Celebrating More Than 50 Years of Service
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SOCIAL ACTION PILGRIMAGE: AN IMMERSIVE LEADERSHIP EXPERIENCE
A Pilgrimage to Remember and Reflect
Social Action to Connect Head, Heart and Mind
Pilgrimage Walk date and details to be announced
Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota with preparation beginning in January 2021.
love and justice are not two.
without inner change,
there can be no outer change;
without collective change,
no change matters.
rev. angel Kyodo williams
Why this Social Action Pilgrimage?
People go on pilgrimage for many reasons. Some common ones are: to visit a sacred space; to seek healing; to give thanks; to heed an inner sense of call; to reclaim a lost or abandoned part of oneself. This pilgrimage offers the chance to connect the soul of our communities through intentional engagement with one community, whose pain captured the attention of the global community.
George Floyd’s death will forever be imprinted on our consciousness. Living forward, how will we connect with community through collaborative social action? This pilgrimage is an opportunity to reconnect with the soul of your community, bringing together prosocial leaders committed to addressing systemic issues that block life-giving change.
We live in a crucial season where our choices will have impact for generations to come. How are you being called to participate in the flow of energy across your community toward generative leadership and impactful social action? Our acts of love and social action reflect an understanding that our individual and collective flourishing are inter-dependent.
We thrive together or not at all!
Preparation - The Walk - Returning Home
Workshops via Zoom
Thursdays, 4pm to 5pm Central
January
Unmasking with Okokon Udo
February
Engaging Power with the Rev. Alicia Forde
March
Welcoming the Stranger
with Deborah Rundlett
Retreat via Zoom
April 24, 9am to noon CST
The Beloved Community
with Anita Howard
Offered as either an
in-person or virtual experience.
Re-Entry Reflection Hubs
Join a Wisdom Circle
Host a Flourishing Together Summit
PREPARATION
Just as you would never run a marathon without training, you would never embark on a pilgrimage without preparing. Taking a pilgrimage involves physical, emotional, mental and spiritual conditioning. To that end, we offer three four-week workshops to explore self, power, and community.
January Workshop—UnMasking with Okokon Udo
Learn about a journey of social action and personal transformation. As Okokon explains, we all learned to wear masks as a way to function in the world, which once served a purpose but now holds us back. This reflective and interactive experience will give you a taste of the full UnMasking experience and offer some basic understanding of what is needed for you to UnMask and come home to yourself. Thursdays, 4:00 - 5:00 pm Central, $80
February Workshop—Engaging Power with Alicia Forde
Explore what it means to own and engage our power, so that we might harness it with intention. Join Alicia on a journey beyond achievement and success to a stance in which power comes from your inner core that you might lead from your soul. Herein, lies the invitation to reclaim your purpose in the work of love and justice. Thursdays, 4:00 - 5:00 pm Central, $80
March Workshop—Welcoming the Stranger with Deborah Rundlett, in conversation with global leaders
Radical hospitality calls us to welcome the stranger in on a daily basis. Hospitality is not a subtle invitation to adopt the life style of the host, but the gift of a chance for the guest to find his or her own. This calls for us to welcome the stranger: within ourselves, our neighbors, our world? Over the next four weeks, we invite you to welcome the stranger through four curated conversations that invite each of us, with humility and creativity, to create a new field of possibility. Thursdays, 4:00 - 5:00 pm Central, $80
April Retreat—Beloved Community with Anita Howard
What does it mean to be a just and loving community? In the 1950s-'60s Martin Luther King, Jr. championed social action aimed at creating The Beloved Community, a global community of caring where poverty, hunger, and injustice are no more. In the wake of the COVID pandemic and post-George Floyd era, the structure of community is being challenged and forged anew. This journey explores what it means to be a beloved community today, and steps we might take to create it. Saturday, April 24, 9:00 am - noon Central, $80
PREPARATION LEADERS
Okokon Udo
Mary Kay DuChene
Mary Kay DuChene
Okokon Udo is the Founder & CEO of SoulEngineering, an international change management and leadership consultant, a certified executive coach, process facilitator, public speaker, instructional designer and master trainer with over thirty years of experience in organizational effectiveness, intercultural effectiveness, diversity & inclusion, leadership and team development.
Mary Kay DuChene
Mary Kay DuChene
Mary Kay DuChene
Mary Kay DuChene is the Director of Leadership Development for LeaderWise. A leadership coach and consultant, facilitator, teacher, and strategist, Mary Kay has over 30 years of experience in management, leadership development, marketing, and business management and development.
Deborah Rundlett
Mary Kay DuChene
Deborah Rundlett
Deborah Rundlett is the Founder of Poets & Prophets, a learning community committed to connecting soul with Source for the flourishing of community. Author, professor, coach and trainer, Debbie equips leaders across disciplines to serve as agents of social, economic and environmental change.
Anita Howard
Anita Howard
Deborah Rundlett
Anita Howard is a Contributor in Social Action and Change Leadership for Poets & Prophets. She is a university professor, master executive coach, and
researcher. Her work at Case Western Reserve University centers on coaching intentional change, emotional and social intelligence, and leadership for the common good/social justice.
