Teachers for 2012

Ecumenicon 2012
April 20-22, 2012 Thursday evening (registration). Class schedule being decided.

If you wish to be considered for teaching in future years email Rosanna@RosannaTufts.com for forwarding to the Trustees.

This list is alphabetic by Teaching Name.

PICTURE	NAME	BIOGRAPHY
	Geraldine Amaral	Geraldine Amaral is the author of Tarot Celebrations: Honoring the Inner Voice, creator of “Tarot 1-2-3” instructional video and regular columnist for Pathways Magazine. She fell in love with the Tarot about 30 years and has been using it ever since. She utilizes Jungian/archetypal psychology and Divine Metaphysics in her work. She is a respected/gifted teacher and intuitive counselor. She focuses her work on how to use esoteric tools in pragmatic ways as well as for insights and personal transformation. Her classes provide a unique blend of spirituality, psychology, philosophy, humor, literature and personal empowerment methods. She is currently a seminary student in the United Metaphysical Churches and holds a BA in Psychology and an MA in English. Email: geraldine@thespiritualtarot.com and website www.thespiritualtarot.com.
	Lu Ann Beck-Day	Lu Ann Beck-Day has a BS in Nursing and Master’s degree with 11 years experience in psychiatric and chemical dependency nursing. She is currently studying for the First Degree in the Correllian Wicca Clergy Program. She is a member of the Cedarhurst Unitarian Universalist Church, Ecumenicon Fellowship and Terreiro Sol Surgiu
	Barbara Berman	Barbara Berman (Rose) is a science writer, musician, clown, artist, and healer.  She also loves animals; small, growing human beings; and vegetable gardens.  Her M.A. in clinical psychology makes her look wise if you don’t see the smoke and mirrors.  Although she started out Jewish, she has added many traditions to her personal practice and works with Lynn Andrews, author of Medicine Woman, every summer.  She has led numerous clown workshops for all ages – it’s fun! - and looks forward to learning as much from you as you will from her. Rose has been teaching clowning for more than 30 years in both ministry and working with children (and both). In Finding Your Clown! She shows us how to heal and balance negativity in yourself and your environment by letting your suppressed Inner Clown out to play. “Here come the Jesters, 1, 2, 3…”
	Duane Bowers	Duane Bowers, LPC (White Crow) is a grief and trauma therapist, educator, and author in private practice. He teaches seminars nationally , internationally and regionally on dying, death and grief, and on trauma and traumatic loss. Duane’s specialty as a therapist is working with survivors of traumatic loss and suicide. His seminars focus on ‘complementary and alternative’ interventions and supports for clients. He is an energy worker, a Reiki Master, a Oneness Blessing Giver, and has taught healing techniques associated with death and dying to a variety of healing circles and spiritual/metaphysical groups including Darkover, Ecumenicon, and the Washington-Baltimore Pagan Clergy Association. In addition he has taught Grief Counseling for Alternative Clergy and The Body Mind and Spirit of Trauma as continuing education classes for Ecumenicon. Duane is the author of Guiding Your Family Through Loss and Grief and A Child is Missing: Providing Support for Families of Missing Children.
	Monika Butke	Monika Butke (Lonely Coyote) is a Psychiatric Rehabilitation Counselor in Harford County. In June 2011, she moved to Maryland from Queens, NYC, where she was a Residential Psychologist with YAI-National Institute for People with Disabilities (www.yai.org). For almost five years. she worked with MR individuals with a wide range of co-occurring disorders, and helped them to learn basic ADL skills, budgeting/money management, coping skills, social skills, leisure skills, behavior management, community inclusion, and medication management. While living in NY, she also worked as an Addictions Counselor in both inpatient/outpatient programs at hospitals and within the Correctional Dept. of NJ. She received her Bachelor’s at the Ohio State University (www.osu.edu) in Criminology and Psychology, and worked as an Unbonded Officer for over two years. After graduation, she moved back to my native Flushing, NY (the biggest Chinatown on the East Coast!) and pursued her Master’s degree at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (www.jjay.cuny.edu). She graduated in 2005 with an MA in Forensic Psychology and a concentration in Substance Abuse. She eventually received her CASAC (www.oasas.state.ny.us/index.cfm) and used it for about 1-2 years before working with YAI-NIPD. She is a “floating”participant/friend of both Ár nDraíocht Féin: A Druid Fellowship (ADF) and Assembly of the Sacred Wheel. Currently, she am a Senior Student/Apprentice of Caroline Kenner’s Gryphons Grove School of Shamanism. She hopes to open her own private Shamanic Healing practice soon (www.healingcoyote.com). .
	Charles Butler Neto	Rev. Charles Butler Neto is an interfaith minister with Ecumenicon Fellowship. He was its founder along with three others in 1987. He was reared as a Pentecostal Christian, the son of missionaries to Brazil, where he was born. He studied with Lord Thoth (Oscar Garcia-Vera) and Lady Ingrid Dennison of the Ravenwood tradition and achieved his 2nd Degree Wiccan initiation with Temple of Isis Rising. He was further trained in Santeria by Baba George Rawlings of the Temple St. Michael and Temple of the Personal Path in Baltimore, MD. He is currently working as a Wiccan faith representative at the Federal Correction Institute in Cumberland, MD, and runs an Umbanda Verde home temple in Hyattsville, MD with his spouse Voudoun Mambo Fancy P. Cline. His presentation this year focuses on walking the middle way between the forest and the sea.
