We are honored to welcome our guest teachers to Spring Camp. Learn more about them below:
Darvesha MacDonald
Murshida Darvesha leads groups internationally in meditation, deep ecology, and the Dances of Universal Peace. She believes that if we come to know ourselves as interdependent, our caring for all beings increases; and as we come to understand contingency, we strive to create conditions which bring about peace and happiness for all life. Our practice and our life should be one. Darvesha is the Chair of the Ruhaniat Ziraat Council and the Ruhaniat Guidance Council, and President of the Board of the Dances of Universal Peace International.
Arjun Calero
Arjun is a visionary thinker committed to the awakening of humanity. A cofounder of the Colombian and Latin American Ecovillage Networks, Arjun is also one of the founders of Ecoaldea Atlantida, an ecovillage community in Colombia where DUP trainings and sacred altars are planted. A medicine man with years of experience in the path of ceremonies, sacred plants, sweat lodge, sun dance, and vision quest, he travels with these altars. Still active in these Eco-networks as elder and vision keeper, he has training as a biologist, specializing in ethnobiology and ecology with a M.Sc. in eco-social regeneration. Arjun envisioned and coordinates the Beyond Initiative, a program aimed at cultivating the Dances of Universal Peace in the Middle East, North Africa and Asia. He is recognized as a Sheikh in the Sufi Ruhaniat where he also serves on its Board of Trustees. He is a Senior Mentor of the Dances of Universal Peace and a sitting member of the DUPIN Board of Directors.
Malika Elena Salazar
Initiated in the lineage of the Sufi Ruhaniat International, Malika is a Leader of the Dances of Universal Peace, explorer of different Native American practices, musician, and singer of World Sacred Music. Through her golden voice, she offers a journey for different spiritual traditions of the Earth, celebrating the human spirit, cultivating the sense of a planetary community full of diversity and beauty, and promoting respect, understanding, and recognition between all religions and spiritual paths. She has released several albums and singles of World Sacred Music.
Munira Elizabeth Reed, Ph.D.
Munira is a Sheikha in the Sufi Ruhaniat International, Mentor in the Dances of Universal Peace, Cherag (Sufi Interfaith Minister), and Executive Director of Shalem Center and Abwoon Resource Center. Her primary focus is outreach with Saadi’s Aramaic/Sufi work, which has taken her across the United States, Brazil, and various parts of Mexico. Munira lives in Columbus, Ohio, USA.
HuDost
Many years before receiving praise from NPR, ranking on the Billboard and radio charts, or winning prestigious awards, something magical happened; a teenaged Moksha Sommer was reading the lush words of the Persian poet Rumi in her Montreal apartment and wildly decided to join friends for a spur of the moment trip to North Carolina for a Rumi Festival put on by Turkish Sufis. It was there that, from across a room of dancers, Jemal Wade Hines was playing frame drum and heard Sommer’s voice cutting through the crowd and jolting his heart awake. That moment was the beginning of HuDost.
Sommer and Hines married as a couple, as musicians, as activists, and as parents. In all of those they are guided by love. They are highly engaged activists, doing advocacy work as Representatives for ONE (a non-profit organization dedicated to ending extreme poverty) and joining forces with other non-profit organizations. They have discovered the alchemy of joining music and activism.
Ozark Sufi Camp 