We Gather 2 Listen

We Gather 2 Listen Create a safe space for meaningful conversations to take place. Joe knows that each person matters and plays a crucial role in his/her own community.

Joe is currently the founder of We Gather 2 Listen—a comprehensive business all about reaching out and connecting to others with effortless thinking, productive gathering, and genuine listening. Joe is a certified Art of Convening trainer and is dedicated to helping individuals and organizations become empowered by using conversational leadership techniques to create an authentic community of lear

ning. Joe’s incredible, wholehearted compassion and commitment led him to co-found CHOICESS, the first program in California supporting individuals with developmental disabilities to live an independent lifestyle. His drive and passion led him to dedicate his life to these individuals and their families for over 30 years now. This is just one of many organizations that resulted from his incredible love and commitment in assisting individuals, families, and organizations to create the change they desire together. However, Joe didn’t stop at CHOICESS—he continued to devote his time and heart in developing programs that improved the lives of individuals. He co-founded CIRCL to provide technical assistance to enhance Community Living Services to individuals with developmental challenges. Through CIRCL, Joe created networks to mentor, foster, and provide learning opportunities that allow people to contribute and exchange ideas with one another. If that wasn’t already enough, Joe became a certified PCT trainer and later a mentor through the Learning Community of Person Centered Practices. He has developed an appreciative perspective that teaches people the concept of “when you understand a person you are more capable of caring for them.” Joe’s way of being allows him to gather individuals with disabilities and their families to create a life of meaning, purpose, and understanding. He now trains other agencies, service coordinators, families, and individuals to move together in authentic ways of being. Joe is also involved and concerned with finding alternative solutions to the economic challenges faced by many today. He was able to present a unique program that connects and gathers these people to support one another through their own unique gifts and talents. By introducing the Temple City TimeBank, Joe has enabled a community to bond together and realize that we all have something to contribute. Not only does Joe balance an amazing amount of programs and events, he does so with a huge slice of soul pie topped with enthusiasm and care. Joe’s big heart and determination allow him to change his community one event, workshop, and program at a time.

10/25/2022

“Why wait for a dying, archaic system to fix itself? We have plenty of people, plenty of work to be done, and an equal time on this Earth. We can do better."
- Edgar Cahn

06/30/2021
10/04/2020

THE DOOR BENEATH EVERYTHING

There is a door
beneath everything
we’ll walk right by
if we don’t stop to look
with our troubled hearts
and a loving eye.

We only have this one life to live, no matter the difficulties of our times, no matter the incompetence of our political leadership, no matter the fires, the smoke, the inequalities, and the manifest inherited wrongs of our time; though every one of those things needs to be put right. Human beings have always lived their years through fire and ice, individually and socially since the beginning of our conscious awareness. But no matter the tenor of our times, no matter the suffering socially and individually we were born to the challenge and to the invitation to a deeper and more abiding sense of appreciation and presence; to be the one gifted and then to be the one who then passes on that gift. A possibility for happiness in any individual life is the prime motivator behind wanting that possible happiness for all others and for all those generations to come and for creating a world where that might be the primary everyday miracle. Without the gifted presence of happiness or without the happiness of gifted presence, our only legacy is the grey hope of survival. We are more than survivors and we are more than those who simply have to grit their teeth to get through. There is a door beneath everything we'll walk right by, if we don't stop to look with a troubled heart and a loving eye. DW

from
LOUGH INAGH
In
THE BELL AND THE BLACKBIRD
Poetry by David Whyte
APRIL 2018 © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press
…

Beneath Everything
Photo © David Whyte
Maxwelton Beach
Pacific Northwest Aug 2nd 2020

We are asked to be courageous!
07/25/2020

We are asked to be courageous!

COURAGE

is a word that tempts us to think outwardly, to run bravely against opposing fire, to do something under besieging circumstance, and perhaps, above all, to be seen to do it in public, to show courage; to be celebrated in story, rewarded with medals, given the accolade, but a look at its linguistic origins leads us in a more interior direction and toward its original template, the old Norman French, Coeur, or heart. Courage is the measure of our heartfelt participation with life, with another, with a community, a work, a future.

To be courageous, is not necessarily to go anywhere or do anything except to make conscious those things we already feel deeply and then to live through the unending vulnerabilities of those consequences.

To be courageous is to seat our feelings deeply in the body and in the world: to live up to and into the necessities of relationships that often already exist, with things we find we already care deeply about: with a person, a future, a possibility in society, or with an unknown that begs us on and always has begged us on. Whether we stay or whether we go - to be courageous is to stay close to the way we are made.
..

COURAGE Excerpted From CONSOLATIONS:
The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning
of Everyday Words
© 2015 David Whyte and Many Rivers Press

…

Golden Gate
Photo © David Whyte
April 14th 2019

07/25/2020

Content warning: This video contains footage of graphic violence that may be upsetting to some viewers. Please use discretion when showing the video to child...

06/06/2020

Address

4445 N. Sunflower Avenue
Covina, CA
91724

Telephone

+16269459546

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