Anita Howard
Anita Howard
THE WALK
All true pilgrimages begin with yearning. For us, the yearning is to shape a future in which love and justice are one. Simple and profound, this yearning finds its roots in remembering who we are so that together we might shape a future. This pilgrimage is an invitation to discover wholeness born
of our brokenness.
Our Journey
- Little Earth, Cedar & 24th Street
- Ground Zero, Chicago & 38th Street
- Holy Trinity & Police Precinct
- The Peace Bridge
- Pilgrim Baptist Church
- Rondo Neighborhood
- The Capitol Steps
Practical Details
Date and cost to be announced.
Click here to add your name to a list indicating your interest.
You will be notified when registration opens.
Transportation: This is a walking pilgrimage (about 11.5 miles). As such, we are not able to provide transportation. However, we encourage those unable to walk to join us virtually.
Lodging: Our pilgrimage begins at Little Earth. Find the nearest hotels in downtown Minneapolis.
Pilgrimage T-Shirt: Those making the in-person pilgrimage will be gifted with a Social Action Pilgrimage
t-shirt in order to allow hosts to identify those on the pilgrimage.
RETURNING HOME
There is a tendency in times of deep change to want to go back to simpler times. Deep down we know there is no going back. We know we cannot change things by fighting our existing reality; we can only claim our inter-dependence and build the new together. To do this, we need support.
Re-Entry Reflection Hubs
We rarely allow ourselves the time to absorb our learnings, let alone integrate them into the fabric of our lives. We invite you to do nothing for three months, except reflect and be! Reflections will be provided weekly over the course of June, July, and August to guide you in your learning and integration. There will also be monthly opportunities through Pilgrimage Hubs to connect and be.
Wisdom Circles—Starting in September
We are at a choice point. The question is: Will we choose life so that we and our descendants may live? To do so involves engaging in the political realities of this present moment, not just in the abstract but generatively and holistically. This requires strong, loving and wise leaders who understand the power to influence and move deep adaptive change. It requires you! Next circles starting in September 2021.
Flourishing Together—A One-Day Immersion
This is a community-based initiative that equips Circles of Five committed to the flourishing of their community through building the new. Particular emphasis will be placed on nurturing
a more equal, fair and sustainable way of being community, especially in the wake of Covid-19. Flourishing Together is grounded in the understanding that the flourishing of the one is dependent upon the flourishing of the whole. More details upon request.
Pilgrimage Hosts
Mary Kay DuChene is the Director of Leadership Development for LeaderWise.
Deborah Rundlett is the Founder of Poets & Prophets.
Mark Sundby is the Executive Director of LeaderWise.
Okokon Udo is the Founder & CEO of SoulEngineering.
For more information, visit:
June 9, 2020
Dear LeaderWise Friends,
Our hearts grieve over the tragedies of the last couple weeks, as we’ve witnessed racial injustice, police brutality, violence, and murder. These events once again lay bare the ugliness of systemic racism in our nation. Like many of you, our staff has begun to take a hard look at ourselves, and we’ve not always liked what we’ve found. For those of us who are white, racism has polluted our perspective through white privilege. Even if we know better on one level, on an unconscious level there’s still a part of us that believes the following lies - “Race doesn’t matter,” “In America, everyone’s treated equally,” “If you play by the rules, all people have a shot at the American dream.” Well, these just aren’t true. Our naive hope, “Can’t we just all get along?” just doesn’t sound right anymore. People who are Black, including those on our staff, have had to feign patience and understanding with the rest of us way too long.
Like most of the nation, it’s taken us too long to wake up to the full impact of systemic racism. It’s no secret, for instance, that most white people view racism as an issue of individual morality and actions while most people of color know it’s deeply systemic. As Dr. Okokon Udo, a LeaderWise colleague, astutely observes, “It’s a Race Pandemic” — and it extends way, way beyond COVID-19.
Rev. Karen Hutt, a vice president at United Theological Seminary and LeaderWise board member, recently delivered a moving online sermon about her experience with race, and we share it below. Toward the end of the sermon, she talks about shifting from “political hope” based in naive optimism to a “spiritual, human-oriented hope” based in “acting and organizing.” As she notes, if we embrace the second hope, we’ll find it to be a “spiritual, human, life-centered, life-giving hope.”
Rev. Hutt’s words compel us to act. At LeaderWise, we recognize that the journey towards transformation will be long — and, at times, arduous. Regardless, we must act now. To begin this journey, our staff encourages you to join us in one or more of the opportunities outlined below.
We recognize that this only a beginning point for LeaderWise, as well as for most of us, in our efforts to help dismantle white supremacy. Although we’ve taken a few steps for our own work as a staff — such as inservice workshops on cultural competence and internalized narratives about race — we know we’ve a long way to go. At LeaderWise, there will be more conversations — and more actions to take — as we examine our biases, learn new ways of being, and take steps toward individual and collective transformation. We humbly invite you to journey with us.
Sincerely,
Mark Sundby
Executive Director
