Stillpoint Scholarship Fund
By Rev. Elizabeth Rechter, Executive Director
At this time of year, as Stillpoint’s fiscal year closes, we ask you to consider making a donation to help us continue the good work of forming and supporting spiritual directors and encouraging contemplative life. This year we invite you to help us establish the Stillpoint Scholarship Fund. We are committing to award a tithe of all program tuition received each year to seed this new fund. Your contribution will help us extend an invitation to those who feel a calling to becoming a spiritual director, but who would never consider our program due to financial constraints or language barriers or they are younger adults who haven’t been introduced to spiritual direction. We are asking for your help to raise $2,500.00 by June 28th.
On May 18th, Stillpoint celebrated the graduation of ten new Spiritual Directors from our California program, and in March we celebrated eleven graduates from our Ghost Ranch residential program in New Mexico. While not expected, often graduating classes give a gift as a symbol of their gratitude for this deep journey and training. This year, Stillpoint received two beautiful gifts, new tools to keep the fire tended at our Ghost Ranch retreat house, and from the California class, a one year tuition scholarship.
Whenever I am considering making a contribution of any kind, whether it is my treasure, my talent, or my time, I am guided by the ancient spiritual practice found in the book of Leviticus. It reads:
When you reap the harvest of your land,
you shall not reap to the very edges of your field,
or gather the gleanings of your harvest.
You shall not strip your vineyard;
you shall leave them for the poor
and the alien:
The text is from a series of chapters called the Holiness Code outlining what holiness will look like in our lives. Not all of it is easily applicable to our 21st Century lives, but this one is powerful wisdom for me. Part of what it means to live a holy life, a whole life, is to know how to be generous with what we have been given. This Code teaches us to allow a portion of what we have, the edge of our field, not to go into our own barns, but to be left for the poor. It was the original food bank.
What part of your life do you give away? What is left at the edge of your field for those in need? What was left for you when you needed it?
Stillpoint is committed to living into our wholeness by establishing a scholarship fund, and something more. This year we have incorporated a new piece into our curriculum. Each participant of our program is asked to bring their sacred listening training to a place on the margins. Some visited the incarcerated, others the homeless, and some will continue these relationships as a permanent part of their spiritual direction practice. Everyone benefits from being deeply heard.
Can you join others by offering from the edge of your field so we can reach our goal by June 28th?
Congratulations to all our Graduates for their offering to the world,
and Blessings for the Journey,
Elizabeth+
Rev. Elizabeth I. Rechter
Executive Director, Stillpoint