	Shekha Maryam Kabeer Faye	Shekha Maryam Kabeer Faye is a speaker and writer on Islam, sufism, and spirituality. She lives in Philadelphia where she owns a home that is a refuge for spiritual travelers, and she herself travels extensively throughout the world on the mission of building bridges of light, knowledge, and understanding. When she was twelve years old, Maryam Kabeer Faye was given a painted scroll of an ancient wanderer, upon which were inscribed the words: Seek and The Truth Shall Make You Free. This message galvanized her soul and determined the course of her life. Following the call, she set out on the journey, internally and then externally, and was guided around the world many times, from one remarkable being to the next, everywhere collecting messages and clues. Born in a Jewish family, she was led to live in India and Nepal, and in monasteries in Europe, and then guided to embrace Islam at the hands of an ancient Sufi Master a few minutes away from the tomb of the Prophet Abraham. She then was guided to study intensively with Sufi Masters around the world. Her journey to the holy places and people of the earth, led her finally to Africa and the deep truth that all lives are totally interconnected and united with our own. This profound realization dispelled the great myth that the creations of the One Most Loving Creator can be separated by any racial, national, or cultural distinctions.
	Anna-Sara Fire	Rev. Anna-Sara Fire is a hospital chaplain and teacher of Yoga. She received her M.Div. at Stockholm University, focused on Sami Studies, and an interfaith minister with Fellowship. For the past 4 years she has been a student of Shamanism under Rev. Dr. Crow Swimsaway and Bekki Shiningheart of the Church of Earth Healing. She currently leads classes in Vinyasa Yoga out of the Village of Radikal Healing. (Vinyasa Yoga) Vinyasa Yoga
	Rik Fire	Rev. Rik Fire, LCSW is a counselor in private practice in Pennsylvania. He is an Interfaith Minister with Ecumenicon Fellowship with specific interests in Unitarian-Universalist, Gnostic, and Shamanic studies. He is employed as a Licensed Clinical Social Worker for a managed behavioral healthcare company. His eclectic private practice specializes in working with clients in areas related to spirituality, gender & sexuality & energy healing, as he is also a Reiki Master & shamanistic practitioner.
	PanOrpheus	PanOrpheus is the High Priest of the Stone Circle Coven (www.stonecirclecoven.com) He has been active in the Pagan Community centered in the Greater Philadelphia area where he has been teaching and leading rituals and workshops. He has co-written and led a three ritual series called the Orpheus Rituals. Panorpheus sees himself in the role of Muse, rather than Mentor.
	Cathy Roberts	Cathy Roberts is an LCPC with a MS in Pastoral Counseling from Loyola University. She has 14 years of experience in counseling individuals, couples, and families. For the last 8 years she has been in private practice in Gaithersburg. She leads spiritual retreats, teaching lay pastoral caregiver basic relationship skills, and coaches a group of women on the principles of the Inner Marriage. Her wisdom teachers include a Presbyterian minister and Swamis in the Kriya Yoga tradition.
	Tom Swiss	Tom Swiss idescribes his spiritual path as “Zen Pagan Taoist Atheist Discordian,” which usually baffles questioners enough to leave him alone. He has taught a wide variety of audiences subjects spanning the gamut from acupressure to Zen and from self-defense to sexuality. Tom has previously served as President of the Free Spirit Alliance, and is an NCCAOM Diplomate in Asian Bodywork Therapy, a karate teacher holding the rank of yondan (fourth degree black belt), a poet, a singer/songwriter, an amateur philosopher, and a professional computer geek. He is currently shopping his first book on Zen Pagan spirituality, Why Buddha Touched the Earth, to agents and publishers.
	Patricia Taylor	Rev. Patricia Taylor (Childsight) is Sacristan (Minister of Sacred Environment) in Ecumenicon Fellowship. Her focus is on home and solitary worship, helping others to live a daily faith. She participates with her husband in a weekly role play at the Game Parlor in Chantilly, VA.
	Rosanna Tufts	Rev. Rosanna, MMDA is the Chair of the 2012 Conference - Temperance: The Union of Opposites. She puts her unique stamp on this year’s conference to bring together strong teachers dealing with obsession vs. centering, addiction vs. release, conflict and resolution. Rosanna is a Minister of Music and the Dramatic Arts with Ecumenicon Fellowship and has been a part of Ecumenicon since its beginnings. Her ministerial service project was to cut an album “Follow Me to the Forest” which showed the breadth of both her spiritual calling and musical talents. She has been the co-director of Ecumenicon’s theater ministry, A Company of Strangers, for the past 14 years. She has been producing a radio program for the past year “The Tufts Get Going” in which she has interviewed musicians, artists, entrepeneurs, and business shapers making a difference. She holds a ToastMaster’s Competent Communicator certificate. She is a former Certified Compensation Professional in the Human Resources field with a specialty in conflict resolution.
	Anita Wagner	Anita Wagner is a polyamory educator and activist, committed to creating the social and political climate where people can discover and practice the intimate relationship structure that best meets their emotional and human needs free of governmental, societal or institutional coercion or favoritism. As a polyamory educator, she is committed to helping people who choose polyamory learn the relationship skills necessary to succeed, such as making peace with jealousy and otherwise avoiding the pitfalls and reaping the rewards of polyamorous relationships. For more information visit Anita’s website, www.practicalpolyamory.com.

