Advent Workshop: Living in the Poetry of Our Bodies

Originally Published on the website of Oblate School of Theology

December 3 @ 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM

$50.00

Dec 3 | 10:00AM – 1:00PM (Lunch included) | OBLATE RENEWAL CENTER

As the holidays move into high gear, we often find ourselves exhausted, moving at a frenetic pace, with our fight/flight/freeze instinct in overdrive.

If you would like to enter Advent this year at a more contemplative pace, to move thoughtfully into the season, please join us for a two-hour workshop that integrates the body-mind through intentional mindfulness practices including gentle movement, written reflection, aroma therapy, and poetry. These are practices that can ground us in respite, so that we may enter the joy of Christmas with deep gratitude and nurturing hope. We will close our time together with lunch.

Copies of Horizons of Joy: Poetic Thresholds for Winter and its Companion Journal (River Lily Press 2021) will be provided for all participants. We look forward to being with you!

Feature Image: photo by Andrea Ptak

Workshop Facilitators

Terri E. Boggess, Ph.D.  After 48 years of Teaching, (32 of those years serving as a Professor at St. Mary’s University), I retired in May. During the time I served as the Chair of the Exercise and Sport Science Department at St. Mary’s, I taught several different classes throughout the years and found myself becoming very passionate about teaching Wholistic Wellness. As the students (and all of us) learn to recognize the interconnectedness within our own bodies, our hearts open and allow us to embody the wisdom of St. Irenaeus: “The glory of God is the human being fully alive”!  In this workshop, my role will be to introduce Wholistic Wellness and then lead the participants in very gentle practices that will allow each person to experience Breathwork using aromatherapy (by choice) and Embodied Practices such as Meditation and Yoga taught as prayer……Hopefully leaving everyone feeling “fully alive” !

Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill, Ph.D., FRSA.  I am a wife, mother, poet, professor, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. I am happiest teaching, learning, and researching the interconnections among language, peace, creativity, and compassion, whether that’s in the privacy of our own lives or in community with others. This feeds my belief that “love plays the long game in the dialectic of our becoming”, whether that’s the back-and-forth within ourselves, within our families and colleagues, or within our larger communities. In this workshop, my role is to introduce a prayerful practice of words, “meditative etymologies,” to tap into how we become what Melanie A. May calls, “the flesh of our words.”

Registration

Workshop Fee: $50.00

Fee includes the books, Horizons of Joy: Poetic Thresholds for Winter and The Companion Journal.  Fee also includes lunch.

Participants are encouraged to bring a light jacket/shawl, reusable water bottle, and writing materials.

For information or to register by phone, contact Victoria Luna, Director of Continuing Education, at vluna@ost.edu or (210) 341-1366 EXT 325.