr. John Cobb, Bonnie has created Earth Crisis Support Groups and Potluck Parties which are an offering of Our Common Home Counseling Center in order to create community and a safe place to share feelings and thoughts about the worst existential threat the human family has ever faced with escalating wars, the threat of nuclear holocaust and ecologic catastrophes.
Walt and Bonnie are exploring biodynamic farming and have created the Secret Garden Retreat Center on a five acre paradise in the fertile Willamette Valley of Oregon with an interfaith Secret Prayer Garden with twelve Tree Prayer Stations inviting prayers and love for the natural world locally and globally. BA, UCSD Visual Art, MFA, ACT Theater, CA Teaching Credential Art and Theater, USIU, M.Div. Claremont School of Theology, Certificate from Marin Institute for Projective Dream Work, International Association for the Study of Dreams Representative Pacific Northwest, and working locally with the Oregon Biodynamic Association.
Along with her counseling practice, she is the minister of Church for Our Common Home an untraditional Christian based church worshiping in the barn with the animals and on Zoom. As she often says “God (called by many names) loves you and there is nothing you can do about it
Dr. Walt Rutherford After life changing experiences serving in combat in the Vietnam war, Walt began working for peace and wholeness. Clinically, he has served veterans and other survivors of violence and abuse including those addicted and suffering from trauma. In 1979 Walt became the Director of one of the first Vet Centers in the nation, where he began his study of the phenomena later to be known as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD.) Today, he is known as a pioneer in the research and treatment of trauma therapies.
In the 1980’s Walt began a study of Tibetan Buddhist Philosophy and its medical approaches. He has been fortunate to learn from many Tibetan masters in this field. With a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology he has taught Buddhist Psychology and created university courses in it.
Walt is known for his work with couples, relationship counseling and multi-generational issues. His approach is driven by the knowledge that warmth, empathy and love are necessary forces of healing. He believes in the need to treat the whole person – mind, body, and spirit. Having been involved in the fields of counseling, consulting, and academic teaching for over forty years, Walt credits the many people he has co-created change with as his teachers in becoming the person and therapist he is today.
After forty years of solo practice as a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist, Walt was excited to co-create a dynamic center with his wife Bonnie that models loving relationship. His approach is driven by the knowledge that warmth, empathy and love are necessary as the forces of healing. He believes in the need to treat the whole person – mind, body, and spirit. Having been involved in the fields of counseling, consulting, and academic teaching for over forty years, Walt’s interest in positive mental states, optimum health, and innovative forms of healing and growth inform his service to others.
Local Dallas Oregon ECSG every Sunday 5-7 pm pst call or text Bonnie. ZOOM ECSG every Monday 4-6 pm pst
Guidelines for Earth Crisis Support Group and Potluck Parties, updated 10/2024 for in person and Zoom groups
“Don’t think a small group of people can’t change the world. It is the only thing that ever has.” Margaret Mead
Reader #1 Welcome to our Earth Crisis Support Group and Potluck Party (ECSG). Our group has gathered to develop close relationships. Creating community is the most important preparation for future crisis. We are facing the worst existential crisis the human family has ever known, the 6th extinction of life on earth, the only one created by us humans. Many of us live in denial or fear and many of us do not have enough people to share our feelings and thoughts. ECSG’s meet and share a meal together which is the key that creates community. These local gatherings draw upon three group models including psychological support groups, Twelve Step meetings and the early Christian church who shared a weekly meal in people’s homes. We begin like a Twelve Step meeting reading aloud these written guidelines enabling any newcomer to understand and fully participate and for anyone to be the meeting leader.
Reader #2 ECSG guidelines enable us to become a planetary network to organize and create local and global actions. We encourage new groups and no previous experince in group facilitation or membership is necessary. Zoom groups are now beginning and all groups are alcohol and drug free. There are no fees to form or join a group If you would like to make a tax-deductible donation to continue this work please go to the website. We ask that two volunteers agree to be the leader and time keeper. (Agree now.) Leader, please pass the sign in sheet around now and ask for a volunteer to create a contact sheet. Ideally, the weekly leader and time keeper are rotated each week and can be taken on by newcomers. There is a short-suggested script at the end of these guidelines for the leader. Until the group has about seven members who attend weekly, all members are asked to invite new members. Each week everyone offers uninterrupted sharing for three minutes if the group is about seven people. (Please make adjustments for more or less people.)
Reader #3 The first time around the circle is a check in on how we are feeling and what is going on with us personally. The second time we share our feelings and thoughts about our understanding about what is happening in the world. If we do not know how we feel and have nothing to say we sit in silence. When we sit in loving silence for often more thought emerge that we may want to share. During dinner we enjoy open conversation including possible plans for actions or projects and ask for support we may need. Everyone can bring a sack lunch, order a pizza or whatever you need to make the food work for your group. As we eat dinner, we share stories of hope and visions of an ecological civilization. We commit as a group to learn together what is happening in our world and share credible and reliable news sources. Please create and add to “More Reliable News Source List” for your group. The four sections include; 1. Personal sharing, 2. Sharing about our feelings and thoughts about what is happening in the world, 3. Open conversation and potluck party ending with a brief check out sharing 1. How we are feeling, 2. How we felt about the group, 3. One hope 4. Action item we will do in the next week, “FFHA” Feelings, Feelings about Group, Hope and Action. The Leader begins this sharing time by twenty minutes before the second hour to keep the meeting and dinner no longer than two hours. 4. Clean up with dancing.
