Category: Events

 

On April 10 in Portland OR, we offer “Can the Blessed Virgin hold the hearts of goddess women?” Led by Michael McDermott and friends, the special event includes readings from the late Patricia Monaghan’s Mary: A Life in Verse and first-person accounts of Mary’s influence on women’s lives.  Michael says, “If anyone has tales of the hold of Mary, come prepared to share.”

 

Michael was Patricia’s husband and creative partner in the Black Earth Institute, a think tank dedicated to re-forging the links between art and spirit, earth and society.

 

Reviewer Dennis Daly says Mary: A Life in Verse “magnifies a simple naïve young woman into a goddess of secular goodness and the preternatural hope of mankind.”

 

Annie Finch, American Witch poet and performer, calls Mary: A Life in Verse “A remarkable, absorbing, and quietly revolutionary book” that offers readers

the sweet and sublime fruit of an attentive and courageous spiritual life. It brings us a new Mary, a Mary for the world and for the ages, who stretches beyond the limits of the Christian story and partakes of something far more ancient, larger, and more glorious: Mary as a woman, and a goddess.

 

A celebrated writer and editor, Patricia Monaghan was our beloved co-founder of ASWM. Much of her extensive work focused on mythology and spirituality, especially Irish and women’s spirituality. Her books include The Encyclopedia of Goddesses and Heroines, Wild Girls, The Red-Haired Girl from the Bog. She also edited Goddesses in World Culture and The Encyclopedia of Celtic Myth and Folklore.

 

Join us for this celebration of Patricia’s work and an important reclaiming of Mary in the lives of modern women. The event is held in conjunction with our 2015 symposium.  It begins at 7:30 on April 10 at the Red Lion Hotel on the River in Portland, Oregon. It’s free and open to the public.

As you plan to join us in Portland for our 2015 Symposium (April 11), be sure to include enough time to join us for special free events before and after our day program.  On Friday night the program begins with a special event held in conjunction with the Black Earth Institute:

7:30 pm at Red Lion Hotel on the River–free and open to the public

““Can the Blessed Virgin hold the heart of goddess women?” A celebration and reading from Patricia Monaghan’s Mary:  A Life in Verse with Michael McDermott.  If anyone has tales of the hold of Mary, come prepared to share.

 

And after the day of presentations, we’re happy to announce a wealth of talents hosted by the Women of We’Moon:

7:30-9:30 pm at Red Lion Hotel on the River–free and open to the public

SACRED SHINDIG: A Sharing Circle

with Goddess play, Goddess stories, songs, jokes and other shenanigans!

• Including Performance by Bethroot Gwynn (“A Wisdom Goddess Mind Play”)
• Spoken Word by Lea Bayles (“Wild Wisdom”)
• Inspirations by SisterSpirit Women’s Spirituality Circle
• Anthem by Naomi Littlebear Morena and Izetta Smith
• And surprise interactive offerings

Priestess of Ceremony: Marna Hauk

Priestess of Song: Barbara Dickinson

 Wear your Sacred Garb! Be ready for a Circle of Participatory Power

“Who Is Telling the Story? A Few Remarks on the Mythic Imagination”

 

The wondrous events and magic depicted in myth mirror the creative process

of storytelling in countless ways. Using her own experience as a writer as

well as that of other contemporary and classic writers and poets, Griffin

will describe the often mysterious alchemical process by which words and

rhymes, plots, turns of plots, characters, scenes and even whole landscapes

enter the imaginary realm of the tale, a process which challenges many of

the dualities engrained in modern consciousness.

Meaning to Writing or Writing Meaning

Friday, April 10, 2015  9 AM to 3 PM

First Unitarian Church, 1011 SW 12th Ave., Portland, OR

Details:  $55.  Bring sack lunch; tea and coffee provided

To register: kradditz@firstunitarianportland.org

Whether you have never gotten around to writing before or you are an accomplished, like most of us, you have probably faced a blank page thinking you don’t know what to say. Often this feeling can prevent you from writing anything at all. In this workshop we will explore the way that the process of creative writing is less about knowing than discovering meaning. From developing trust in intuition, to listening to the sounds words make, to exploring metaphorical and mythic resonances, to exploring the significant “accidents” we call synchronistic, to allowing endings to develop naturally, often surprising us, literature gives us a different path for finding meaning. We will do some writing in class and talk about all the angels and monsters we have encountered along this path.

Susan Griffin is an internationally celebrated writer whose books have been translated into 17 languages and widely anthologized. Among twenty books, Woman and Nature is considered  a classic of the environmental movement and  A Chorus of Stones: the Private Life of War was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. The recipient of an NEA Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, an Emmy Award, and the Commonwealth Club’s Silver Medal for poetry, she has taught writing on college campuses and in community centers throughout the United States and internationally.