Jerry is a husband, father, teacher, spiritual director and retreat leader.  He is an ordained Deacon in the Episcopal Diocese of East Tennessee, currently assigned to St. John’s Cathedral in Knoxville.  Since arriving in Knoxville in 1985, he has served as a university dean, foundation president, healthcare executive and on the boards of over 60 nonprofit organizations at the local, state and national levels.

Jerry received his BA from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he was a Morehead Scholar, MS from the University of Memphis and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University. He and his wife Robyn, an attorney, have two adult children.

Jerry has led On Being Human, Third Half of Life, Sacred Reading and other workshops.

Husband, father of three, and electrical engineer by training. A spiritual refugee and lifelong seeker who values liberty, personal responsibility, and learning how to live in harmony with truth.

Chris has led The Quest for Meaning, Meaningful Life Film Discussion Group, Lanterns to Light The Way, The Artist's Way, and other programs.

John worked in the Audiology department of the University of Tennessee for 10 years, coordinating a number of programs. He left UT to found Blount Hearing and Speech Services, which has served over 20,000 patients in the past 35 years. John is also the co-founder and CEO of the Hearing and Speech Foundation, an institution that focuses on conducting research to provide a better understanding of human perception and in so doing to improve the field of audiology.

John has taught courses on surrender and forgiveness at Blount Memorial Hospital for many years in their recovery programs.

Fred is an art historian (Ph.D., U. Chicago) who taught at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville for 30 years.  Fred has a special interest in the iconology of Buddhist art (“meaning” as well as style and context).  After specializing in the meaning of Buddhist subjects in Asian art for years, one day about 25 years ago he suddenly realized that there is a reason why those Buddhist images sit the way they do. At that point he began a meditation practice of his own. Since that time, he has studied with a number of different teachers and participates in a half-dozen meditation and study groups including one on Lovingkindness based on the teachings of Andrew Olendzki.

David is a professor emeritus of the University of Tennessee College of Social Work. He is a certified MBSR Teacher through the Brown University Mindfulness Center and has had a daily sitting practice for over three decades. He has trained a wide array of individuals and groups in mindfulness practices. For the past five years, he has taught the MBSR 8-week course to UT graduate students in social work, counseling, and psychology.

Ronda Redden Reitz is a Clinical Psychologist and depth therapist practicing primarily in the Jungian tradition. A devotee of the inner life, Ronda is at home in the imaginal world. Both personally and professionally, she enjoys dreamwork and using dream images to spark creative endeavors. Off and on, she pursues analytical training. Ronda has been married to Carl for 47 years. Together, they have three children and four grandchildren. The children are wonderful; the grandchildren perfect.  For nearly 25 years, Ronda has been involved with the Meaningful Life Center and its predecessor, the Quest for Meaning. In her spare time, she enjoys reading, hiking, gardening, and needlework, primarily knitting and needlepoint.

Joyce has attended many sessions at MLC over the years, including meditation retreats and classes with Jerry Askew and David Patterson. She’s been a lifelong seeker, reader, thinker and meditator and finds discovering various spiritual paths to be a fascinating and enriching pursuit. This book, “The Living Tao: Timeless Principles For Everyday Enlightenment” has been especially resonant and she’d enjoy sharing thoughts with others.

Now retired, Joyce used to create and manage local, regional and national TV programs and broadcast/cable departments for all genres of non-fiction shows around the country, culminating here in Knoxville for HGTV as their first Director of Programming & later VP, and finishing her career with a few creative and executive roles at Jewelry Television.