Reader #4 The leader will announce the four times of group sharing. We hold four one-minute periods of prayer, silent meditation, song or ritual in between sharing and after the closing of the dinner portion before clean up and dancing.
Group guidelines include; 1. We agree to share our feelings and thoughts about our understanding of our planetary crisis including ecologic, economic, social, political breakdowns, the risk of nuclear war and increasing ecological catastrophes. 2. Everyone is invited to listen deeply and share without being interrupted. 3.Before the potluck there is no cross talk, meaning we do not comment on what other people have shared, and we refrain from interrupting people except to ask clarifying questions. 4. Everything shared in the group is kept in confidence. 5. We encourage “I” statements.
Reader #5 6. Commit to loving everyone in the silences as well as in conversation and send a silent mantra and blessings to everyone as they share repeating silently, “I love you, I love you, I love you.” 7. Everyone helps to clean up and plays music to sing and dance together while cleaning. 8. If there is a conflict in the group, we set aside a separate time solely for a discussion about the issue or conflict but not during the two-hour ECSG format. We schedule a time for the group to discuss the issue after a meeting or another agreed upon time. All information about the issue is shared and everyone is invited to speak about their ideas and feelings. Usually, a wise solution is revealed naturally in this manner. ECSG’s offers experienced group leaders available for consultation when requested. 9. Please keep a current members contact list and email and/or pass out to newcomers. Everyone is encouraged to give and receive support to one another in-between meetings by phone etc.
Leader, please begin now by offering the first invitation for one minute prayer, song, silent meditation etc. before first round of sharing. Blessings and good luck. May you support and become close to one another, dream and vision together and do meaningful actions in the world.
Possible words for the Leader or use your own words. One Minute Prayer, Song etc Leader: We now ask for a volunteer to offer a one-minute prayer, silent mediation, song or ritual. (This is offered before each section and before clean up.) First Sharing: We now begin sharing for three minutes, how you are feeling and what is going on with you personally. Second Sharing: We now share what is your understanding some of the important things that are happening in the world and how you are feeling about them. Third Sharing before dinner: It is now time to eat together. Please offer a blessing for our food. Sharing before clean up Leader: Thank you for sharing and it now time to begin a short check out without cross talk. 1. How we are feeling, 2. How we felt about the group, 3. One hope, 4. Action item we will do in the next week, “FFHA” Feelings, Feelings about Group, Hope and Action. (After sharing.) We now ask for volunteers for the needed tasks including: dish washing, drying, putting away dishes, putting food away, clean counters, make coffee and tea, DJ of music. We suggest these jobs are rotated so everyone can learn each task. Time Keeper The time keeper uses their timer on their iPhone or other method. Generally, about three minutes of sharing for a group of 6-8 will enable the group to be completed in two hours. The leader and time keeper will alert the group when it is about twenty minutes before the end of the group making it time to check out in order to begin clean up enabling the group to be completed in a two-hour period. Example: If you begin at 5 pm you would have the checkout by 6:40 pm in order to finish clean up at 7 pm. If or when people go overtime in their sharing the Leader is encouraged to name this and say something like, “Please finish your thought for your time is up and thank you sharing.”
Tax deductible donations can be made Our Common Home, www.ourcommonhomecounselingcenter.org If you want to begin a new group, or want support in the facilitation of your group, contact Rev. Bonnie Tarwater, (858) 248-5123, revtarwater@yahoo.com
Come dance music to play on an iPhone or other device while you do the dishes for ECSG!
Cumbia, Jackson Brown I Feel Good, Dolly Parton Nine to Five, Joni Mitchell Big Yellow Taxi, Sly and the Family Stone We are Family, Bonnie Rhett Nick of Time, Ray Charles, Hit the Road Jack, Beatles, They Say Its Your Birhtday, Its Been a Hard Day’s Night, Twist and Shout etc. Abba, Dancing Queen, Aretha Franklin, RESPECT, etc. etc.
Nancy S. Mahoney began the first Earth Crisis Support Group (ECSG) and Potluck Party in the Woodstock New York area. She is an active member of Church for our Common Home and earned a BA from William Paterson University in 1977. After raising a family she went back to college and received her MPS from Pratt Institute in Special Education Art Therapy in 1990. She later became a registered art therapist and was board certified in 1997. She became a licensed professional counselor in New Jersey in 2000 and a Creative Arts Therapist in New York State in 2012. In Nyack, NY she worked with Creative Response to Conflict as an art therapist with children whose mothers had been incarcerated. She has been an exhibiting artist in mixed media and collage. She finds the Holy in creating art and in the woods and farms of New York. She has 4 daughters and 9 grandchildren! If you're interested in joining her Earth Crisis Support Group and Potluck Party, please contact her at artnsm@gmail.com or (415) 939-7667 or (845) 321-2660.