How can I help?
Offerings
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Presentations, Spirituality Workshops, and Retreats
Alison is available to talk with or lead a workshop or retreat for your group, organization, or business. Below is a sampling of some topics for such occasions.
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Contemplative Activism: Spirituality and Social Justice
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Incarnational Engagement with Justice Work
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Holy Resistance: Activism as a Sacrament
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Engaging with the Holy: Prayer and Contemplative Practices
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Science and Spirituality: Living Out of An Evolutionary Consciousness
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Blessed, Broken, and Shared: A Eucharistic Approach to Our Brokenness and the Mystery of Human Suffering
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The Cosmic Walk Ritual: An Interactive Workshop on the Sacred Universe Story
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Callings: Discerning Your Life’s Vocation and Purpose
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Active Listening: An Interactive Workshop for Professional and Personal Relationships
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Holding Space: Conflict Transformation, Understanding Approaches to Conflict, and Creating Mutual Understanding Between People to Heal from Harms
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Book Alison to Speak at Your Event
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Please fill out this form to express your interest in having me speak at your event. I ask that inquiries be submitted at least one month before the event, but will consider shorter notice on a case-by-case basis. I will be in touch with you about your request within 5-7 days.
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Please complete this request form: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSc36XbGZmRpBrJCz5wynUkKqPP0pG5gNfnhqRzaNxXMlGmj8Q/viewform
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Spiritual Companioning
Spiritual Companioning (also known as Spiritual Direction) provides a sacred space to listen to our heart’s desires, be present to what the Spirit is inviting us to, explore our questions, rest in the unconditional love of God/Creator/Energy/Spirit/Universe/Source of All Being. It is this Love, and our willingness to let it in, that heals our wounds. As we heal, we grow in our self confidence and gain the courage to journey deeper within to know ourselves and holy that lives within us. Spiritual Companioning allows each person to move at their own pace as they feel called. Though spiritual and inner work may be tiring, scary, or painful, it is also found to be life-giving, joyful, and liberating.
A Spiritual Companion accompanies a person or group through the journey of spiritual discovery, brokenness and healing, joy and pain, questions and doubts. It is a loving, non-judgmental process that allows a person to acknowledge their wounds and to enter a space of healing. The core work of spiritual direction supports people in deepening their trust in a loving God and in listening and noticing where Spirit is leading and showing up. Spiritual companioning is different from counseling in that there is no specific end goal to accomplish, other than continued spiritual freedom, and a deepening sense of loving relationship with self, community, and God. All parts of life are suitable topics in spiritual direction, since the things that affect our hearts, minds, and bodies inevitably affect our spirit and soul.
Spiritual companioning is open to people of any faith tradition or no tradition. Some people who find spiritual companioning helpful may be dealing with grief or loss of a relationship, community, job, changing identity, healing/changing harmful images of God (often a judgmental or punishing God from our religious past or family) and discovering a truly loving God, overcoming a drought in one’s spiritual life where what used to work no longer is, struggling with embracing out brokenness, LGBTQ folks or others who experience marginalization and need a safe spiritual space to work through religious trauma, struggling with with intimate relationships, or searching for spiritual nourishment and community outside the traditional institutions of “church.”
I am also an inter-faith and inter-spiritual Spiritual Companion meaning that I will work with anyone who wants to grow and attend to their spiritual selves and journey, regardless of their religious or non-religious affiliation. Spiritual Companions typically meet with clients for a one-hour session once each month. This relationship can continue indefinitely, although the relationship may end at any time. Sessions take place in a comfortable meeting room at Hildegard House in the Gentilly neighborhood of New Orleans. My rate for spiritual direction is $0- $225 per hour on a sliding scale. I am happy to offer a free 20-minute consultation to see if you find us to be a good match.
Mediation Services
Conflict is a normal part of our human experience. Mediation is a confidential, nonjudgmental, and voluntary process used to help people reach agreements, rebuild relationships, and find permanent solutions to their disputes. Mediation is a process that allows each participant speak for themselves and make their own decisions.
