A Mindfulness Center in the Midwest: Seven Years and Embracing Impermanence

After seven years of joyful service teaching mindfulness in the Kansas City community and beyond, the Midwest Alliance for Mindfulness is coming to an end. You can read about years 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 if you would like to learn more about the evolution of the revolution from the inside out.

This year was one of transition for our community and for many people in this country – a real-life lesson in impermanence.

We reduced our offerings considerably as we took time to consider how we might go forth in a new reality. Our weekly practice gatherings continued as always and we:

• grieved the loss of a beloved teacher,
• held an innovative spring creativity retreat at Hollis Renewal Center,
• offered our first craftivism workshops, and
• guided several half day retreats themed on connecting with nature and community.

Everything is impermanent and our community of practice is here to help us bend, not break amidst the winds of change. There are seasons when these winds feel like hurricanes, cyclones, derechos, threatening to sweep our whole lives off their foundations.

Fortunately our beloved community will carry on through the Midwest Mindfulness Collective (MMC), returning to our grass roots origins and honoring those who’ve gone beyond.

I will no longer be the coordinator for the community as my energies are being called in new and necessary directions. You will see me in the practice space as a participant though and we will all be in good hands with our familiar family of trained teachers.

It has been a joy and an honor to be a part of this amazing journey with all of you and I look forward to experiencing what emerges in this time of evolution and transition. This web page will remain for as long as I can maintain it as a legacy site and a resource.

There’s a thread you follow.
It goes among things that change.
But it doesn’t change…

– William Stafford, excerpt from The Way It Is