HDS Reorientation & Common Conversation and Common Read Small Group Discussions
Details for the Common Read Closing Circle Celebration are below.
Common Read Closing Circle Celebration
Monday, April 24, 2023, 11 am-2 pm ET
James Room, Swartz Hall
Join us as we gather to share a meal together and engage in heart-centered conversation as a community about our yearlong engagement with the Harvard and Legacy of Slavery report. This will be a time for reflection and celebration as we also honor members of our community who will be leaving us. At this time of great change, we will re-cast our vision for a restorative, anti-racist and anti-oppressive HDS and a world healed of racism and oppression. We will share a meal together and engage in heart-centered conversation.
Affinity Spaces
To support the work we do in the small groups, we will hold affinity spaces for further processing. These affinity spaces are open to all HDS faculty, staff, and students based on self-identification. You are welcome to attend more than one, if you identify with more than one (for example, BIPOC and international). Each session will build off the last and we are trying to create intentional containers where folks can build relationship and trust, so we strongly encourage folks to make sure to attend the first session and, if it resonates with you, do your best to come to the other two sessions.
- White Identity (or White-Identifying) HDS Common Read Affinity Group: February 10, March 24, April 14, from 10 am to noon, Multifaith Space
- BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, People of Color) HDS Common Read Affinity Group: February 10, March 24, April 14, from 10 am to noon, Braun Room
- Transracial Adoptee and Bi/Multiracial HDS Common Read Affinity Group: February 13, March 27, April 17, from 3 to 5 pm, Multifaith Space
- International, Bi/Intercultural, and Immigrant HDS Common Read Affinity Group: February 14, from 3 to 5 pm, and March 29 and April 18, from 1 to 3 pm, Room 106, Divinity Hall
RSVP appreciated, but not required. You may RSVP by filling out the online form
Gathering to Breathe and Heal
The HDS DIB office invites you to join us the first Thursday of every month for Gathering to Breathe and Heal from 4 to 5 pm. This will be an open space where we gather to connect, center, and breathe, rooting ourselves in love through restorative circle practices. We are all navigating a violent world replete with new iterations of racial and other forms of violence that manifest every day. As a community, we want to support each other as we struggle to attend to the daily demands of our lives. This space is open to all members of the HDS community. We offer this space to hold us all, while we recognize that different events impact people differently. Given this, each month we want to collectively center the voices and needs of those in our circle most directly impacted by any recent events and experiences. This will be an open space where we can collectively lament, testify, listen to music, or sit in silence. We will hold space for our pain, our grief, and our moments of joy.
There is so much we are holding, including grief and a range of emotions connected to so much recent pain, harm, violence, and loss of life. At our initial planning of this gathering, we aimed to center our time on the mass shooting in California and the impact on our AAPI community. Since then, the video release of the killing of Tyre Nichols has reignited outrage and pain over state and police violence deeply impacting our Black community members. Our circle holds it all and it holds us all. We invite all members of our HDS community who want to join us in circle to support one another and breathe.The gathering will be facilitated by Deans Melissa Bartholomew and Steph Gauchel.
Common Read Small Group Circle Sessions
Our Common Read text, The Legacy of Slavery at Harvard Report and Recommendations of the Presidential Committee is inviting us to journey to the heart of the cultivation of race and racism in this country. As a divinity school, we are called to take this journey through the head and heart through a healing framework that will help us disentangle from the roots of slavery. We will work through a relational, restorative approach rooted in love designed to help each of us examine ourselves and strengthen our connection to our own humanity, the humanity of others, and our interconnectedness with all living beings.
We recognize that this is a challenging read that requires a commitment to intellectual engagement. We also want to approach this read wholistically understanding the deep impact on us psychologically, emotionally, and spiritually. The container we create together during our small group sessions will be with intention to cultivate an atmosphere where intimacy and trust are nurtured and where participants can bring their full selves and be brave.
We will gather in circle and engage restorative practices such as a grounding and checking in with one another. Our framework and guide for our reading of and discussions about the report are rooted in these questions:
- What is the role of religion and/or the Church?
- What intellectual/academic questions and or frameworks can we apply to help us interpret this history and how it informs our work today?
- What heart-centered questions and/or frameworks or tools can we apply to this grief work and racial justice and healing?
- What questions direct us to action? How are we being called to action?
For questions, please contact Melissa Bartholomew, or Steph Gauchel.