Public Panel on THE POWER OF LOVE

with Fran Grace, Belvie Rooks, & Alexander Vesely

Friday, July 19, 4:00 – 6:00 pm

Montgomery Chapel

5 Richmond Road (at the corner of Bolinas and Richmond Roads), San Anselmo, CA 94960

Limited seating is available for this Public Panel, featuring the author and contributors to the award-winning book, The Power of Love: A Transformed Heart Changes the World.  Tickets are $20 – see bottom of page for registration. 

Event is hosted by the nonprofit 501c3 organization, Inner Pathway Publishing.

Event Description:

Each panelist will share about “the power of love” in their particular context and experience, with contributions from several special guests they have invited.   Ends with Q and A with the audience.  Books will be available for purchase.

Overview:

What does the “power of love” look like in our world today?  Each panelist will speak from a different area of human experience. 

Now more than ever, in midst of a fracturing world, the path of Love calls to us.  Love heals.  Love regenerates.  The path of Love takes us beyond “us vs. them” to an experience of love that is dynamic and all-inclusive.  

“This love includes everything.  It belongs not just to a human relationship, or to an inner relationship with God; it is a love that is everything, that flows through all that exists.”—Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Sufi mystic, “Love and Prayer,” October 2023.

The mystics from diverse traditions have laid out the path of Love. They affirm that Love is so powerful, even a small gathering of people aligned with Love has a healing effect on participants and in the world at large.

“When the goal is to love, every day has meaning.” —The Power of Love book

These are living truths that we observe in all the great liberation movements of humankind.  

ABOUT FRAN GRACE

Fran Grace, M.Div., Ph.D., serves as founding director of the nonprofit, Inner Pathway, and is Emerita Professor of Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Redlands (CA), where she pioneered a meditation program. She received her Ph.D. from Princeton Theological Seminary in 1997 and has been recognized for her teaching and research into spiritual life by appearances on CSPAN, NPR, a Pew Fellowship from Yale University, etc.  Academic life, however, did not fulfill her deep inner quest for truth.  After encountering her spiritual teacher in 2003, Dr. David R. Hawkins, who taught her a path of inner freedom, she worked closely with him for many years.  She edited several of his books, such as Letting Go: The Pathway of Surrender, and the official revision of Power vs. Force.  Her most recent book, The Power of Love, was a Silver Award winner in the Benjamin Franklin Book Awards for the “Best Inspirational Books in 2019.” The book includes encounters with 14 visionaries of diverse traditions.  She was certified as a Spiritual Director in 2001, and she completed her training as a Death Doula in 2022, after her partner’s son died of Covid. Through the nonprofit 501c3 organization, Inner Pathway, she donates her time by teaching classes, retreats, online groups, and offering private sessions for those seeking spiritual support.  

ABOUT BELVIE ROOKS

Belvie Rooks, is an essayist, educator and human rights and social justice activist whose work weaves the worlds of spirituality, feminism, and ecology. Meeting Dr. Martin Luther King as a teenager had a lasting and transformative impact on her. During the anti-apartheid era and movement, Belvie was one of the first two women on the National Steering Committee of the African Liberation Support Committee (ALSC). As Associate Director of the Third World Fund she traveled frequently to UN and OAU sponsored anti-apartheid meetings in Zambia, Tanzania, Kenya, Sudan and Nigeria. She was honored to serve as an election monitor during the transition to majority rule in South Africa and to later attend Nelson Mandela’s historic inauguration as South Africa’s first democratically elected president.  As an educator, Belvie was a member of the founding faculty of the College of Social Justice at the State University of New York (SUNY) Old Westbury and is the creator of Hey Listen Up: A Sense of Self-A Sense of Place, a groundbreaking multimedia urban eco-literacy project, and the creator and host of ConverZations That Matter, a series featuring thought leaders and innovative thinkers from around the globe. Belvie has served on the boards of Bioneers, the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, and the Institute for Noetic Sciences. She was a founding staff member of Wild Trees Press, cofounded by Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker. As an essayist, her published works have appeared in many publications and anthologies.  Belvie is an American Book Award winner as senior editor of Paris Connections: African American Artists in Paris, and co-producer (with Damani Baker and Danny Glover) of the award-winning film The House on Coco Road (now on Netflix).  With her husband, Dedan Gills (August 21, 1945–December 20, 2015), she co-founded “Growing a Global Heart” and, following his passing, she published the highly acclaimed book of his poetry and her reflections: I Give You the Springtime of My Blushing Heart: A Poetic Love Song. 

Belvie will be joined by Elizabeth Miller, Ph.D., editor of the Springtime book.  Elizabeth is co-founder of Pseads Institute (San Anselmo), a unique learning institute that inspires youth to explore the interconnections of self, other, and the earth, through creative expression.

ABOUT ALEXANDER VESELY

Alexander Vesely, M.A., Dr. h.c., is the grandson of Dr. Viktor Frankl, author of the timeless classic, Man’s Search for Meaning.  Alex co-founded The Viktor E. Frankl Institute of America, as well as the Online Academy for Logotherapy at the Elisabeth Lukas Archive. He travels the world speaking on the topic of Logotherapy, the meaning-centered school of psychotherapy founded by his grandfather. In addition to being a licensed psychotherapist and head of the Viktor Frankl Media Archives in Vienna, Alex is a film producer and award-winning filmmaker working with StraightUp Films in Los Angeles. 

Alex’s talent for filmmaking was noticed at an early age, and some of his earliest video footage was taken of his grandfather, who bought Alex his first video camera.   His psychological and spiritual depth is apparent in his films. Alex has directed many short films, commercials, and documentaries, but is most proud of, Viktor & I, which won several prestigious film awards in the United States, including the Diamond Award for the Best Documentary at the California Film Awards.  Another film, Wizard of the Desert, is about the American psychiatrist and medical hypnotist Milton Erikson, whose life’s work began at a young age. Paralyzed by polio and expected to die, Erikson discovered inner mechanisms of mind to reactivate healthy body function. This film has received rave reviews. Alex is currently working on a new documentary entitled Pioneer of Meaning.