What is Our Sacred Circles (OSC)?
Our Sacred Circles is the community branch of Joyoushout, holding its virtual gatherings and events since 2018. OSC offers spaces for individuals seeking community support to embody and work for change at the intersection of justice, spirituality, creativity, and healing. Gatherings are centered in shared learning and teaching, relationship building, and community engagement. The connections we bring, make, and maintain are our sacred circles of connection, enabling us to renew, heal, grow, and sustain ourselves as we work for personal and collective transformation. Together we are creating a microcosm of the world we wish to live in and leave for our children.
Our Sacred Circles is the community branch of Joyoushout, holding its virtual gatherings and events since 2018. OSC offers spaces for individuals seeking community support to embody and work for change at the intersection of justice, spirituality, creativity, and healing. Gatherings are centered in shared learning and teaching, relationship building, and community engagement. The connections we bring, make, and maintain are our sacred circles of connection, enabling us to renew, heal, grow, and sustain ourselves as we work for personal and collective transformation. Together we are creating a microcosm of the world we wish to live in and leave for our children.
How Do We Understand Spirituality?
Joyoushout/OSC sees Spirituality, as the sustained and life sustaining practice of returning to our essence or spirit by deepening our "roots and branches" in this world (thank you Empress Judith) so that we can be forces for love, liberation, and life within ourselves, toward each other, and in relationship to our planet. "Spirit" is the source(s) from which we draw in order to be the best versions of ourselves in solidarity with others.
Joyoushout/OSC sees Spirituality, as the sustained and life sustaining practice of returning to our essence or spirit by deepening our "roots and branches" in this world (thank you Empress Judith) so that we can be forces for love, liberation, and life within ourselves, toward each other, and in relationship to our planet. "Spirit" is the source(s) from which we draw in order to be the best versions of ourselves in solidarity with others.
OSC GATHERINGS 2024
COME JOIN US !
*All times are EDT
COME JOIN US !
*All times are EDT
OSC Writers' Circle
Tuesdays 10-11 am via zoom This writers circle, now in its 3rd year, is for activists, educators, creatives, and caregivers of all walks seeking to reflect on, share, and chronicle their life journeys and wisdom. All are welcome and no writing experience is required. Free and Open To All. Exciting news!! We are in final revisions for "Legacies of Love" a collection of our writings, illustrated by the Charlotte Galper. 
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OSC Wisdom Circle 2nd Sundays 5:30-7 pm via zoom
This group, now in its 4th year, is open to women identified, gender fluid, and non-binary wise folk. We are LGBTQIA+ loving, co-led, and dedicated to deep mutual care and the sharing of our life stories and wisdom for ongoing growth and engagement as healers, creatives, and change makers. Our time together is guided by deep listening and trusting what emerges as we share what is happening in our lives. Free and Open To Folks as listed above. See below for more info. on "The Spot"
Joyoushout helped raise 6 K during December's Open Mic (2024) at "The Spot" to help save Eddie's home and TheLRoom! Deep love gratitude for all who attended and made this possible. Find out more about TheLRoom at https://thelroombnb.weebly.com/. We also held a fundraiser in 2023 with the fabulous civil rights author Rosalie Turner and raised over 10K for the Durham Freedom School. Rinah has been a guest storyteller and DFS for two years in a row! |
What is "The Spot"?
Need a place for your small, intimate or informal retreats, workshops, staff meetings, and fundraisers?
"The Spot" (Supporting People Onward Together) is Joyoushout's donation based little community space in Durham for celebrations, retreats, and learning. Previous events include: Coffee and Conversation, a Solstice Celebration with Alex and Li-Lan, a Sound Bath with Shana, Torah study with Rabbi Noah and live music and dancing with members of Redford's Wives! We are open to hosting ongoing dinner and movie nights, community conversations, dancing, bonfires, and more. All events are kept small and have with indoor and outdoor options. For more information, contact Rinah at joyoushout@gmail.com and join our listserv to stay up to date on events.
Need a place for your small, intimate or informal retreats, workshops, staff meetings, and fundraisers?
"The Spot" (Supporting People Onward Together) is Joyoushout's donation based little community space in Durham for celebrations, retreats, and learning. Previous events include: Coffee and Conversation, a Solstice Celebration with Alex and Li-Lan, a Sound Bath with Shana, Torah study with Rabbi Noah and live music and dancing with members of Redford's Wives! We are open to hosting ongoing dinner and movie nights, community conversations, dancing, bonfires, and more. All events are kept small and have with indoor and outdoor options. For more information, contact Rinah at joyoushout@gmail.com and join our listserv to stay up to date on events.
