DR. SUSAN MOSSMAN RIVA
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​​Welcome to my Blog
As we behold, we actively transform the image.
Website User Guide:
Each chapter in Homing In is supported by a blog that offers supplemental articles, film documentaries, as well as important links and insights that support the reader’s transformational process. These story strands are part of a holistic teaching story or mandala. Each blog further develops the themes presented in the book.The blog is an online learning course in the Social Sciences that informs, guides, and connects readers to important concepts as they embark on their transformational journey.

Postscript:

12/1/2021

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Hannah Arendt claims that our natality is our source or root of our capacity to begin something new. She invites us to consider our natality as part of a web of human relationships where each unique newcomer is the source for the capacity of action.
Our natality is the basis for our freedom. Our emancipatory process is potentialized by our uniqueness. In The Human Condition, Arendt writes “we come into the world by virtue of birth, as newcomers and beginnings”. We are born into networks of human relationships, spurring the creation of new kinships, friendships, partnerships, and apprenticeships. As each newcomer establishes their place in the world, their arrival elicits re-actions. Therefore, natality is a source of action.
« The child must act, she must establish a place in the existing web of relationships, and she thereby forces others to act too, to respond to her initiative. Every birth thus calls for action, both from the child and from others. And so, to the extent that a capacity is brought about –and kept alive– by that which makes the capacity necessary, the condition of birth can be said to be the source of the capacity for action. In other words, this capacity depends on that condition in the sense that, without the constant arrival of newcomers, it would probably atrophy and eventually disappear. This, then, is what Arendt means, I submit, when she says that the human capacity to begin is rooted in natality” Wolfhart, 2015). 
Our natality can be understood as a form of transformative action. Homing In describes a concrescence of life-o-grams, organically growing in a story mandala that becomes a shared transformagram. As we take up the hero’s journey, we venture into landscapes of meaning that require us to decipher the enigmas that appear as signposts or synchronicities on the Holy G-rail Way. As we walkthrough “glovircal” landscapes of meaning, in search of the promised land, we engage in social poetics, beautifying the story mandala.
Homing In, we find our way forward in relationship with God. The promised land symbolized by Zion, is God’s chosen home. It is a place of “rest” where God can dwell in a sanctuary with his creation. By Homing In, we find the promised land, transported by mediatorship.
Let’s live our lives as beautiful works of art lifting life hi-story to a level where it is transposed into sacred poetry. When we understand that our relational matrices are configured by social poetics, we tap into the source that brings forth our unique capacity for creative action and the genesis of transformational lifeways.
Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk who is a peace activits that has developed mindfulness teachings, and is the founder of the Plum Village tradition. He has also developed a new style of Zen calligraphy. I will end with his famous calligraphy, “I Have Arrived, I Am Home”:​

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Here is a link to an interview with Oprah Winfrey:
Here is a link the Plum Village website on “I Have Arrived, I Am Home”:
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Here is a link to learn more about his life history and mindfulness teachings.
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Here is a link to a book on narrative theology:
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Genesis 1-11 A Narrative: Theology Commentary - James Chuckwuma Okoye
Here is an article on Arendt’s notion of natality:
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