Dear Friends,
Thank you for all your help and support. This letter comes as I celebrate thirty-six years in the work. As you can see by my calendar, helping people to heal from trauma and mentoring healers has continued with many wonderful teaching opportunities. This is where most of my time and energy goes each year- hands-on for the wounded and teaching healing. I am so grateful that this is my life, my life’s work.
While there are no prisons or refugee centers listed on my calendar, each year I get my hands on people from all such situations and more among the general population, and increasingly each year. Every teaching trip engages the life wounds of individuals who carry the worst of it in heavy hearts, rounded shoulders, painful joints, and mental anguish- all the while saying they are fine. Warm hands have a hospitality all their own that brings out secrets, that longing for wellness, and to let the burden go. There is plenty of need for my gifts. Increases in poverty alone is a national trauma that brings more suffering, more wounding of innocents, and more need for my gifts- not to mention constant war and our vets.
The Quaker Initiative to End Torture- QUIT! is thirteen years old. I have been teaching the history and current status of American torture as the founding convener of QUIT all this time. Each night I search for news of American torture for teaching- Guantanamo prison has new construction, etc. I offer presentations and publish news stories. Please see our new website – www.quit-torture- now.org.
Writing and publishing are a great joy for me. My first book, The Dance Between Hope & Fear, about healing from trauma, continues to bring me high praise from healthcare professionals, clergy, and survivors. My second book, How Far Have You Traveled, is being wrangled by editors with the hope of going to print this year. This second book focuses on having a sense of ones goodness, a powerful idea in healing and all of life. December 2017 I was in a solitary retreat in the California desert to work on book three- the stories of my own healing and spiritual adventures. While writing is not an easy or natural act for this learning disabled high school graduate, it has become a necessity and a great joy.
I’ve been invited to give the keynote plenary to Great Plains Yearly Meeting in Wichita, KS. This is my 10th yearly meeting where I’ll give a keynote. This recognition of my gifts helps me to do more.
For 35 years I have worked primarily by invitation and lived mainly on gifts. All this time you and many others have kept me on the road- teaching, doing hands-on healing energy work, and reporting new hope from difficult places. I need your help to continue. I need your practical and pragmatic support to do more. I’ve just turned sixty-six years old and I know there’s more to come. Please help.
In the Light,
John Calvi, May 2018
PS Here is a special thank you to so many of you who stepped up when my car died in December, amidst a 4 state work trip! What appeared to be financial disaster became a declaration of We Are With You! This was a great comfort in personal and practical ways. Thank you very much.