ATTENDING TO & FROM YOUR
BODY IN TIME & PLACE
Lifelong learning is a kind of pilgrimage. Each of us travels our own path, shaped by particular questions, longings, challenges, and companions along the way. Dwight counts it a profound gift to have encountered many wise guides throughout his journey. Some appeared at pivotal moments; others have walked beside him for decades. They have come as teachers, pastors, spiritual directors, therapists, colleagues, friends, artists, and authors—through conversations, communities, and the printed page.
These companions continue to shape Dwight’s life and teaching. More than the accumulation of knowledge, his work is formed by the practice of opening to discover what is real—approaching the world with humility, curiosity, and the conviction that truth is encountered as much as it is learned.
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 people. Creation itself is a wise guide. If creation bears the imprint of its Creator, then every facet of reality—our bodies and places, people and communities, animals and ecosystems, even the systems that shape our lives—has the potential to enlarge our imagination for life, love, and the Divine. Each invites us into more faithful ways of belonging with one another and the whole of creation.
Wise guides often arrive in unexpected forms. Increasingly, Dwight is learning to receive his own body, the present moment, and the particular place he inhabits as trusted companions in the lifelong practice of opening to what is 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 seeks to cultivate an openness of heart to the unexpected gurus continually inviting us into deeper life, wiser love, and greater faithfulness. Embodied, place-based learning is central to this journey. Our bodies and our places offer real-time feedback, revealing how our presence shapes—and is shaped by—the ecosystems of relationships in which we belong. They become trusted companions in learning to live more shalomically.
Having received so much from so many, Dwight now offers himself as a companion and guide for others on their own journeys of learning and formation. Drawing on decades of experience as a pastor, educator, leader, mentor, consultant, coach, and spiritual director, he serves as a professor, writer, speaker, and facilitator of transformative learning.
While their primary teaching home is The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology, Dwight also enjoys guest lecturing, adjunct teaching, serving on doctoral dissertation committees, consulting with leadership teams, and accompanying individuals and organizations seeking to cultivate lives and communities marked by greater wisdom, justice, belonging, and flourishing. Whether working with a classroom, leadership team, congregation, nonprofit, or individual, his hope is always the same: to create spaces where people can more fully open to what is real and respond with faithful presence.
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
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Learning & Teaching