Michael Ortiz Hill

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Michael & Augustine

Michael Ortiz Hill
Painting by Don Bachardy

Several years ago my study of dreams brought me to write about the situation of racism in America. I was compelled by the idea that African-American dreams could be most deeply understood from the wisdom tradition at the source, and so I began exploring the African origins of black American culture. Eventually I went to Africa and met the Bantu healer Mandaza Kandemwa in Zimbabwe.

To our surprise, as Mandaza initiated me into the medicine tradition of his people, a mystery began to open up between us. I call this mystery "gathering in the names” to offer a twist of sweet plurality to Christ’s insight: wherever two or more are gathered in the name of the sacred, spirit descends, awakens.

With an ancient way of peacemaking (Gathering in the Names) and an altogether contemporary way of wisdom (Overcoming Terrorism: A Twelve Step Approach) we hope to gather with you here for the sake of healing an anguished world.

— Michael Ortiz Hill

A Conspiracy of Kindness

A Continuing Education Course by
Michael Ortiz Hill, RN
(In the Redwoods, South of San Francisco)

October 17-19, or 17-21, 2008

- Continuing Education Credit for nurses, LMFT's, and LCSW's
- Fulfills the spiritual practice prerequisite for John F. Kennedy University's Graduate School for Holistic Studies.

All of us are required to find our way through the wilderness of suffering - our suffering, anybody’s – and finding our way as much as anything refines the soul of an adult. The gesture toward a suffering being is at the same time a gesture towards ones own awakening. This workshop is for anyone who takes the matter of learning compassion seriously. In such a time as we live I dare say there is nothing more important.

For more information, click here: http://www.mountmadonna.org/live/programs.html

Selections from Michael's book:

Compassion as a Craft	Sympathetic Joy and Sympathetic Sorrow	Conspiracies of Kindness

MICHAEL ORTIZ HILL is a registered nurse, a Buddhist practitioner, and an initiated medicine man with tribal people of Zimbabwe. The core of his spiritual practice has been the refinement and activity of compassion. He is the author of Dreaming the End of the World: Apocalypse as a Rite of Passage; Twin from Another Tribe: The Story of Two Shamanic Healers in Africa and North America; and The Village of the Water Spirits: The Dreams of African-Americans (both books with Mandaza Kandemwa). He is also the author of the upcoming A Conspiracy of Kindness: Living Compassion at the Bedside of the Ill which will be part of this workshop. He lives in Topanga, California with his wife Deena Metzger.

Michael Ortiz Hill has been approved by the California BRN for 30 units for RN’s who complete this course

Michael and Deena

Deena Metzger
Painting by Don Bachardy