ATTENDING TO & FROM YOUR
BODY IN TIME & PLACE
Lifelong learners are on a quest of sorts, each having their own paths, desires, challenges, and teachers. Dwight is blessed to have encountered numerous wise guides along his learning quest. Some guides came at pivotal moments, while others journeyed with him for decades. Some have been formal teachers, pastors, spiritual directors, therapists, or friends yet others came through media or the printed page. Dwight’s teaching continues to be formed more by opening to discover what is real than by the assumption of ‘knowledge.’
Shalomic Imagination
Through Jesus’ life, teachings, death, and resurrection one’s imagination for G-d’s Shalom for all and everything is transformed and expanded. Dwight has glimpsed just enough Divine reign to desire more.
Apophatic & Cataphatic
Dwight imagines his theological and educational mission as always searching for the least inadequate language to describe G-d, one’s experience of the Divine, or even how one frames reality.
Orthoparadoxy
The most profound teachings within the Jesus traditions are paradoxical, inviting openness, curiosity, faith, and relationship. Learning in the Way of Jesus invites releasing claims to certainty.
“I’m on a learning quest to discover the real and to live in harmony with it. My physical body, the land on which I stand, together with the ecosystem of relations making life possible here & now are my primary guides for encountering the real.
Dr. Dwight J. Friesen
Our teachers are not only other people, creation is a teacher. If creation reflects its Creator then it is possible that everything… being, persons, systems, animals, or any facet of creation is poised to enlarge one’s imagination for life, love, and the Divine, while also inviting the discovery of even more faithful ways of being in relationship with creation. Unexpected gurus are all around us. Dwight is coming to embrace his body, this moment, and his place as ‘wise guides’ to the real.
Your Body
The particularity of your body… your sexed, gendered, pigmented, traumatized, abilitied, located, cultured, stigmatized, suffering, body is one of your primary tethers to reality.
You are bodied!
This Moment
You exist now. Yes, you have a past… but you are not your history. You may have a future… but you are not a fantasy. This moment, right now, is a reliable guide for discovering the real.
You are now!
Your Place
You are somewhere, you are not everywhere… you are not nowhere, suggesting your locatedness is an invitation to encounter reality. Your place matters, it’s one of your teachers!
You are located!
Dwight fosters openness of heart to the unexpected gurus inviting us to life, learn, and love. Body in place learning is vital to opening up to living more Shalomically as it naturally provides real-time feedback helping us to feel the impact of our presence within our place’s ecosystem.
Having received so much from so many, Dr. Friesen offers himself to others along their paths. Having served as a pastor, leader, mentor, manager, coach, consultant, and spiritual director, he invests his days as a formational educator, professor, writer, consultant, and speaker. While Dwight’s teaching is anchored at The Seattle School, he enjoys adjunct teaching, guest lecturing, serving on dissertation committees, sharing cutting-edge research with leadership teams, and supporting leaders in their formative development, and is available to you and your group.
Dwight Welcomes…
- Guest Lecturing,
- Adjunct teaching,
- Writing for journals,
- Facilitating at conferences,
- Leading walking tours of neighborhoods,
- Helping groups listening to their collective narrative within their context,
- Guiding “spirituality of place” retreats,
- Appearing on podcasts,
- Offering workshops . . .
1 . Study With Me
Dwight is Professor of Practical Theology at The Seattle School. Applying to the school’s MATC Ministry degree will maximize your opportunity for life-on-life learning and formation with him.
Enroll now!
2 . Engage My Writings
There are numerous avenues to engage Dwight’s formational offerings… this site is a good place to start. Order his publications, or simply reach out to him… honestly, he would love to hear from you.
Engage relationally!
3 . Invite Me To Join You
Invite Dwight to come to you. He would be thrilled to meet with you in your place, with your community of faith, or at your school. There is nothing quite like letting your place frame our shared learning.
Invite today!
Set up an initial conversation
Learning & Teaching