Dear Friends,
Good work continues and I am well used still, after all these years. I have just returned from work with tortured refugees in North Carolina, a stop in Texas for final edits on my 2nd book due out next month, and soon will teach near Boston. (new book – How Far Have You Traveled?)
You might wonder, how does the work come- usually, word of mouth. I’ll be invited to teach somewhere and it might seem a plain almost boring setting. But within all groups will be some people with life wounds seeking relief, some consciously and some not. And so it is that the neighbor, the grandmother, the janitor seem to be quiet regular people. Then within the context of a healing workshop, some old sadness, some trespass, some large anger releases from a sore arm, a lost memory, a depression held so long and then life is different. The quiet regular one becomes the bright and glad to be here one. You don’t need a war zone to find trauma. You just need some quiet reverence and some trust to believe even the impossible can shift.
Can it really be this letter has gone out thirty-one years and I have been working by invitation and living mainly on gifts all this time? It seems to have worked out well enough. The kindness of many people created this special circumstance where I can be of use in lots of places to many different kinds of hurt. Since 1982 I’ve worked in prisons, refugee treatment centers, schools, colleges, massage schools, religious conferences, AIDS clinics, and dozens of Quaker meetings in 4 countries. Financial support essentially comes to mean choice. My choice has been to use your gifts to be of help, to say yes. It’s made a life work and a life time of gratitude for true.
Now we celebrate the 10th year of The Quaker Initiative to End Torture- QUIT! We still teach about American torture – still used in our prisons at home and abroad. Our new website www.quit-torture-now.org has lots of information. I am the founding convener of QUIT. After several decades of work with survivors, I wanted to speak to the root causes. QUIT continues.
It might be that you’ve been thinking you’d come to one of my workshops, speeches, retreats sometime. Well, I turn 63 May 14th. I’ve been doing this work for 33 years. How much longer do you thing this can go on? Neither of us is getting any younger! I’d say come see me while I still make relatively good sense, such as it is. This gay Quaker healer is not to be missed.
I hope you will send a gift. I know times are tight and donations don’t come easy. I trust you understand that each gift is used carefully in a simple life given to service and care. Your support means I can go out and say yes. It means more good work given where it’s needed. Will you help me now? Thank you, for all these years, thank you.
In the Light,
John Calvi
May 2014