JissoJi’s Oct. 10-12 Retreat
Photo by Rafael Otaki on Unsplash
Come, join JissoJi Zen Ann Arbor to co-create our harvest-time retreat this year in familiar spaces not far from our home. With a focus on Grandmother’s Zen, with its nourishing warmth and fierce love, we celebrate the grandmother energy that runs through our sangha and through your own heart.
You can expect lots of Zazen, community cooking and cleaning, practice discussions with Marta Dabis, along with guest teachers Sister Pine Barbara Newell and Seigen Johnson, and plenty of space for rest. Finally, in the spirit of harvesting the fruits of communal practice together, we encourage everyone to sign up for retreat roles, listed in the signup form.
Retreat Schedule:
Friday, Oct. 10th, from 9 am – 5 pm
Saturday, Oct. 11th from 9 am to 5 pm
Sunday, Oct. 12th Half-day sit, beginning at 8:20am
Friday and Saturday are at the Great Oak Common House, Sunday is at The Center For Sacred Living. The retreat will be offered on Zoom as well, including practice discussions on Zoom as needed.
Recommended: We strongly urge anyone who has not had a 1:1 with Marta before to schedule one before the retreat.
Teacher Bios:
Marta Dabis
Curiosity, meditation and community have been central to Marta’s life journey. She is a Japanese Soto Zen priest and retired board-certified chaplain who trained residentially at San Francisco Zen Center, including intensive practice periods at Tassajara and Green Gulch Farm until 2012 — her Suzuki-lineage root teacher is Edward Espe Brown and ordination teacher is Koji Aquaviva Dreher.
As founder of JissoJi Zen Ann Arbor, an affiliate of San Francisco Zen Center, she has created a spiritual community that integrates traditional Zen practice with contemporary accessibility.
She served as a healthcare chaplain at Yale New Haven Hospital and University of California, San Francisco Medical Center, and volunteered at San Francisco’s Zen Hospice Project.
In her earlier career, Marta worked as a management consultant focusing on organizational development for large organizations. She holds an MBA and advanced degrees in economics, mathematics, and computer science. Marta is managing her chronic fatigue with wisdom and adaptability. She enjoys the close-knit residential community of Ann Arbor Cohousing with her husband and two cats.
Rev. Seigen Johnson (she/her)
Seigen is a public theologian, interfaith dialogue facilitator, and spiritual leadership consultant. Rev. Seigen was ordained as a priest in 2022 by Daito Steve Weintraub in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi. She is most passionate about the growing interest in interfaith formation in higher education and finding opportunities to share insight from liberation and womanist theologies with Buddhist practitioners.
Most recently, she worked for the UW-Madison Center for Interfaith Dialogue and regularly partners with Interfaith America to mentor undergraduate students in interfaith leadership.
She lived in residential practice at San Francisco Zen Center for 7 years after working as a budget and public policy analyst for Santa Clara County in California, where she led meditation workshops for families living in emergency housing and emancipated foster youth. Seigen remains deeply connected to the spiritual lineage of the A.M.E Church in which she was raised.
She’s also an outdoor enthusiast and aunt to 6 mesmerizing nieces and nephews.
Barbara Newell
Mindfulness, meditation and compassion have been the primary focus of Barbara’s life.
She trained and taught for twelve years as a nun in Plum Village and around the world with Venerable Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh. During that time she served as his simultaneous translator and publications manager, and received transmission of the lamp (recognition as a Dharma teacher) from the Zen Master.
In 2016 she returned to lay life in the United States wanting to share all that she had absorbed with a broader range of people. Since then, she has been working in association with renowned meditation teachers Tara Brach, Ph.D. and Jack Kornfield, Ph.D.
Barbara received her JD from the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, where she is now based, and has worked in small and large businesses, law firms, and nonprofits.
In her experience with thousands of students, Barbara has seen how applied mindfulness practices can improve any and every situation. She finds joy in helping people rediscover how to embody genuine presence, connect meaningfully with others, tap into fresh insight, and enliven the everyday.
Grandmothers’ love
Nothing can compare
To grandmothers’ love
Ever since she was a little
Girl you loved her like
Your very own blood.
From the first steps she took
And until the last steps you take
You gave her the gift
Of grandmothers’ love.
Your heart prevailed
Over many other hearts
You showed up every day
And every small triumph
You prayed for. Think of how
Your love has broken through
The door and opened it
Opening the world
To a grandmother’s love.
Your wisdom in your
Prayer. How open you have been
To your grandchildren
No matter what they look like
Your family is your family
You dignify them all with your love.
Your grandmother’s love
Like no other love. It’s a little like
Justice and a lot like protection
That’s how fierce it can be.
It has a strength you see.
Justice for all the ways they will
Be wronged. And protecting
Them with the iron coating
The heartspun armor
They put on in the name
of grandmothers’ love.
She set out one foolish, foolish day
On her way to the grandmother’s
House where she’d be staying.
Grandmother is gone
Alas. Only the wolves are left
Prowling. Still be brave and
Remember the strength of a
Grandmother’s love.
Grandmother, or granny gran
What big eyes you have
Where can I get some eyes
Like that, they see everything
Don’t they? Ain’t that what the
Buddha says and how come
I can’t feel that way
most of the time?
Please teach me a
Grandmother’s love so
I can listen to these and other such
Dualistic complaints
Yeah they keep coming
Don’t you worry dear
Granny got a answer
Call it love
Keep it simple
Grandmothers’ love.
~Sara Ahbel-Rappe
Many Bows,
JissoJi Zen Ann Arbor