Welcome

A Person or an Angle of Light: Encountering Icelandic Literature 

Drawing from Icelandic writer Audor Ava Olafsdottir’s recent novel Animal Life, we will read a little, write a little, and share out whatever you feel called to. There is no pre-reading required, since this session is less about plot comprehension and more about letting Olafsdottir’s lines about light and darkness, mountains and mud, self and spirit spur our imaginations and our writing. The session is writing intensive, so come with a pen and paper. By the end expect to be as uncertain as Olafsdottir when you look up and see human beings: “is it a person or an angle of light?”

 Saturday, October 28th, 2023

10:00 AM to 11:00 PM, ET.

Zoom.

Please register here.

Juliet is the Sun:

On Metaphor and Metamorphosis. 

A workshop to write and talk about everyday and emergent ways of being in this new year.

Facilitated by author, professor, and coach Lina Rodriguez.

 Sunday, January 29th, 2023

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET.

Zoom.

Please contact us for the zoom link!

 A workshop to write, talk, and celebrate whimsy and wonder with Dada, an early 20th century art movement.

Facilitated by writer and poet Tony Bates. 

Sunday, December 18th, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM.

Zoom.

Please contact us for the zoom link!

To Speak in Salt:

The Poetry of Forced Migration and Refugee Activism.

Submitted for consideration for the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for 2023.

Join us to write and talk with author Becky Thompson and her newest book of poems, To Speak in Salt:

No pre-reading or book purchase required to enjoy and gain from the workshop! But please consider supporting poets' work and purchasing Becky's book here or at your favorite bookseller. 

Come!

Sunday, November 20th, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET.

Zoom.

Contact us for the zoom link! 

Humans are gonna human.

Love is gonna love.

Let others be shocked.

A workshop to write and talk. 

Facilitated by poet-playwright and dramatic theorist Irene Loy.

Sunday, October 23rd, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET.

Zoom.

Contact us for the zoom link! 

I'm Pissed. Now What?

A workshop to write and talk about anger and change. 

Join us for this second and final session in our Anger series. Let's write, roar, and renew together! 

Facilitated by spiritual director and poet Ruah Bull.

Sunday, September 18th, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET.

Zoom.

Contact us for the zoom link! 

Anger, the Sacred Smash:

A writing workshop where anger meets wisdom and the walls start tumbling down.

Let anger lead you to its secrets about healing and holiness. 

Facilitated by spiritual director and poet Ruah Bull.

Sunday, August 14th, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET.

Zoom.

Contact us for the zoom link! 

Nonsense:

A workshop to write, talk, and laugh all the way to absurd ideas and new delights.

Find freedom. Treat yourself to the joy and release of writing and talking nonsense. 

Facilitated by poet Tony Bates. 

Sunday, July 24, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET.

Zoom.

Contact us for the zoom link!

A Workshop to Write, Talk, and Taste Life's Darks and Sparkles    

We'll use each other's poems (either ones you find or ones you write) to enjoy life's rich darks, light and fluffy sweetness, and our own new writing we bake up during the session. If you'd like, please share your chosen poem on the doc beforehand.        

*Thank you to Ginny Douglas for the theme and language of cupcakes and poetry to "chew on."         

Sunday, May 29th, 2022  

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET  

Zoom  

Contact us for the zoom link!  

Mother's Day is just around the corner. In tribute to materning -- in the most expansive sense of the term -- and to all things majestic, maddening, and mysterious that stem therefrom, come to this workshop to write and talk about what you know in your heart to be true, if not popular or understood. Poetry by Kim Parko (from whom "despite our reservations, we do have kids" comes), Diotimus's reflections on Artemis, and Kahlil Gibran's thoughts on parenting will spur our writing, imagination, and conversation. Come!

Mother's Day

Sunday, May 8th, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET, Zoom.

Contact us for the zoom link! 

Resurrection is an ancient yet modern concept and experience, from Phoenix's rising from the ashes to one's own hard-won decision to rise from devastation and step once more into the unkempt but fragrant garden of life. Join us to write, talk, and reimagine resurrection with poetry from around the world, across time, and in your own soul. Come!  

Sunday, April 17, 2022.

11:00 AM to 12:30 PM, ET, Zoom.

Contact us for the zoom link! 

