Richmond IONS December 2020 Meeting (December. 19) and Central Virginia IONS Community Group Meeting. It will feature a discussion moderated by Tom Coates.
Where/When: Online only, through ZOOM, on Saturday, December 19, 2020, 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 noon. See the detailed ZOOM instructions in the email.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Our ZOOM calls are password protected. You need to be on our email list to get the link and the password for each ZOOM event.
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Richmond IONS November 2020 Meeting
“Reimagining Our Lives in the Time of the Coronavirus.”
Our December 19, 2020 program will feature a discussion moderated by Tom Coates, our group’s only still-active original member and one of our most popular guest speakers. This is a continuation of Tom’s self-discovery series aimed at exploring the multidimensional aspects of human identity and every human’s search for his or her authentic Self.
2020 will be indelibly enshrined in our individual and collective memories as the year of the coronavirus or COVID-19 pandemic. It will be for us what the plague year 430 B.C. was for Athens and 540 A.D. was for Constantinople, what the Black Death was for Europe between 1347 and 1365, what 1665 was for London, and what the so-called Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-1919 was for the world a century ago.
Its cause, its origins, its effects and virtually everything else about it have been made all the more challenging, murky, mysterious and difficult to comprehend and manage due to its appearance at the onset of a presidential election year in the United States.
It’s also due to the many conflicting and politically charged streams of information now at our fingertips through our current variety of media outlets, especially social media. Everything about it seems an impenetrable enigma, as in Churchill’s famous 1939 quote about Stalin’s Russia, “It’s a riddle, wrapped in mystery, inside an enigma….”
At this point, almost all of us know someone, a family member or close friend, who has contracted Covid-19, and everyone’s lives have been deeply touched and/or dramatically affected by it. Tom will explore the history of earlier epidemics and pandemics in search of parallels between our experiences today and those of our forebears.
All in attendance will be invited to share and discuss their own experiences, perspectives or any special vignettes, angles or insights they may have on this subject, including the kinds of questions about the meanings and purposes of our lives events like the coronavirus pandemic force us to confront and closely examine.
This promises to be another great program and a fitting way to conclude our group’s twenty-fifth year and usher in its twenty-sixth.
About Tom Coates, Our Richmond IONS December 2020 Meeting Presenter:
Tom Coates is a Richmond-based lawyer who has represented numerous spiritually oriented and public interest groups throughout his career. He was a co-founder of Richmond’s Ekoji Buddhist Sangha in 1985, and has been a member and contributor of the Richmond IONS chapter since its formation in early 1996.
In his spare time he enjoys reading, creative writing, painting, woodworking, alpine skiing, biking, backpacking, sailing, time travel, metaphysics, and relaxing with his family at their ancient Outer Banks beach cottage or their Appalachian Mountains retreat. He still reports his most significant unfulfilled ambition of this lifetime is to make love to an extraterrestrial female, preferably of Pleiadean or Sirian origin.
About Central VA IONS Community Group:
Central VA IONS Community Group is an unincorporated association and a local community group of The Institute of Noetic Sciences, an international association based in Petaluma, California (www.noetic.org).
We are not associated with any religion, religious organization, doctrine or set of beliefs or practices and is open to all. Central VA IONS is entirely dependent upon voluntary donations of its members and friends to support its programs, mailings and other costs.
A love offering is requested at each meeting from those attending who are not dues paying members. Richmond IONS/Central VA IONS meetings are held each month at locations announced in its program notices and are open to all. Our website is at richmondions.com.
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