SOME ORGANIZATIONS AND BUSINESSES JOYOUSHOUT SUPPORTS
Armonía Health LLC offers therapies that integrate body, mind, and spirit for holistic well-being. Their vision is to provide compassionate, professional Chinese medicine, therapeutic massage, self-discovery and energy healing services in an inclusive setting that respects social, cultural, religious, and gender views. They are the first acupuncture and holistic health practice in our area with a licensed Spanish-speaking acupuncturist since 2005 and we work towards an integrative approach of offering bilingual services.
At Beyond Conflict offers leadership development program, professional coaching, board retreats and staff training supporting and growing racial and gender justice, engaged facilitation, and individual transformation. Check out their trainings, Finding Freedom: White Women Taking On Our Own White Supremacy and the Yes Lab!
Beloved Community Center in Greensboro envisions and works toward social and economic relations that affirm and realize the equality, dignity, worth and potential of every person by creating beloved community leadership that uplifts the reimagination of our society and prioritizes the voices of those most often marginalized. Beloved Community Center is blessed to be guided by leaders, Rev. Nelson Johnson and Mrs. Joyce Johnson others.
Dream Corps was founded by Van Jones in 2015 to close prison doors and open doors of opportunity, bringing people together across racial. social, and partisan lines to create a future with freedom and dignity for all.
ECHO NC : Building a collective of individuals, businesses, and resources to pool together for a common goal: upward mobility for youth and adults through entrepreneurship.
The Equal Justice Initiative challenges poverty and racial injustice, advocates for equal treatment in the criminal justice system, and creates hope for marginalized communities. Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. We challenge the death penalty and excessive punishment and we provide re-entry assistance to formerly incarcerated people.
Hayti Heritage Cultural Center's mission is preserving and advancing the heritage and culture of historic Hayti and the African American Experience.
LGBTQ Center of Durham is committed to serving the City and County of Durham as well as the surrounding counties to ensure all folks have the resources necessary to live full, joyful lives. They provide space and resources to all people.
Makom: A radically inclusive community of Jewish Placemakers, working together to nurture the Jewish life you envision for your family.
The People's Solidarity Hub: a central hub for activists and organizers to build collective power
Radical Healing: an intentional, radically inclusive, LGBTQ+ and Black, Indigenous, People of Color centered, multiracial and multicultural campus for healing and wellness
RCWMS believes in the power of gathering together to transform ourselves, our communities, and the world. They believe in the power of the written word to share our truths and inspire each other. Join us for workshops and retreats to nurture your creative and spiritual practices. Engage with us in spiritual activism and protest as spiritual practice. Help us build bridges, amplify voices, and reconnect to what is most important.
Respite in the Round is a two-story, round treehouse turned land-based retreat offering individuals and small groups a place for rest, connection, creative making, grounding & vision setting. G: @respiteintheroundnc
The Revolutionary Love Project is founded and run by Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, film maker, educator, innovator, and best selling author of SEE NO STRANGER: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. The Revolutionary Love Project is a movement and community reclaiming love as a force for justice.
SONG envisions a sustainable South and a multi-issue southern justice movement that unites us across class, age, race, ability, gender, immigration status, and sexuality; a movement in which LGBTQ people – poor and working class, immigrant, people of color, rural – take our rightful place as leaders shaping our region’s legacy and future through strategic projects and campaigns developed in response to the current conditions in our communities.
StandUp-SpeakOut of North Carolina: SUSO NC's mission is to empower individuals we serve by providing advocacy and therapeutic support through Art Therapy for children and teens who are victims or witnesses to domestic violence and sexual abuse.
TheLRoom: A place where all women identified folks of all races, religions, and gender identities can gather to relax, break bread, and seek respite
Voices for Justice in Palestine
Voices for Justice in Palestine: They are a nonpartisan social justice nonprofit working for a just and lasting peace for all people in historic Palestine, Jews and Palestinians alike. VJP is a diverse and interfaith statewide coalition.
We Are, which stands for working to extend anti-racist education, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides anti-racism training for children, families, and educators.
We Are Finding Freedom facilitates white anti-racist caucus spaces and trainings with white women and genderqueers for racial and gender justice. Their work is steeped in gratitude for the leadership and expertise of the queer black women who founded Black Lives Matter and many other liberatory organizations and groups, and the powerful frameworks we have learned through them: emergent strategy, cross-generational work, radical hospitality, somatics grounded in Southern experience, collective liberation, and community care.
