Sacred Listening (Guest Speaker: Dor Deasy)
Selections from Acts, Genesis, John
Dor Deasy has been attending Camas Friends Church since 2018. She is currently the Clerk of the Business Meeting for Worship and a liaison to the Elders. She describes herself as having the mind of an analyst, the heart of an explorer and the soul of a poet. Dor’s tap roots are her husband Jim, theologian John Dominic Crossan, and her relationship with God.
On paper, she has an undergraduate degree in industrial/Organizational Psychology and a Masters of Applied Theology. She spent many years working as a Design Researcher studying human experiences and using such techniques as observation, ethnography (following people around and talking with them in their own settings and cultures), group facilitation and depth interviewing.
Her studies included “the meaning of beauty”, “the meaning of dinner”, the “meaning of Teams”, “what if conference rooms had not been invented?” and “the future of transportation.” She currently works as a Chaplain for PeaceHealth. Until February, her focus was acute care (working in the hospital attending to the spiritual distress of emergent and critical care situations). Since February, she has been working in Hospice with a focus on palliative care and the end of life journey.
Dor believes the important parts of our experiences (kindness, self-awareness, empathy, Grace, Forgiveness) are both gifts and skills. Once we have received them as a gift, we are responsible for developing them as skills. She is “a piece of work” and a work in progress.
Acts 1:5 (NRSV):
For John baptized with water, but you will be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now.”
Acts 2:1-6 (NRSV):
1 When the day of Pentecost had come, they were all together in one place. 2 And suddenly from heaven there came a sound like the rush of a violent wind, and it filled the entire house where they were sitting. 3 Divided tongues, as of fire, appeared among them, and a tongue rested on each of them. 4 All of them were filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other languages, as the Spirit gave them ability. 5 Now there were devout Jews from every people under heaven living in Jerusalem. 6 And at this sound the crowd gathered and was bewildered, because each one heard them speaking in the native language of each.
Genesis 11:4 (NRSV):
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves; otherwise we shall be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.”
John 14:17 (NSRV):
This is the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him because he abides with you, and he will be in you.
John 14:27 (NRSV):
Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you. I do not give to you as the world gives. Do not let your hearts be troubled, and do not let them be afraid.