Workshops & Retreats
Designing, planning, and facilitating workshops and retreats. I offer specific workshops, and can design new workshops to meet your particular needs.
I am available to come to your community to facilitate a workshop, retreat, or other event. Most workshops can be tailored in length (and somewhat in content) to the requirements of your event or group. I am also happy to develop a new workshop for your particular group or event. I love to work with groups and communities to develop workshops and retreats to meet your particular spiritual needs.
No group is too small. In larger workshops, it's harder to do intimate work, but we do break into smaller groups.
What do I need? I generally require travel reimbursement; a mold-free, relatively dust-free and fragrance-free place to stay if you're too far away from Edinburgh for me to go and come back in one day; and a stipend for my time. It is also very helpful for me to have an "elder" or companion in the ministry from your community to help anchor my work and orientate me to practical details.
Specific workshops and retreats I offer include:
Singing the Goddess
Goddess Ripples
The Goddess Is Alive and Magic Is Afoot
Theaological Diversity Among Friends
Energy work (as trained by John Calvi)
Meeting for Worship for Healing
Winter Solstice Celebrations; A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual
Ritual and magic
Sacred Handwork: Handwork in the Light and Handwork as Ministry (for Friends); Handwork as Magic (for Pagans)
For Pagan Quakers / Quaker Pagans
Explicit Friends -- community-building among Quakers who experience the Divine an an explicit way
Working with Dying and Death: a Day of Comfort and Healing
...first facilitated at the 2017 FGC Gathering, where the Gathering theme was "Ripples Start Where Spirit Moves."
Songs from simple chants and rounds to more complicated pieces, drawn mostly from the Earth spirituality movement and the feminist spirituality movement. Come as you are, whether or not you think of yourself as a singer. No music-reading needed. All genders welcome.
Theaological Diversity Among Friends
How do we come together in spiritual community in our Meetings when we have different experiences of That-Which-Is-Sacred? We start with a short presentation, then break into small worship-sharing or Claremont dialogue groups, guided by queries where we look at our theaological assumptions and experiences as Friends in community. We come back together as a large group to talk about what we've learned before we end.
The Goddess Is Alive and Magic Is Afoot
The Goddess experientially; the spiritual discipline / spiritual practice of magic.
From the description from the 2013 Gathering of Friends:
The Goddess can be a powerful experience for Friends. Magic can be a powerful tool for transformation and change -- spiritual, personal, political, cultural. We’ll spend time with the Goddess in nature, ourselves, and each other, and working with magic as a spiritual and creative discipline. All genders welcome.
(Click here or here for full description)
Winter Solstice Celebrations; A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual
Winter Solstice music; how-to for presenting your own Winter Solstice Celebration using this ritual; and more.
Click here for more information on the Winter Solstice Celebrations and A Winter Solstice Singing Ritual
Sacred Handwork: Handwork in the Light and Handwork as Ministry (for Friends); Handwork as Magic (for Pagans)
What's the difference between making something, and making something in the Light, making something as ministry, making something as a magical working? We explore the practice of handwork as something we do as worship / with intent. Participants bring their own projects, using techniques such as crochet, knit, beadwork, tatting, basketmaking, macrame, and other crafts.
Explicit Friends
Community-building among Quakers who experience the Divine an an explicit way. Here are slightly different descriptions from two times I've presented this workshop at different events, based on the themes for those events:
Every Quaker Has a Place in This Meeting
Three Friends walk into Meeting for Worship: a Christian, a Pagan, a Jew, a Buddhist, a Non-Theist. Each gives vocal ministry from their own experience; all experience gathered worship. Come create the rest of the story: coming together, supporting each other, building community, helping each other sing in our own unique voices, singing in harmony.
Courageously Explicit
Three Friends walk into Meeting for Worship: a Christian, a Pagan, a Jew, and a Non-Theist. Each gives ministry from their own experience; they all experience gathered Worship. Come create the rest of the story: coming together, supporting each other, building community, helping each other be faithful, speaking explicitly.
Designing New Workshops
Does your Meeting, circle, Coven, congregation, fellowship, singing group, etc., have a particular need none of these quite addresses? I'd be happy to work with you to develop a new workshop specific to your situation. Please get in touch!