For five years, from 1999 to 2004, we had the privilege of working with the Circle of Atonement in Sedona, Arizona. When we returned to Ottawa, we were drawn to continue the Circle’s teachings on A Course in Miracles and, to that end, in 2005 founded Course Oasis, as a non-profit ministry dedicated to the Course.

Our name is based on the oasis image in “The Little Garden” section of A Course in Miracles (T-18.VIII). In his article,“Helen and Bill’s Joining: A Window into the Heart of A Course in Miracles,” Robert Perry, the founder of theCircle of Atonement, has expressed the concept in this way:

The world is a desert, devoid not of water, but of life-sustaining love, a desert scorched by the searing winds of hate. Yet in some corner of this desert something extraordinary happens. Two people renounce the hate. They forgive each other and the gap between them vanishes. This single event has incredible repercussions. It invites divine Guests (God and Christ) to come and surround them. The presence of these guests causes the ground on which they stand to become holy ground. And out of this ground springs a little garden, an oasis in the desert. Those who wander in this desert are then invited into this garden, where they find rejuvenation and healing. When they leave, they carry its essence with them and plant new gardens elsewhere, so that what began with just two people gradually transforms the entire desert into a garden of love.

We are deeply committed to A Course in Miracles and immensely grateful for the many benefits we have experienced as we have studied, practiced, and taught it. It continues to transform our lives and our relationships, often in miraculous ways, and we are honoured to share it with others through this oasis, a “garden of peace and welcome,” based on its principles.

Our goal is to be an oasis of love and healing:

• To which people “thirsting for life-sustaining love” can come to be renewed and replenished through the teachings of A Course in Miracles and its profound message of love, peace, and forgiveness
• From which, carrying its essence with them, they can then go forth to live in peace and joy, experience and demonstrate the message of the Course, and become oases of love and healing for others