cic's Podcast

5/3/26 - Corey Passons leads an interactive celebration on peace-making and the power of interfaith dialogue for connection and understanding.  

4/26/26 - Jamie Rainwood leads a celebration of passages through challenging times, featuring the personal stories of several CIC members, chants and songs.  

Miriam Sterlin leads a celebration that addresses the difficult topic of violence in our sacred stories and how we can deal with that.

"Resistance is not futile":  Corey Passons leads a celebration about the role of effort and resistance in spiritual life and practice.  What is resistance and how is resistance connected to our resilience, response, and renewal?  

Jody Rush shares about his spiritual journey and practices in Christian mysticism.

Wendy Eklund leads a celebration wherein we will come together to celebrate this season of the earth's year and our year - the Harvest. We will look at Completing and Letting go as essential to Renewal  We will consider the challenging task of releasing or reviving personal goals, projects or possessions.

10.19.25 - Corey Passons leads a celebration continuing the theme about a wide vision, a horizon, that leads us toward the line in the CIC call, "for the sake of the whole world."

Jamie Rainwood leads a celebration on resilience, focusing on the interplay between grief and gratitude.

Corey Passons leads a celebration on remembering joy, prioritizing pleasure, and experiencing resilience.

Jodi Kline leads a celebration to honor the holiest of the Jewish holidays, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Corey Passons leads a celebration on reciprocity in the natural world with Robin Wall Kimmerer as a guide.  We will explore choices of response and the power of giving something away.

Kathleen Peppard leads a celebration on Buddhist teachings about equanimity, a practice we can all aspire to in order to develop resilience in stressful times. 

Corey Passons opens the theme of the year, "Resilience, Response, and Renewal" at Reunion Sunday.

May 25th - Based on ideas in playback theatre, Azadi Amaan facilitates community members sharing stories about times they felt deep gratitude and will offer piano playback based on those stories.

May 11th - Corey Passons leads a celebration lifting up the wisdom of CIC mothers and explore how this wisdom could deepen our connection to self, others, the world, and our spiritual source(s).

Corey Passons reflects on the Easter story with the help of Maria, from the "Gospel in Art by the Peasants of Solentiname."

April 6th - "Wisdom from the Margins"  Corey Passons leads a celebration exploring the emerging attempt to withdraw DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) awareness from our institutions.  This celebration asks the what and why of DEI, who benefits from quieting DEI, who suffers?  Finally, we relate the concepts of DEI (as well as the struggle to eradicate it) back to the ancient stories of the Passover.

Judy Olmstead leads a celebration titled: "Creating Resilience within Diversity"  To resist the daunting changes that are happening in our country, people are forming alliances across broadly diverse groups.  To do this, we will all need to have some real tolerance and also an ability to cope when our buttons happen to be pushed.  This kind of resilience within diversity is a very important spiritual quest and the subject of our celebration. 

March 23rd - Guest leader Tajali Tolan and Ted Ryle offer a Sufi Zikr (Remembrance) practice for this week's celebration. They are guides in the Sufi Ruhaniat and certified leaders of Dances of Universal Peace. Tajali is the President and Ted a director of the DUP North America Board. 

This audio features a blessing of past and present ministers, a story by founding minister, Jim Symons, and a reflection on CIC by Corey Passons.

Corey Passons leads a celebration that integrates the explorations we have done with the "shadow" and the "not best" parts and looks to the wisdom of the traditions for this integration and look to compassion and empathy as the foundation beneath the practice.

Kathleen Peppard leads a celebration on the shadow.

This celebration asks what is the offering of the "not best" in our lives and the spiritual/religious traditions that we encounter?  

Megan Parke leads a celebrating about finding and nurturing the "pool of peace" within each of us.

Karen Lohmann leads a celebration that celebrates the trees in her life and in all of our lives.

Corey Passons leads a celebration on listening to your dreams for the world, your self, and others and then asking what is next to honor and support that dream.  This is another way of thinking about what is hope.  On this first Sunday of Advent we welcome the ancient Pagan symbol of the Advent wreath and explore the first candle of the circle, Hope.

On Sunday, November 24, Kathleen Peppard leads a celebration on Cultivating Gratitude During Hard Times. Difficult times may be personal or collective or both. As Francis Weller has written, "The work of the mature person is to carry grief in one hand and gratitude in the other and to be stretched large by them." 

November 17th - Corey Passons leads a celebration that explores the relationship between justice and joy.  We look to insights from Dr. Kamiliah Majied who is a mental health therapist, clinical educator, and consultant on advancing equity and inclusion through contemplative practice.  Her recent book is, "Joyfully Just:  Black Wisdom and Buddhist Insights for Liberated Living" in which she draws on Black cultural traditions and Nichiren Buddhism to lay out a path of justice that is grounded in curiosity, courage, gratitude, and embodied joy.