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HONORED TEACHERS IN MEMORIAM

PICTURE	BIOGRAPHY
	BALU	Thomas Eddie Hufford, known to the Pagan community as Balu, was the High Priest of WesTran Alpha Coven. He conducted the Cleansing Sacred Space portion of the opening ritual for Ecumenicon in several previous years, and was Ecumenicon’s webmaster for more than 5 years. Balu crossed to the Summerland from complications of colon cancer on Sunday evening, November 29, 2009.
	Alexei	ALEXEI KONDRATIEV was a Celtic scholar, teacher, priest, and an amazing friend. There was no area of Celtic scholarship in which he was not a master, ranging from images of the various Goddess traditions from both Eastern and Western Europe, to the many ways in which Celtic Spirituality endured through the transitions into Christianity as well as Wicca and other Celtic forms. He passed in the fall of 2010.
(photo by Eric Robbins)	Black Lotus	Len Rosenberg was a Hindu Scholar and a devotee of Ganesh. He co-lead Mnemosyne Coven in New York City for many years with his partner of many years, Alexei Kondratiev. He passed from a heart attack in the fall of 2010. Len had extensive knowledge of all the classic mythologies, eventually becoming deeply involved with the Goddesses and Gods of Hinduism. When he shared the sacred stories, it was never in a dry, strictly academic manner. He brought them alive for us, made them accessible, always with a sparkle of humor. Ganesha, Kali, Sarasvati, Tara (Obituary from WildHunt)
	Midian	MIDIAN (aka Kevin Drewery) was the founder of our Sacristan (Sacred Environment) Ministry. The five-year program was the basis for the ordination of Patty Taylor as a Sacristan. He will be missed by Ecumenicon Fellowship and at least four different UU congregations.
	Tami Cox	Tami Cox died at the age of 47 on Thursday Jan. 28, 2010 after suffering a stroke. Tami was a Two Spirited (Lesbian) American Indian warrior woman. For 4 years, she was the on site EMT staff for our conference. She was always proud of our Native American tradition and would talk for hours on the subject. She also studied other traditions like Wicca.
	Rabbi David Honigsberg	David Honigsberg died suddenly of a heart attack on March 27, 2007. He was a scholar, musician, a guitarist, a writer, a game reviewer, a graduate student, a Kabbalah expert and teacher. He taught at Ecumenicon, Sacred Space, Esotericon, and many other spiritual conventions.
	Blessing Bird	Rev. Amy Paul died of complications of cancer on October 3, at 4:00 am in her sleep in a hospital in Baltimore. She was an Elder of the Good Medicine Society, founder of a powwow in Havre de Grace, MD, and a teacher at several area conferences, including Ecumenicon Interfaith Conference and Darkover Science Fiction Convention. She was a scholar, a librarian, and a quiet teacher.

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