Tricia de Beer

Tricia de Beer (M.Div., D.Min.) is a retired Episcopal priest and has served in various settings for 33 years. Her ministry has focused on spiritual formation and experiential adult education. She aspires to be a “contemplative activist” – a contemplative: one who is looking for God in everyday life, becoming present to myself and others; and an activist: one who believes that my faith invites and demands that I engage with the structures of power that harm and destroy life and work to protect our world with the gifts God has given me.

She first learned of non-violent communication in 1980 when she was trained in Straight Talk for couples. Practicing in her marriage and anchoring her parenting of two small boys, she began to offer small groups for couples and families who wanted to create a different kind of family – one with healthy patterns of communication.

Twenty-some years later, she was introduced to Marshall Rosenberg’s Non-Violent Communication. She was working with young adults in a service learning program in Boston in which men and women, straight and queer, and black and white, were living together in community as they worked for justice. She was responsible for helping them learn how to talk non-violently to each other across those differences. It was a learning for us all! In the past 15 years she has been teaching non-violent communication in a variety of settings.

Her activism centers on racial justice work. She is co-chair of the Round Table on Criminal Justice (League of Women Voters), a member of the Racial Justice and Reconciliation Team at her home church, St. Andrews, and a member of the Guilford Anti-Racism Alliance.