The Center to Awaken Kindness offers contemplative self-care tools and practices in the form of online courses, programs, and resources. Each is designed to enhance personal growth and deep human experiences while encouraging the exploration of life as a prayer-filled sacramental journey.
What We Do
 
Penny Taylor and Bill Ressl create contemplative self-care tools and practices rooted within historic Christian meditative traditions grounded in a progressive theological lens resting in Paul Tillich's systematic theological frame and integrated with evidence-based contemplative practices from mindfulness, positive psychology, and understandings of gratitude with an awareness of the richness that Bowen Family Systems Theory and Carl Jung's psychoanalytic thought offers.

Our Spiritual contemplative self-care tools and practices invite the Spirit grounded deep within to open a new reality in order to face the struggles of life’s transitions and challenges. In the tradition of Jesus the Christ that is grounded in the Protestant Principle raising awareness of the expression of the Spiritual Community that transcends every particular church, and Catholic Substance recognizing the concrete embodiment of the Spiritual Presence here and now - the Center to Awaken Kindness creates contemporary tools and practices to encourage inner and relational new realities.
 
Everything we design is in the service of awakening love and kindness in the world. Our educational online courses, programs, prayer books, journals, and other resources utilize historic evidence-based contemplative practices that for eons have offered transformation for the human expereince. Each tool we design and practice we encourage is designed to strengthen renewal of self and the world through the practice of recognizing the sacramental reality that exists all around.

Our Mission
 
The mission of the Center to Awaken Kindness is to bring the gifts of the Spirit alive in the world through contemplative self-care tools and practices.
We see that the need to awaken, nurture, and empower kindness individually and in the world is more important than ever. Our contemplative self-care tools and practices are the contemporary creative spiritual response of Bill Ressl and Penny Taylor. Rooted in the progressive Christian prophetic tradition we strive toward a renewal of self and the world we live in grounded in listening love that supports the emergence of a new reality here and now. We believe kindness that is made visible through the love of Jesus Christ from the stories of scripture is very much needed here and now throughout the world. It is not the religiosity of yesteryear grounded in a Jesus of institutional religious definitions, but a personal, Spiritual participation with the Spiritual Presence manifesting as a New Reality here and now. All our contemplative self-care tools and practices encourage you to reflect on and define your personal theology of kindness (your God talk) and make it visible in the world (your God walk).
Foundational Theoretical Frame
 
Deep within emptiness, meaninglessness, and nothingness a Sacred Somethingness can be discovered. This Sacred Somethingness fills us with gratitude that leads to renewal - a new reality emerges that fuels a new sense of being deep within that nurtures emptiness into a participatory fullness, meaninglessness into an intentional purpose, and nothingness into a dynamic vitality.

Life as an Art Quilt

Exploring life as an art quilt opens a path toward deeper awareness of being able to begin to become aware of the Sacred Somethingness that has always been a part of the human journey - especially in times of emptiness, meaninglessness, and nothingness. Self-care that dives deep into contemplative practice can open the Sacred Somethingness deep within each of us supporting the manifestation of a physical representation of that Sacred Somethingness in our journey of life here and now.
Through the imagery of the art quilt called life the participation of the Sacred Somethingness through life becomes visible. Often when we think of a quilt we imagine a physical item stitched by hand or machine. Such a quilt often tells a story of their creator. A quilter takes three pieces of fabric (top, batting, and backing) and uses a thread to connect them - and in the case of a sewing machine two threads (a top thread and a bobbin thread). The art quilt of life is very much the same. The creator of the art quilt of life, the Sacred Somethingness, sews the fabrics of life together – the balance of past, present, and future expressions of reality made visible through our life experiences (top layer) and meaning making practices (the backing). The batting, the center fabric between the other two layers, is the presence of the Sacred Somethingness deep within – the Spiritual Presence that is ever present but rarely visible. The two threads that create the stitch are the time and space of life. Moment by moment the art quilt of life is stitched together creating a visual reminder and legacy of the story that is life. Self-reflection assists in bringing awareness to the reality of our participation in the story that becomes the personal art quilt of life.
 
Join us on the journey of utilizing contemporary contemplative self-care tools and practices to turn emptiness into a participatory fullness, meaninglessness into an intentional purpose, and nothingness into a dynamic vitality. Discover your personal art quilt of life with our contemplative self-care tools and practices that offer an integration of historic contemplative practices and contemporary evidence-based understandings.
A-FACT ... Foundational Methodology

The A-FACT process was first defined by Penny Taylor in her PhD dissertation at the Chicago Theological Seminary: She Reached Out In Faith: A Pastoral Theology Interpretation of Anxiety (2015). A-FACT is grounded in her pastoral theological ethnographic focus on Veronica from the Bible defined through an integrative paradigm grounded in the thought of systematic theology of Paul Tillich, Murray Bowen's family systems thinking, and various Liberation Theologians. Over the years, Penny and Bill have refined and expanded the integrative paradigm through additional theological constructs, neo-Jungian thought, Bowen Family Systems Theory, Mindfulness, Positive Psychology, understandings of Gratitude, and theories from clinical social work.
Examining transformative processes from various historic methodologies, the A-FACT Process is a powerful tool supporting re-newal. It is a five step interactive system that includes:
 
+ Reflecting on one’s story of life (Awareness).
+ Being guided by the Spirit to see the possible (Freedom).
+ Enhancing the practice of living a devotionally grounded prayer-filled mindful existence (Acceptance).
+ Living into life as prayer (Courage).
+ Reframing life spiritually to discover life as prayer, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your might” Deuteronomy 6:5 (Transformation).

The A-FACT Process is the foundational methodology utilized by the Center to Awaken Kindness.