Wisdom of the World Religions 11-Month Series

Michael Bogar, MDiv, ThM: Michael’s approach is from a full-life experience and he can relate to a wide range of people. He has a way of communicating to those at the top of their game and those ready to quit. Life is educational, each morning presents an opportunity to begin anew. He has taught at the graduate and undergraduate levels and has a proven ability to inform and inspire students ranging from the informal beginner to the serious scholar. Students and audience members frequently comment on his depth of scholarship, personal approach, and sense of humor.

 

Michael has studied and taught classical religious texts from many religious traditions and is a very effective teacher of spiritual concepts. He has studied Jungian Depth Psychology and universal mythologies. He is a brilliant integrator of mythology, theology, personal spirituality, practical philosophy, and depth psychology. He combines deep scholarship, spontaneous humor, and contagious enthusiasm with a down-to-earth practical approach to personal and spiritual growth. People open up easily to his clear and amicable style.

 

Imam Jamal Rahman is a popular speaker on Islam, Sufi spirituality,and interfaith relations. Along with his Interfaith Amigos, he has been featured in the New York Times, on CBS News, the BBC and various NPR programs. Co-founder and Muslim Sufi minister at Interfaith Community Sanctuary and adjunct faculty at Seattle University, he is a former host of Interfaith Talk Radio and travels nationally and internationally, presenting at conferences, retreats,and workshops.

 

Jamal's passion lies in interfaith community building. He remains rooted in his Islamic tradition but cultivates 'spaciousness' by being open to the beauty and wisdom of other faiths. Through the process of an authentic and appreciative understanding of other paths, Jamal feels that he is becoming a better Muslim. This spaciousness is not about conversion, but about completion. Jamal has an abiding faith in the power of heart-to-heart connections to encompass differences and dissolve prejudices. 

Rabbi Ted Falcon: Spiritual guide, author, teacher and therapist, has taught Jewish traditions of Kabbalah, meditation and spirituality since the 1970s. Ordained in 1968 at the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Cincinnati, he served in Los Angeles as a congregational and then a campus rabbi. In 1975, he earned a doctorate in Professional Psychology and, in 1978, founded the first meditative Reform congregation. He moved to Seattle in 1993, where he also founded a meditative synagogue. He is the author of A Journey of Awakening: Kabbalistic Meditations on the Tree of Life and co-author, with David Blatner, of Judaism For Dummies. He served as Scholar-in-Residence at Unity of Bellevue for two years, and has a private spiritual counseling practice, seeing people in his Seattle office as well as via Skype. He is Chair of Interfaith at Unity in Lynnwood.