Services Offered

I am challenged to give a description of what I do or offer. In setting up Tourmaline Life Center my goal is to create a stimulating and supportive community and provide a set of services and resources for those who want to explore their lives and come to a deeper sense of who they are.

While I’ve been trained as a life coach, I hesitate to formalize my services in this way. So let’s just say that I am energized by a good conversation with other seekers in which we share life experiences and challenge each other to move forward in the rich tapestries of the spiritual life.  I see such conversations as mutually supportive.

If anything in my background strikes a chord, why not contact me and we can have a conversation about whatever. I also consider myself a networker and enjoy connecting people to others and to groups where I think they would grow and contribute through interaction and dialogue.

Background

My life has taken me through diverse experiences, and all of them have added richness to my life. Let’s begin with what draws me most:  I am a spiritual seeker.

Though I would not have called it spiritual early on, this spiritual thread has run through my life from childhood onward. My teenage hobbies were astronomy, chemistry, electronics, religion, and cosmology, all aimed at finding a worldview that would satisfy my appetite for the “big picture.”

In my twenties I was a closet rebel in my conservative Lutheran church, secretly pursuing materials by Edgar Cayce, the paranormal, psychic phenomena, etc. But with the sudden death of my parents when I was 29, my coping skills returned to more mainstream Lutheran dogma. I enjoyed teaching adult bible classes for 20 years, always pushing the edges of orthodoxy.

In my 50’s I broke out of and eventually left my conservative Lutheran church. During this period I helped to create several small spiritual support groups, got heavily involved in some non- orthodox and deeply spiritual courses at a local Catholic seminary, served as a hospital chaplain intern and was part of a clinical pastoral education program at the hospital.   Next I supplemented my head-knowledge with a more holistic experiential perspective by becoming a massage therapist, graduating from a school that fostered an appreciation of  the spiritual nature of the human body.

I then entered and graduated from an intense five-year spiritual transformation program offered by the Sevenoaks Pathwork Center in Virginia. Here I found my spiritual legs.  I also completed a two-year Pathwork teacher-training program offered by Sevenoaks.  During this time I also completed the Newfield Network training, “Coaching for Professional and Personal Mastery,” and two 8-week training sessions in contemplative dialogue.

I am in several small support groups, including a spiritual writing group, a Ken Wilber Meet-up group, a local Pathwork group, and a men’s group. This background speaks to my keen interest in personal development and working in groups with fellow seekers.

Most of this personal work has flowered after my retirement from corporate and organizational America. But I enjoyed my earlier life as well. My college background was engineering. My 29- year career was all with a computer software and engineering consulting firm (SDRC), where I worked in management (several officer roles, including 3 years as CEO), administration, and sales. I was also in various leadership roles with my local church, the United Way, and several other non-profit organizations. I am a father of three and a grandfather of seven.