September 24-26, 2021
Check back here for registration information closer to the event date.
“When I no longer have time to squat and, astonished, watch water striders at play on the rivers clear skin, I’ll know I’ve been to long away from the wood and strayed too far from the actual, that my eyes need to be refreshed.”
– Timothy P. McLaughlin
We have long lived in the illusion that “Nature” is out there somewhere. As if we had to leave the real to find something different. This has led us to want to drink more water for our health, while throwing the plastic bottle out the window along the road. Or build an economy on an industry that cut down enough trees in one state, to build the entire city of Chicago in another. This illusion has been costly and we are just beginning to realize this. We are never not in nature. At the same time, we do need to leave the artificial world of civilization now and then, and touch our wild roots in a forest or near a beautiful lake. This is what this retreat is about. It offers the opportunity to explore the wild beauty out of which “civilization” has come. To encounter a wild Mystery that we try to tame both outside ourselves and inside. Come and join us and our poet elder, Timothy McLaughlin, from New Mexico, on an adventure.
Join us for this time as we gather in nature, and engage in creative ways that will help us explore and integrate with its beauty.
Location:
Circle Pines Center
8650 Mullen Rd. Delton, MI 49046
Retreat Focus
The GREEN MAN Rewilding Retreat will call men to reach into their
soul depths and uncover a natural wild essence typically buried by the swirlings of modernity. Through immersion in nature, sessions of drumming-chant-dance, engagement with poetry and myth, firekeeping, earth-based ritual, and men’s council, the rewilded male waiting in each of us begins to show his face and open his voice.
What Will I Learn?
some fundamental practices, including myth-telling & poetry-speaking, dance & chant, prayer &
ritual, relations with nonhuman entities, and wilderness wanderings.
Poetry Excerpts
“To walk free along a high ridgeline, to plunge into the smooth skin of sea, to lie still on a fresh pallet of felled needles, to stretch my heart over the long strobes of dawn light. . .” from poem “Simple” by Timothy P. McLaughlin
“Society, the world, is transformed by people who believe, who celebrate the presence of God, and who transform the world using symbols, gestures, and the old stories of belief and religion. The starting point is always in community.” RITES OF JUSTICE, by Megan McKenna
“Hail Great Mother-blue-green body of earth, first dancer, first water carrier, womb and tomb of all-we are remembering how to rightly love you, to once more reverence every animate bit of your magnificence, rooted or wandering, all of it touchable, kissable, even edible, as we are.” from poem “Hail Mother” by Timothy P. McLaughlin
“The universe not only has a profound space, but there is also a penetrating interrelationship among all its dimensions and aspects, a web of relationships, that can be described as organic, holistic, and ecological.” THE HOLY WEB, by Cletus Wessel
“How many times have the pines been blown through to sound this song, circling their heads and fluttering their fingers in brilliant surrender to wind or no wind?” from poem, “The Pines” by Timothy P. McLaughlin
“When I see one thing, anything-this fallen branch, for instance-for what it fully is, there can be only one response: praise.” from poem “Feeding the Sun” by Timothy P. McLaughlin
The retreat leader:
Timothy P. McLaughlin is a poet, speaker and coach. He served many years in native education and founded an indigenous youth spoken word program featured in the New York Times and on the PBS
NewsHour. McLaughlin has created two collections of wild earth poetry: Rooted & Risen and the forthcoming Seeds Under the Tongue. He is perhaps best known for his powerful style of embodied poetry recitation and storytelling. Raised with Catholicism, McLaughlin has followed a traditional Lakota spiritual path since early manhood. He lives beside the Santa Fe mountains with his wife, Madi Sato, and their three children.