Currently Reverend Nate is teaching the following course at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia.

 Charting Compassion

Mondays September 12 - December 12, 2011 from 7:00 - 8:30 pm at the

First Unitarian Church 2125 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, PA 19103

$20 course fee plus $15 book fee

With inspiration from Karen Armstrong’s new book, “Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life,” Reverend Nate will lead a hands-on workshop on how to use your internal compassion compass. Each week participants will be asked to read one chapter of the book, to journal, and to prepare to participate in a weekly PST exercises - Personal Spiritual Training. We won’t simply talk about compassion. We will literally chart where compassion is thriving in our lives and engage in roll plays, improvisation and games to train our mind and body to authentically act from a place of kindness. This applied spiritual training will require participants to attend every single class and to come to each session prepared. Committed practitioners encouraged to enroll. Limited to 12 participants. Click here to register.

Previous Classes

As a certified teacher, with a bachelors and two master's degrees in education, Reverend Nate takes seriously the craft of religious education. He intentionally crafts curricula that inspire moral and spiritual growth across the lifespan. Here's a short list of workshops that he has previously facilitated.

Everyday Spiritual Practices

• Inspired by Scott Alexander’s book, this workshop will explore various pathways for enriching your life. This hands-on workshop will engage participants in the spiritual disciplines of the mind, the heart, the will, the body and the soul.

ADORE: A Dialogue on Race & Ethnicity

• Three-time Oscar winning film, Crash, will serve as the text for us to explore issues of race and ethnicity in the United States. The following quote will serve as our starting point for the discussion: “It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.”

Homosexuality & the Bible

• Join us for free showing of the moving documentary entitled “For the Bible Tells Me So” that reveals the stunning clash between religion and homosexuality. Reverend Nate will facilitate a discussion that will not only ground participants in biblical scholarship but also provide a safe place for authentic expression about their personal experiences with sexuality and religion.

Ethical Eating

• What constitutes food? How much should be eaten? Where does our food come from?  How is it produced and by whom? What is ethical eating? These are some of the questions each participant will have the opportunity to answer for oneself. The workshop will conclude by crafting a self-defined Consumption Covenant that will apply various spiritual practices to one’s dietary goals. Source text include In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan; A Diet for a New America; the documentary Food Inc.; and Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingslover.

Spiritual & Financial Abundance

• Brent Kessel, one of the top financial advisers in the country, outlines eight financial archetypes that describe our relationship to money. What money-type are you?  What are your heartfelt money goals and how do they relate to your core money-story, the story that keeps replaying in your unconscious mind?  Various spiritual practices will be applied to help you achieve spiritual and financial abundance. 

Conversations on Forgiveness

• One of the most challenging spiritual disciplines is forgiveness.  We’ll use feminist theory, psychology, and multimedia to experience the healing power of forgiveness. As a critic of traditional theologies of forgiveness, Reverend Nate will place emphasis on the spiritual practice of reconciliation as a process that may or may not lead to authentic forgiveness.

Adults in Transition

• The following series is designed for adults in any life transition: changes in careers, relationships, locations, identity and beliefs.  The workshop will combine the educational with the aesthetic.   The first unit, entitled, "Transitions & Transformations" is designed to help us identify our transitions and begin to envision our desired transformations. The second unit, "Intimacy and Independence" recognizes that we are responsible for the quality of our lives together, and are therefore called to balance our intimacy with our need for independence. In doing so we achieve a state of interdependence. The final unit, "Marginality and Mattering" helps us identify where we matter in life so as to heal the parts of our lives where we feel marginal.  Collectively, these sessions provide a safe and tender place for adults in transition.

Soul Work: Anti-Racist  Theologies  in Dialogue

• Edited by Marjorie Bowens Wheatley and Nancy Palmer Jones, "Soul Work" contains nine papers by 30 scholars, ministers, theologians, teachers and activists on the complex and pressing issue of racism.  Each from radically different theological perspectives the authors help to thresh out the relationships between theology and ethics, belief and action, and the personal and pastoral.  Soul Work reconsiders all we thought we knew and understood about racism and anti-racist work. 

Let Your Life Speak

• Award winning author Parker Palmer reflects on the Quaker saying, “Let Your Life Speak.”  He writes, “Before you tell your life what you intend to do with it, listen for what it intends to do with you.  Before you tell your life what truths and values you have decided to live up to, let your life tell you what truths you embody, what values you represent.”  Participants will use Palmer’s teachings to reclaim one’s authentic self in community.

Population Education

• Population growth affects our environment, including air and water; it affects economies; it affects energy availability, use, and distribution; and it also affects our everyday lives, whether we live in the city, the suburbs, or anywhere in the world.  We’ll explore activities that can be done with children at multiple age levels (elementary through high school) to introduce the issues and develop strategies for dealing with them in a way consistent with the UU principles.

The Spiritually Mature Leader

• Co-facilitated by various congregational leaders, Spiritually Mature Leadership, invites church members to integrate leadership strategies with various spiritual practices.   For example, participants will integrate mindfulness trainings with decision-making processes as well as identify self-care goals so as to better care for others.  Leaders will use systems-theories to observe toxic patterns in congregational life and discern the appropriate spiritual disciplines to promote organizational health.