If you are experiencing any stage of a conflict (anticipating possible conflict, currently engaged in a conflict, or wanting to resolve a conflict of the past that is still lingering), I would be delighted to initiate the mediation process with you and the person or people you are experiencing a conflict with.
I am committed to providing mediation services that are accessible to all people. Mediations are offered on a sliding scale to accommodate people of different incomes. Mediations are held in a venue that is convenient for both participants and offers privacy. The day and time of the mediation is scheduled based on your availability. Most mediations last 1-2 hours though a second session can be scheduled if needed.
Some people who have benefited from my mediation services include work supervisors and employees, neighborhood associations, small businesses, roommates, non-profit organizations, co-workers, parents of a child needing to resolve custody disputes, roommates, community groups, incarcerated people and their family members, neighbors, churches, professional contractors, law enforcement officers and civilians, and others.
Conflict Resolution Training
Effective conflict management is an essential skill for every leader and aspiring leader. When harnessed productively, conflict can be a force to build both company culture and deeper relationships through listening and mutual understanding. This Conflict Resolution training is a highly interactive and engaging training to explore conflict, our relationship to it, our past experiences with it, the five approaches to conflict, and how to navigate challenging conversations or resolve conflict in your workplace, organization, congregation, or community group.
This training is offered for 2-hour or 4-hour at $250 an hour rate.
Rituals and Ceremonies
If you have a significant life event or transition on the horizon and would like to memorialize or celebrate it in a special way, please let me know. I am available to help you create a unique blessing, ritual, or experience to mark important transitions such baby dedications and baptisms, new beginnings, sacred unions and weddings, funerals and celebrations of life, blessing of a new home or business, or grieving a significant loss.
Honorariums support this ministry. Please message for more details about various packages and availability to mark momentous events and transitions in your life and the lives of loved ones.
Hildegard House Retreat Space
About Hildegard House
Hildegard House of Hospitality is inspired by and named after Saint Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard House is a place to nurture and feed the hungers for spiritual depth, life meaning, and a recognition of our interdependence with all of creation. The House serves a place of reflection, rest, and rejuvenation for those doing the works of mercy and justice in our time. It provides a comfortable space to deepen relationships with each other in our struggles for justice and with the land that feeds us.
Hildegard House provides a garden to for mutual nourishment (we nurture the earth and She nurtures us), a Christ room for retreatants or those in unique housing need situations, a Healing Room for wellness and care, and gathering spaces to build community among contemplatives, organizers, and activists through retreats, workshops, centering prayer mornings, and events.
If you are interested in booking an overnight retreat or more information about upcoming events, please message Alison here.
About Saint Hildegard of Bingen
“Fire of the Holy Spirit, life of the life of every creature, holy are you in giving life to forms. Rivers spring forth from the waters earth wears her green vigor.” –Hildegard of Bingen
St. Hildegard of Bingen was a healer, mystic, artist, writer, musician, preacher, spiritual director, prophet, poet, visionary, composer, philosopher, feminist, and Benedictine Abbess. She wrote theological, botanical, and medicinal texts, liturgical songs, and poems. She founded monasteries and is considered the founder of scientific natural history in Germany. A visionary leader of extraordinary creative power, in 2012, St. Hildegard was canonized and made a Doctor of the Church.
One of her great gifts was insight into viriditas, or the “greening power of God,” the life force at work in all of creation. This central creative principle was key for Hildegard in sustaining her soul and her work.
Saint Hildegard embraced the positive role of the body and the senses in the spiritual life as the doorway to encountering God in the world. Rooted in her Benedictine life, she saw moderation and balance as the heart of thriving physically and spiritually.
Wisdom, or Sapientia, was a key figure in Hildegard’s visions and theology as were the virtues, which she named as the gifts given to us to cultivate our inner greenness. For Hildegard, the incarnation could be said to be more important than salvation. Her theology and practice opens us up to a profound honoring of the sacred present in all creation. Mary and the divine feminine play a central role in being the bearer of this holiness into the world.
“No creature has meaning without the Word of God. God’s Word is in all creation, visible and invisible. The Word is living, being, Spirit, all verdant all creativity. This Word flashes out in every creature. This is how the spirit is in the flesh — the Word is indivisible from God.” - Hildegard von Bingen