Thursday, February 19, 2009

2009 Kickoff event with Kona Goulet. Please join us February 27th.

Next week, we look forward to our first event of 2009. Please join us Friday, February 27th at 7pm at the Rubin Museum of Art. Our first speaker of the season is Kona Goulet, Director of Development for EnlightenNext.

"Keeping the Faith: Pursuing Higher Values in Challenging Times"

You may have heard the refrain, “If you want to know what you value in life, just look in your check book.” In these challenging times, when we tend to become more conservative, the question is, what are we conserving? Do we conserve that which matters most? After we cut out the “excess” in our lives, is what’s left a reflection of our higher values? Or do we succumb to survival instincts and leave our higher aspirations to times less troubling? In this talk, Kona Goulet, Director of Development for EnlightenNext, will speak about how in challenging times we must ask ourselves even more deeply just how much our lives (and finances) are expressing our faith and our deepest values.

Kona Goulet is Director of Development for EnlightenNext, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by spiritual teacher Andrew Cohen and dedicated to the evolution of consciousness and culture. She is one of Cohen’s senior students and has been practicing his teaching philosophy of Evolutionary Enlightenment for fourteen years. Goulet has worked for the past decade in the corporate and financial sectors in England, Australia and Holland. She first became the Managing Director for EnlightenNext in the UK in 2004 and two years later, became the Director of Development at the EnlightenNext World Center based in Lenox, Massachusetts. She is a passionate advocate for the potential of philanthropy to uplift and transform culture. Her work entails developing creative forums for philanthropists to come together as agents of transformation.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Faith and Finance

We're just two weeks away from our 2009 kickoff event with Kona Goulet on February 27th!!! With the financial turmoil surrounding all our lives, the Interfaith Experience team thought "Faith and Finance" would be an interesting topic to expand upon for our winter/spring season.

The roots of finance have seemingly been corrupted by greed and poor risk controls. The foundations of the global financial system are broken. The global divide between the rich and poor is ever increasing. The need for sustainable business models grows everyday in the wake of global climate change. All these matters are of profound importance for all of us and one wonders what faith communities and traditions have to say about these challenges and possible solutions in the years to come.

We look forward to exploring these issues with our speakers and hope that you can join us for the journey. Please join us on February 27th with speaker Kona Goulet.