November 10th - Corey Passons leads a celebration with facilitation of a Tonglen meditation by Karen Lohmann and a dance led by Jo Curtz.  We focus on connection, following the intuition of our path despite circumstances, and focusing the merit of our spiritual practice beyond ourselves.

Nancy Luenn visits CIC to tell of the origins of the annual Day of Remembrance celebration in CIC.

Corey Passons leads a celebration that lifts up the energy of noticing life and taking in the beauty of the world and this life.

October 20th -  The CIC Social Justice Committee hosts a celebration taking a look at the current situation for our homeless neighbors. Meg Martin, Director of Integrative Services at Interfaith Works, is the guest speaker. She shares of her story and gives a summary of the homelessness situation in our area along with services available and ways CICers can help. 

This is the music played by the CIC musicians (Penny Purkerson, Dick Hauser, Miriam Sterlin, Jo Curtz, Ryan Stephens, and Sarah Huntington) during our building of the healing altar.

Corey Passons leads a celebration that continues to explore the theme of gratitude in reference with neuroscience and spiritual practice.

Celebration leadership from Himayat Inayati. Himayat is a Murshid (senior leader) of the Sufi Ruhaniat International, the wisdom stream of Samuel Lewis (originator of Dances of Universal Peace) in the lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan and the Chishti order of Sufism. 

Jamie Rainwood leads a celebration that explores our stories of gratitude and how it heals and impacts our lives.

Corey Passons leads a celebration that introduces the theme of the gratitude as a focal point for our CIC year.  Off we go!

Transition Sunday!  Corey Passons leads a celebration that takes in the harvest of the year and directs us toward the work of community beyond the circle and into the summer. 

Steve Gold leads a celebration entitled:  "Torah-Veda Mysticism, Kabalah, Tree of Life, Meditation."  This presentation weaves the spirituality found in Torah and related sources of Jewish Mysticism/Kabalah with connections found in Vedic spirituality and mysticism. Meditation and chanting are at the core of both of these paths.

Corey Passons led a celebration about navigating the journey...which sometimes includes not having a clue and needing to wait out the storms.

Sabra Hull, Alan Hardcastle, Sue Cummings and Bethanie Sand lead a celebration that holds space for Mother Earth. Through the lens of Joanna Macy's 3 stories or realities from her book Active Hope, we explored our concerns for our beloved earth, as well as ways we can stay centered and engaged in ways that call to us.

Corey Passons leads a celebration about the moments on the journey when something is set down or let go.  Our bodies as they age, our identities, relationships, spiritual practices, habits, hopes, hang-ups....we are constantly acquiring attributes and concepts, and sometimes we reach a point where we know that something needs to be let go.  How do you navigate letting go?  What are the practices that help you do that?  We explore options of this ongoing dynamic of the journey.

Corey, Hugh, and others lead a celebration on the values embodied in the TUCO building and how the CIC community can help support those values. 

Corey Passons continues to share about what influenced his journey from "head to heart" as we hear from the mystics.  We heard voices from mystics across diverse traditions and explored what is within and around us that invites us "into the mystic", as the song goes.

Hilarie Hauptman leads a celebration entitled, "Let the Beauty of What You Love Be What You Do" and "Uplift From Darkness Through Inspiration" The celebration featured several individuals (including one duo) from our community sharing their passions.  You will hear Pat Starzyk read an original children's story, Karen Ray spoke about growing vegetables/flowers, Hal and Miriam sang an original song, and Jo led us with a timeless beautiful chant. Hilarie shared what drew her to lead this service and hopes it nourishes you too. 

Corey Passons leads a celebration about the journey of contemplative practice.  We heard poetry that opens the mind and heart to the way of contemplation and participated in various contemplative practices.  

Corey Passons leads a celebration on the first Sunday of Lent.  We explore the journey toward life and Spring as the days become longer.  How are we making room for the journey of becoming?  What is emerging that we celebrate?

Corey Passons leads a celebration honoring the first Sunday in Black History Month.  We reflect on insights of the Black experience of migration to Thurston County via Dr. Thelma Jackson's book, "Blacks in Thurston County, Washington 1950-1975: a community album." 

Members of the recent anti-racism study group facilitated by Leeann Tourttllott and Kristine Forbes lead a celebration in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Members of the study group share personal stories that reveal what they've learned about recognizing their own white privilege and how the new perspective is changing their choices and actions. 

Paul Rocks will lead a celebration titled, "St. Bridgid of Kildare: walking in liminal space"