Unfortunately, due to insufficient registration numbers, we have to cancel this event.
Date: Oct 13-15, 2023 – (a 2-night retreat)
“What is the focus of this retreat?”
In his book, The Hidden Wound, Wendell Berry writes: “If white people have suffered less obviously from racism than black people, they have nevertheless suffered greatly; the cost has been greater perhaps than we can yet know. If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of that wound into himself. As a member of the dominant race, he has felt little compulsion to acknowledge it or speak of it; the more painful it has grown the more deeply he has hidden it within himself. But the wound is there, and it is a profound disorder, as great a damage in his mind as it is in his society.
This wound is in me, as complex and deep in my flesh as blood and nerves. I have borne it all my life, with varying degrees of consciousness, but always carefully, always with the most delicate consideration for the pain I would feel if I were somehow forced to acknowledge it. But now I am increasingly aware of the opposite compulsion. I want to know, as fully and exactly as I can, what the wound is and how much I am suffering from it. And I want to be cured; I want to be free of the wound myself, and I do not want to pass it on to my children. (pp,3-4)
This retreat was created for white men who are committed to the struggle to end White supremacy, have begun to awaken to how the construct of Whiteness has profoundly damaged and distorted their own humanity, and are looking for a supportive community where they can gather to face, grieve, and seek healing from their own moral and psychic wounds. Only by taking this crucial inner journey of healing can Whites truly prepare themselves to be part of the multi-racial coalitions required to end the global racism that manifests in the ongoing destruction of all human and other-than-human communities.
What to expect:
This retreat offers a safe and brave space for white men to take a crucial journey of discovering, grieving, and beginning to heal from the moral and psychic wounds caused by the construct of Whiteness. Taking this journey will not only provide a greater possibility for wholeness on a personal level, but will also help white men to be better allies in confronting the systemic nature of white supremacy in our world
There will be five whole group gatherings scheduled during the retreat that will invite a deeper understanding and engagement with the theme. There will also be times to wander in nature, journal, do artwork, and have small group conversations that will help to foster soulful connections with the natural world and the other men at the retreat.
Related Quotes and Recommended Reading
“I will flatly say that the bulk of this country’s white population impresses me, and has so impressed me for a very long time, as being beyond any conceivable hope of moral rehabilitation. They have been white, if I may put it, too long…” (James Baldwin, The New York Times, Feb. 2, 1969).
“Since English and American law could not countenance unfree human beings who had not broken the law, the Englishmen and Americans who wanted to own slaves had to divest their victims of humanity itself, to render them less than human in order to seize the slaves’ freedom and live morally and intellectually with themselves. This feat required the slave owner to look into the face of his slave and see no human.”
“Under Anglo-American law, the system could have been justified and lived with no other way, leaving white Americans today with what may be the most difficult psychological wounds human beings can suffer – the self-disfiguration that is the consequence of having denied the humanity of human beings.” (The Accommodation-The Politics of Race in an American City by Jim Shutze: p. 52-53).
“If white people have suffered less obviously from racism than black people, they have nevertheless suffered greatly; the cost has been greater perhaps than we can yet know. If the white man has inflicted the wound of racism upon black men, the cost has been that he would receive the mirror image of that wound into himself. As a member of the dominant race, he has felt little compulsion to acknowledge it or speak of it; the more painful it has grown the more deeply he has hidden it within himself. But the wound is there, and it is a profound disorder, as great a damage in his mind as it is in his society.
“This wound is in me, as complex and deep in my flesh as blood and nerves. I have borne it all my life, with varying degrees of consciousness, but always carefully, always with the most delicate consideration for the pain I would feel if I were somehow forced to acknowledge it . But now I am increasingly aware of the opposite compulsion. I want to know, as fully and exactly as I can, what the wound is and how much I am suffering from it. And I want to be cured; I want to be free of the wound myself, and I do not want to pass it on to my children.
“Perhaps this is only wishful thinking; perhaps such a thing is not to be done by one man, or in one generation. Surely a man would have to be almost dangerously proud to think himself capable of it. And so maybe I am really saying only that I feel an obligation to make the attempt, and that I know if I fail to make at least the attempt I forfeit any right to hope that the world will be better than it is now.”
(Wendell Berry, The Hidden Wound, pp. 3-4).
“But I want to tell you something. This pattern this ‘system’ that the white man created, of teaching Negroes to hide the truth from him behind a facade of grinning, ‘yessir-bossing,’ foot-shuffling and head-scratching–that system has done the American man more harm than an invading army would do to him.” (The Autobiography of Malcolm X).
“Grief is usually thought of as a product of losing something or someone. But what happens if parts of myself were tied off at the stump with the fine threads of White Culture, never allowed to develop in the first place? What is the absence of humanity inside of me created by Whiteness? And what would it mean to fully grieve that absence?” (Abraham Lateiner, “Grieving the White Void,” Medium, 3/24/2016).
Recommended reading
The Hidden Wound, by Wendell Berry
Grieving the White Void article by Abraham Lateiner
The Lost People article by Thom Hartmann in The Hartmann Report
The retreat leaders:
Bryan Smith –
served as an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church (USA) for over 30 years. He also is a certified spiritual director and life coach as well as a trained facilitator of human development through the Animas Valley Institute. He serves as a guide at the Center for Wild Spirituality and has done anti-racism work for over 20 years. He completed his M.R.O.P. in 2014 at Pilgrim Park, IL.
Bryan’s passion is to help others to discover the richness and vastness of their own depths so that they can live out their truest and most meaningful purpose in life.
Glenn Siegel, M.D. –
Glenn Siegel, M.D. is a retired psychiatrist who has entered a larger conversation with Wholeness and Self-Healing through the wisdom of the more-than-human world. He is also a Wild Mind guide trained through the Animas Valley Institute (Bill Plotkin). Glenn has an enduring commitment to add both his voice and actions to the dismantling of patriarchal hierarchy, white supremacy/racism, and gender based inequities. He completed his M.R.O.P. in 2016 at Aravaipa Canyon, AZ, and his Elder Rites of Passage in 2018 at Ekone Ranch, WA. Glenn is also an Illuman Wisdom Elder emeritus.
Glenn is called to be a change agent for cultural renaissance, particularly in the realm of white consciousness.
