DENVER—Anyone needing a break from all those speeches and protests at the Democratic National Convention will find solace through some riverside meditation and yoga.
Meditate ’08 is a six-day retreat on the banks of the South Platte River coinciding with the convention. Its organizers aim to give delegates, candidates, demonstrators and locals a chance to slow down and reconnect with their inner selves.
“We’re giving people a place to sit down and shut up and see what happens next,” retreat co-chair Don Morreale said Thursday.
Forty teachers from a range of traditions, from Buddhist and Hindu to Christian and Islamic, will offer meditation classes beneath the shade of cottonwood trees. There will be yoga and stress-reduction classes.
Morreale, a Denver writer who teaches meditation on cruise ships, said politicking and proselytizing will be banned at the retreat.
Even though some might think the idea “trippy,” Morreale said he thinks it can’t help but counter “angry energy” that could come from protests.
Meditation can make politicians and other citizens aware of their internal suffering—and change their ways to have more empathy for others, he said.
The retreat was developed after a member of Morreale’s meditation circle, Denver psychiatrist David Nichol, won a city permit to use a park during the convention. Protesters have won the right to use other parks.
Morreale said his group’s name isn’t a spin-off of Recreate ’68. Organizers of that group now say their name is an appeal to revive the grass-roots activism of the 1960s, not an appeal to violence.
Meditate ’08 is among dozens of workshops and panel discussions promoted by the Network of Spiritual Progressives, an interfaith group that distances itself from the religious right as well as religious phobia on the left. Events include appearances by Jim Wallis, editor and founder of Sojourners Magazine, and Rabbi Michael Lerner, editor of Tikkun Magazine.
