John Dear information now up

For all John Dear info, go here. You can download the summary flyer or any of the three event flyers (complete with registration forms) from that page. Tim Costello is speaking at the Wednesday night event too.

This guy is amazing - well worth going to check him out! Click on the picture below for an enlargement:

Rainbow Serpent

So I've been asked to run an NVDA (nonviolent direct action) workshop at Rainbow Serpent, a "music, arts and lifestyle event" in central Victoria next weekend (Fri Jan 26th - Monday Jan 29th). I'm going up the Sunday morning and doing two workshops, and Anthony is coming with me. If you're interested in going as well, you'd be most welcome. Details are on the website (not sure about day passes yet, will find out).

Trip to Breakwater

In our discussions about intentional community, I mentioned there was a Baptist monastery in Geelong (Breakwater) that do amazing intentional community, and that we should go down there sometime and learn from them. We've tentatively made plans to head down to Breakwater next Saturday (27th) January. If you'd like to come with, let me know. I'll officially confirm or deny the trip going ahead later in the week.

Jarrod awarded Donald Groom Peace Fellowship

Congratulations to Jarrod, who has been in Tassie the last few days at the Quaker Yearly Meeting, receiving the Donald Groom Peace Fellowship. It's a Quaker award granted to further work in the area of peace and nonviolence.

There's been lots of glowing things said about him in many other places, such as here and here, but the cool thing is we can say:

"We know him! He's our friend!"

If you're feeling like it, shoot him an email to say hi and congratulations.

John Dear in Melbourne!

Father John Dear, a Jesuit priest and peace activist from the US, is coming to Australia in February/March thanks to Pace e Bene Australia. You might remember John from one of the first weeks of Violence to Wholeness (he's the one who defines violence as "forgetting who we are" as children of God).

I'm organising the Melbourne leg of his tour, so there are three events you're welcome to be a part of:

Tuesday March 13:

* Day Seminar on Sustainable Peacemaking, 9am-4pm. Pallottine Community, Kew. Cost ~$60 (maximum of 50 places, so get in quick).

Wednesday March 14:

* Public lecture @ Whitley College (Cost ~$25)

* Public lecture @ Collins St Baptist Church (Cost ~$15-$25).

Weekend Away

The weekend away is booked for February 9-11, at the same house as last year in Rosebud. Cost will be a little more than last year, but won't exceed $40 per person for the whole weekend (likely less, depending on how many people come).

We'll be running it in Open Space format again, so it should be a lot of fun.

new website up and running!

The new-look website should be almost fully functional. If you have any problems or suggestions for improvements, please let me know.

I've created this news page so that you can receive inspiral news via the RSS feed. That way you don't have to keep visiting the website to catch up on the latest news.