Category: Events

Among the Goddesses:

Interactive Writing Ritual for Healing and Justice

This interactive writing ritual is designed “to provide participants with closure and catharsis as we synthesize the gifts of the 2017 ASWM program through imaginative transformation. We will open by invoking goddesses of chaos, loss, mourning, justice, transformation, and peace.”  After the invocation, participants will be guided in a three part writing ritual of naming, releasing, and healing, designed to shift our stories into narratives of power. Our final group ritual will weave sacred dance, circling, drumming, and chanting with the words we have written, offering a focused and inspiring doorway out of the symposium into the rest of the world.  Please bring writing implements and any ceremonial attire you desire.

Annie Finch is a an award-winning poet, writer, and performer. Her many books of poetry and poetics include Spells: New and Selected Poems; Eve; and Among the Goddesses, awarded the 2010 Sarasvati Award in Poetry from ASWM.  Her column on woman-centered spirituality appears regularly in The Huffington Post, and she is currently completing her next book, A Witch’s Way.  Subscriptions to Annie’s Spells and Poetry Witch Musings are available at anniefinch.com.

 

Pendle Hill is a Quaker study, retreat, and conference center located in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, just outside Philadelphia.

Pendle Hill was established in 1930 as a Quaker study center designed to prepare its adult students for service both in the Religious Society of Friends and in the world. The founders envisioned the new school as “a vital center of spiritual culture” and “a place for training leaders.”

Today, Pendle Hill continues to be a vibrant experiment in adult religious education, through its conferences, publications, and online resources. At the heart of its programs are the foundational principles of “equality of opportunity and respect for individuals, simplicity of the educational and material environment, harmony of inward and outward actions, community in daily life and in the seeking of the Spirit.”

 

Our 2017 symposium sessions will take place in the historic Brinton House, overlooking the woods and pond, and located a short walk from the Main House where our meals will take place. Pendle Hill is located on 23 beautiful acres of grounds. We encourage you to come early to enjoy walking the mile long woodchip trail, through “miniature ecosystems” with140 species of trees and flowering shrubs.

Pendle Hill is located just outside Philadelphia, easy to reach by car, train, or plane. It’s a Five-minute drive from Media and Swarthmore College and 20 minutes from Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges.

 

At our 2017 symposium, ASWM members will be treated to a special concert by the Anna Crusis Women’s Choir (ANNA), Philadelphia’s own feminist choir.   We will also recognize the long time work of ANNA by presenting them with the 2017 Brigit Award for Excellence in the Arts. For over 40 years, the Choir has empowered, challenged and uplifted audiences with music that inspires, provokes, delights and informs.

ANNA is a premier performing arts group in the greater Philadelphia region, supporting critical causes including promoting peace, guarding reproductive rights, ending poverty, achieving gender equality, supporting the LGBTQ community, fighting rape and abuse – anywhere that music can bring a sense of empowerment.

At the same time, ANNA is committed to musical excellence and to the creation of new music by commissioning works from women composers. They have performed at such diverse venues as Carnegie Hall, the Tannenbaum Center for Interreligious Education at the United Nations, and the Women’s Rights Convention at Seneca Falls, NY. Their songs unite women of all economic backgrounds, sexual orientations, ages, and racial and religious heritages.  In their own words:

We believe in using music as a force for social change. We often focus our vision on women’s issues and lives in all of our diversity. We create an open and welcoming space for people who love lifting their voices in song and who share the belief that music is the currency of hope.

Registration is now closed for our 2017 Symposium in Philadelphia,  “Mythology, Women and Society:  Growing the Groundswell.”

We will meet at Pendle Hill Retreat Center for a program of scholarship and arts, and a community conversation about women, society and justice:

• Peggy Reeves Sanday–Keynote:  “The Matrixial Foundation of Maternal Cultural Meanings in Myth and Ritual,” exploring the matriarchal cultures of the Muoso and Minangkabau
• Annie Finch–a writing ritual for justice and healing
• Lucia Birnbaum and Cristina Biaggi–transformative justice
• Lisa Levart –“Art, Activism and the Goddess”
• Anna Crusis Women’s Choir–evening concert

Our schedule includes such topics as The Mothers of #Black Lives Matter, Biblical heroines and queer theory, Algerian mythology, Eco-Justice, Hildegard von Bingen and Anatolian Great Mothers.

Come early on Friday for interest groups discussions about film and intuitive knowledge, and other topics of interest.  Those who register may apply for our Marketplace.

