Minding the Spirit Within Us: The Meaning of Prayer, Meditation and Mindfulness
What constitutes a life of minding the Spirit within us particularly during a time of stress? Why did the disciples of Jesus ask him to teach them to pray? What are the meaning and expectations of praying? What is the relationship between the practices of praying, meditating and mindfulness, self-care and their influence on our capacity to regulate our thinking, feelings and actions? What does it mean to be religious or spiritual and practice meditating and/or praying?
This course will explore these and other questions about prayer, praying, meditation and mindfulness. Participants will also look at different ways of thinking about how prayers are composed and offered in a communal setting as well as a private practice.
In a confidential setting, course participants will be encouraged to offer their experiences and concerns about the relationship between and meaning of prayer, meditation and mindfulness practices. They will also be invited to think broadly and be creative in forming their own prayer and meditational life. Some of the written works of persons such as Howard Thurman, Thomas Merton and Marian Wrigt Edelman will be reflected upon to discern the meaning of prayer and meditation. However, prayer, meditation and mindfulness can be expressed through a variety of forms of which art, dance, music and poetry are just a few.
The course is open to all. Its format will be group discussion and exercises. As a covenant community we each mind our spirit and engage in spiritual practices in different ways. Each session will begin and end with a prayer, meditation or reflection to which participants are welcomed to contribute and share with the group. Selected readings will be sent to the participants two weeks in advance of the course. Participants are encouraged to bring with them to the course any composition of prayers and/or meditations they would like to share with the group.
The objectives of the course is for participants to:
1) Broaden and deepen our theological understanding of the meaning of prayer and its relationship to meditation and mindfulness.
2) Further develop skills for the practice of prayer.
3) Identify formats useful for developing, writing and presenting prayers in a public setting.
4) To experience the fun of minding our spirits.
Frederick J. (Jerry) Streets, as Senior Pastor of the Mount Aery Baptist Church in Bridgeport, Conn. from 1975 to 1992, led the congregation in significant growth, building a new church edifice and developing many social outreach programs and ministries.
He is the first African American and Baptist to serve as the Yale University Chaplain and Senior Pastor of the Church of Christ in Yale. While serving in that role from 1992 to 2007, he established a model of multi-faith campus ministry. In honor of Yale’s tercentennial, Yale University Press published his 2005 book Preaching in the New Millennium.
In 2008 Professor Streets was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, where he taught in the Department of Practical Theology and explored the intersection of religious, social welfare and medical institutional outreach services to those affected by, and infected with, HIV and AIDS. He also initiated the first collaboration between the Department of Social Work and Criminology and the Department of Practical Theology. He returned to South Africa as a Fulbright Specialist in 2010 and 2012 to assess the transition of the University of the Free State in Bloemfontein, South Africa, in becoming a multicultural and ethnic institution since the fall of apartheid.
He served as the Senior Pastor of the historic Dixwell Avenue Congregational United Church of Christ in New Haven from 2012 to 2023. Founded in 1820, Dixwell Church is the city’s oldest African American congregational church.
Professor Streets is the first African American to serve as the Carl and Dorothy Bennett Professor in Pastoral Counseling at the Wurzweiler School of Social Work, Yeshiva University in New York City (2007-2012). He is a Visiting Associate Professor at the Columbia University School of Social Work and in the Spirituality, Mind Body Institute in the Department of Clinical Psychology and Education, Teachers’ College, Columbia University and formally in the Department of Social Work and Latino Community Practice at the University of Saint Joseph in West Hartford, Conn.
He is a founding faculty member of the Harvard Program in Refugee Trauma, through which he assists in the training of mental health professionals across disciplines, religions, and cultures in providing mental health services to those throughout the world who have been traumatized by war and natural disasters.
He is a member of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences, a licensed clinical social worker (LCSW) and a 2009-10 Fellow of the Connecticut Health Foundation.
Some of his wider involvements include having served on the Board of the Fund for Theological Education and the Iranian Human Rights Documentation Center and on the Association of Theological School (ATS), The Commission on Accrediting.
A native of Chicago, Dr. Streets has been nurtured by the American Baptist Convention, Progressive National Baptist Convention, and United Church of Christ denominations. He has published numerous articles and book chapters and is the recipient of many awards. His latest book, on clergy well-being, is scheduled to be published in 2024 by Wipf and Stock/PICKWICK publishers.