Want to help Black owned businesses grow? Visit: www.websiteplanet.com/blog/support-black-owned-businesses/ (Thank you Emma for sharing)
Armonía Health LLC offers therapies that integrate body, mind, and spirit for holistic well-being. Their vision is to provide compassionate, professional Chinese medicine, therapeutic massage, self-discovery and energy healing services in an inclusive setting that respects social, cultural, religious, and gender views. They are the first acupuncture and holistic health practice in our area with a licensed Spanish-speaking acupuncturist since 2005 and we work towards an integrative approach of offering bilingual services.
At Beyond Conflict offers leadership development program, professional coaching, board retreats and staff training supporting and growing racial and gender justice, engaged facilitation, and individual transformation. Check out their trainings, Finding Freedom: White Women Taking On Our Own White Supremacy and the Yes Lab!
Beloved Community Center in Greensboro envisions and works toward social and economic relations that affirm and realize the equality, dignity, worth and potential of every person by creating beloved community leadership that uplifts the reimagination of our society and prioritizes the voices of those most often marginalized. Beloved Community Center is blessed to be guided by leaders, Rev. Nelson Johnson and Mrs. Joyce Johnson others.
Dream Corps was founded by Van Jones in 2015 to close prison doors and open doors of opportunity, bringing people together across racial. social, and partisan lines to create a future with freedom and dignity for all.
ECHO NC : Building a collective of individuals, businesses, and resources to pool together for a common goal: upward mobility for youth and adults through entrepreneurship.
The Equal Justice Initiative challenges poverty and racial injustice, advocates for equal treatment in the criminal justice system, and creates hope for marginalized communities. Founded in 1989 by Bryan Stevenson, a widely acclaimed public interest lawyer and bestselling author of Just Mercy, EJI is a private, 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that provides legal representation to people who have been illegally convicted, unfairly sentenced, or abused in state jails and prisons. We challenge the death penalty and excessive punishment and we provide re-entry assistance to formerly incarcerated people.
Hayti Heritage Cultural Center's mission is preserving and advancing the heritage and culture of historic Hayti and the African American Experience.
LGBTQ Center of Durham is committed to serving the City and County of Durham as well as the surrounding counties to ensure all folks have the resources necessary to live full, joyful lives. They provide space and resources to all people.
Makom: A radically inclusive community of Jewish Placemakers, working together to nurture the Jewish life you envision for your family.
The People's Solidarity Hub: a central hub for activists and organizers to build collective power
Radical Healing: an intentional, radically inclusive, LGBTQ+ and Black, Indigenous, People of Color centered, multiracial and multicultural campus for healing and wellness
RCWMS believes in the power of gathering together to transform ourselves, our communities, and the world. They believe in the power of the written word to share our truths and inspire each other. Join us for workshops and retreats to nurture your creative and spiritual practices. Engage with us in spiritual activism and protest as spiritual practice. Help us build bridges, amplify voices, and reconnect to what is most important.
Respite in the Round is a two-story, round treehouse turned land-based retreat offering individuals and small groups a place for rest, connection, creative making, grounding & vision setting. G: @respiteintheroundnc
The Revolutionary Love Project is founded and run by Valarie Kaur is a renowned civil rights leader, lawyer, film maker, educator, innovator, and best selling author of SEE NO STRANGER: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love. The Revolutionary Love Project is a movement and community reclaiming love as a force for justice.
SONG envisions a sustainable South and a multi-issue southern justice movement that unites us across class, age, race, ability, gender, immigration status, and sexuality; a movement in which LGBTQ people – poor and working class, immigrant, people of color, rural – take our rightful place as leaders shaping our region’s legacy and future through strategic projects and campaigns developed in response to the current conditions in our communities.
StandUp-SpeakOut of North Carolina: SUSO NC's mission is to empower individuals we serve by providing advocacy and therapeutic support through Art Therapy for children and teens who are victims or witnesses to domestic violence and sexual abuse.
TheLRoom: A place where all women identified folks of all races, religions, and gender identities can gather to relax, break bread, and seek respite
Voices for Justice in Palestine
Voices for Justice in Palestine: They are a nonpartisan social justice nonprofit working for a just and lasting peace for all people in historic Palestine, Jews and Palestinians alike. VJP is a diverse and interfaith statewide coalition.
We Are, which stands for working to extend anti-racist education, is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization that provides anti-racism training for children, families, and educators.
We Are Finding Freedom facilitates white anti-racist caucus spaces and trainings with white women and genderqueers for racial and gender justice. Their work is steeped in gratitude for the leadership and expertise of the queer black women who founded Black Lives Matter and many other liberatory organizations and groups, and the powerful frameworks we have learned through them: emergent strategy, cross-generational work, radical hospitality, somatics grounded in Southern experience, collective liberation, and community care.
Want to help Black owned businesses grow? Visit: www.websiteplanet.com/blog/support-black-owned-businesses/ (Thank you Emma for sharing)