Update: Interest Groups will meet at 7:30 Friday evening, in the Brinton House

1.  Film and Filmmakers will meet Friday evening.  They will offer a special screening of “As She Is,” a new film by Megan McFeely, who will participate in the group’s conversation about the feminine principle and individual power for change.  This is an authentic and beautiful documentary about a woman’s real quest into the unconscious to claim what was missing..to integrate the masculine with the feminine and give birth to herself. 
2. Nondominant Ways of Knowing:  Intuition and Divination.  This group will consider the relationship between our women’s wisdom, intuition, and methods to divine insight.  Nancy Vedder-Shults will be on hand to discuss her new book, The World Is Your Oracle.
3. Chant, Song, and (maybe) Dancing:  This group will get us centered through bringing our voices together. Weather permitting, we will meet outside where we can dance together.

For more information contact our Events team.

Mythology, Women and Society: Growing the Groundswell

March 25, 2017, Brinton House, Pendle Hill,  Philadelphia PA

8:00-8:30 – REGISTRATION (Dining Hall & Brinton House)

8:30-9:30  KEYNOTE

The Matrixial Foundation of Maternal Cultural Meanings in Myth and Ritual

Dr. Peggy Reeves Sanday, Professor of Anthropology, University of Pennsylvania

 

9:45-11:15 SESSION 1: Motherhood in Patriarchy

Moderator: Marna Hauk

1. Priscilla Hobbs-Penn, Finding Demeter: Re-Imagining the Myth of Motherhood for Millennials
2. Carla Ionescu, The Myth of Athena/Medusa–Justice and War: The Duality of Women’s Roles in Patriarchal Politics [skype]
3. Donna Giancola, Women, Land, and Eco-justice

 

9:45-11:15 SESSION 2: Biblical Heroines and Social Justice

Moderator: Joan Cichon

1. Jessica Bowman, Riding the Spiral: Social Justice, Mystic Creativity, and Goddess Consciousness
2. Caralie Focht, The Butch Goddess: A Queer Reading of Exodus 2-6
3. Judith Wouk, Justice for Hidden Heroines – Delilah
4. Hadassah Nechushta, Justice for Hidden Heroines – Queen Nechushta

 

11:15-12:45 PM  Networking Lunch (Dining Hall)

 

1:00-2:30 SESSION 3: Writing Workshop

Among the Goddesses: A Writing Ritual for Justice and Healing

Annie Finch

 

1:00 – 2:30 SESSION 4: Matricultures and Social Justice

Moderator: Gayatri Devi

1. Mary Louise Stone, Empowered Leadership from a Motherline of the Americas
2. Gayatri Devi, Mothering as an Imaginary of Political Peace: Mothers of the #BlackLivesMatter Movement and the Democratic Process
3. Laura Zegel, Black Mother Within: Retrieving Our Selves from Racism and Sexism Through the Black Madonna

 

2.45 – 4:15   SESSION 5: Goddess Wisdom Righting Wrongs: Three Transnational Stories

Moderator: Dawn Work-Makinne

1. Dawn Work-Makinne, Sibyl of the Rhine: Hildegard von Bingen as a Northern Wisdomkeeper
2. Monica Mody, The Borderlands Feminine: A Feminist, Decolonial Framework for Remythologizing the Goddess in South Asia/Transnational Culture
3. Irene Wolfstone, Indigenous Matricultures in North America [skype]

 

2:45 – 4:15   SESSION 6: Embodiment and Mysticism: New Sisterhood in the Academy

Moderator: Gayatri Devi

1. Annalisa Derr, Invoking Inanna: Female Bodily Wisdom of Cyclical Renewal as the New Societal Model
2. Gina Belton, Soror Mystica Wears a Red Dress: The Alchemy of Midwifery and Decolonization in Our Last Wild Place
3. Megan McFeeley, Alone Together: Social Activism From Inside
4. April Heaslip, Reinitiating Psyche: The Academy as Sisterhood

 

4:30 – 5:45 PLENARY: From Groundswell to Eruption: Transformative Justice

• Cristina Biaggi, Volcano Goddesses
• Lucia Birnbaum, Future has an ancient heart. case: Blackbird and Pear Tree

 

6:00 – 7:30 DINNER BREAK

 

7:30 – 9:00 PM  GODDESS IN ART AND SONG

• Lisa Levart, Art, Activism and the Goddess
• Anna Crusis Women’s Choir, Concert