In her new book Curating Bracha: An Exhibition in Words and Light, Angelina Rodriguez writes the life of feminist and spiritual painter Bracha Ettinger as an exhibit of paintings. What splashes of color, lines of light, and curious shapes deliver you and imagined viewers "to the light available" in your every breath and thought? Join us for this two-session series to write, talk, and imagine your life as a series of paintings that heals both artist and viewer. Gather for this writing excursion into the gallery of the soul and write those streaks of light: your life.  

In this second and concluding workshop on Angelina Rodriguez's book Curating Bracha: An Exhibition in Words and Light, we will gather the invisible love from the previous session and shape it into colors, objects, and textures on the page to write our autobiographies as a series of paintings. What events shaped you? What people guided you? What titles would you give paintings of your journey? We will write our lives as streaks of light and splashes of opal, onyx, and sea green. No need to have attended previous sessions, and no pre-reading required. Just come! Write the living museum of your own masterpiece: your life. 

This first of two workshops inspired by Angelina Rodriguez's new book, Curating Bracha: An Exhibition in Words and Light, invites us to notice invisible love showered upon us. "You may not feel this happening," Rodriguez writes, "but something is changing." In what ways do we unconsciously radiate and receive love? How might art and writing carry us through this rainstorm toward mutual healing? Come to write and get drenched by love.  

We’re living in a time of change, reappraisal, mystery. It’s a threshold space, and together we can write our way through it and see what unfolds. Join guest facilitator and author Kim Langley to look at poems and quotes from her book Send My Roots Rain: A Companion on the Grief Journey, and rediscover what lies behind, ahead, and within.

Join us for Part 3, our third and final session in this series. We will review, integrate, and introduce Warrior and Evader wisdom. Come! Facilitated by poet-playwright Irene Loy. 

 Learn to perceive the world through archetypes, and let everything change inside you. Last session we befriended the Coyote, Trickster, and Caretaker inside us. This time, we will get cozy with the Mystic, Devil, and Child. Come! Facilitated by poet-playwright Irene Loy.

Get to know ancient energies inside you -- including Coyote, Trickster, and Caretaker -- in this special Institute writing workshop facilitated by poet-playwright Irene Loy.

 Celebrate the changeless strength of the human soul with a writing workshop in this season of resilience. Come to write, talk, and reimagine, in the words of poet Natalie Diaz, "all we have been born for, . . . all we have yet to become of love." 

Celebrate raw beauty in this poetry party with Soul Forte: A Journal for Spiritual Writing contributors Tony Bates, Arlo d'Olivine, Diana Dunn, Mara Inglezakis, Kathleen Finn Jordan, Tanja Kummerfeld, Bethany Lee, Donna Pucciani, and poetry enthusiasts everywhere. To learn more, please contact me here. 

Learn to love both harmonies and dissonance in music and beyond in this special writing workshop with guest host, Tony Bates. 

What would happen if instead of asking each other what we do, we asked, What are you here to do? What would your most ideal job description look like? 

Lina Rodriguez, PhD, author, professor, and coach, will facilitate this writing workshop. 

Join us to write, talk, and imagine. Leave with a promotion to your higher self. 

Welcome to our final session of How to be a Mystic, and we've only just begun! Join us to explore Helen Schucman's poetry about the Real World, a place that looks like everything you ever felt it was at the back and base of your heart your entire lifelong. So, come -- and write what you know. 

Join us for our third session of "How to be a Mystic." We will explore Emily Dickinson's day job as a mystic. Her duties: to translate God / the Divine / Eternity into language. Let's join her in transcribing the mysticism inside us! 

We will read, write, and revel in Marie Howe's poems written in the voice of two women mystics who taught Yeshua ben Yosef a thing or two: Mary, his mother, and Mary Magdalene, his close friend and confidante. Come to hear what they still have to say. They're waiting for your response back to them. 

Sit down for a coffee break with that most conversational of mystics, Rumi. Open-ended prompts will coax you to write, think, listen, and feel from the voice of the everyday mystic inside you. Come. It's time.  

Join us for Part 2 of "This Book Changed Me." Bring a passage from a poem or book that made you feel less alone and gave you new hope. We'll use everyone's chosen passages to generate writing and revelry in an eclectic community of listeners and activists, witches and pastors, delicious sinners and mischievous saints. Come, and let your book change us, too.