It is with a heavy heart yet optimistic spirit that we write to share news about the future of The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMind). After much discernment and valiant effort, the CMind Board of Directors on May 18, 2022, voted unanimously to begin the process of sunsetting the organization due to cumulative issues of financial instability exacerbated by the pandemic and national shifts in philanthropic funding. With gratitude for 27 years of community and 25 years of formal incorporation, CMind will cease operations and programming on September 1, 2022. 

We understand that this message and decision may come as a shock to our beloved community, and we hold with you the sadness and grief of this message. Equally, we are encouraged. The natural world teaches us transitions are necessary transformations—communities must learn and evolve. This ending of the formal structure of the organization is also a new beginning. 

It is our hope and determination that the spirit of CMind will live on with the continuation of The Journal of Contemplative Inquiry (JOCI), the Association for the Contemplative Mind in Higher Education (ACMHE), and in the archiving of our library of digital resources within other institutional and organizational homes. Most importantly, our work over the last 27 years, lives on in each of you—in the communities we have catalyzed in forming across the globe; in the organizations that have found their birth from the fertile environment of CMind, and the community of scholars practicing contemplative ways of being within their institutions and society writ large. 

We, as an organization and community, are now being asked to live what we practice. While our time as an organization has come to an end, in many ways our work as a community of scholar-practitioner-healers is just beginning. Globally, we find ourselves in societal moments fraught with chaos, division, selfishness, and fear. Each of us is being called to meet these moments we are living through with grace, tenacity, generosity, and a learned ability to let go. The work we have engaged in together provides us with the courage to understand impermanence and the mystery of transformation and has engendered in us a spirit of curiosity about what is made possible and what might emerge. May this abiding hope guide our collective action to create more just, heart-centered futures. 

We will move through this cycle of the life of the organization with diligence and intentionality. As such, CMind Co-Founder Mirabai Bush and Board Member Stephanie Briggs have been appointed by Board Chair Dr. Michelle Chatman to co-lead the ad hoc committee developed to implement the CMind Organizational Transition Strategy, which includes the potential transfer of programmatic and intellectual assets of the organization to institutional and organizational partners to ensure the spirit of CMind endures. Over the next few months, we will provide updates to the community as the Transition Committee solidifies their work and the Board and staff finalizes plans for the community to process this transition together. 

We offer gratitude for each of you and we hope to see you at our 18th and final Summer Session on August 1-3, 2022. 

— The Board of Directors & Dr. David W. Robinson-Morris, Executive Director
The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society (CMind)

2 June 2022

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Staff

Dr. David W. Robinson-Morris
Executive Director

Carrie Bergman
Associate Director

Caryn Blair
Special Assistant

Board

Dr. Michelle Chatman, President
Associate Professor, Crime, Justice, and Security Studies, University of the District of Columbia

Dr. Lenwood Hayman, Vice-President
Associate Professor of Community Health, Morgan State University

Dr. Ameena Batada
Professor of Health and Wellness, University of North Carolina Asheville 

Joseph W. Belluck
Founding Partner, Belluck & Fox

Mirabai Bush
Senior Fellow and Founding Director, CMind

Stephanie Briggs
Owner/Designer, Be.Still.Move

Dr. Vaishali Mamgain
Associate Professor of Economics and the Director of the Bertha Crosley Ball Center for Compassion, University of Southern Maine

Dr. Lisa Napora Treasurer
Co-Founder and Director, The Mindfulness Alliance

Dr. Amy Pucino
Associate Professor of Sociology, The Community College of Baltimore County

Dr. Alberto López Pulido
Professor of Ethnic Studies & Director of Turning Wheel Project, University of San Diego