from
China Galland
Dear Friends:
Here are the details for
the two ongoing groups I am leading, beginning February, 2008, in
Marin County, California.
You can still enroll in my week-long
class starting January 28, at GTU in Berkeley through first class.
(click to see more
on GTU class below)
February 20 - June 11, 2008,
The Black Madonna Study Group
China Galland and Catlyn Fendler
Limited enrollment.
Admission by phone interview only.
Tuition:
$375
email or call
415/451-7497
Six meetings total,
five Wednesday nights, 7:00 - 9:30 PM ( private home), 2/20, 3/19,
4/16, 5/14, 6/11
and, on 5/24, 1:00 -
5 PM: a gathering and labyrinth walk at
St. Gregory's
Church, San Francisco,
www.saintgregorys.org
The ancient image of
the Black Madonna, “Our Mother Moist Earth,” is the archetype we need
now in order to tap the energy for change. Meeting monthly, we'll
build altars, meditate and sit together in counsel in order to create
a safe place, a vessel in which we can explore the myriad images of
the Dark Mother. Within this structure, individuals will be encouraged
to explore specific forms of the Madonna to which they are drawn and
share their discoveries with us. Catlyn Fendler is a teacher,
trained labyrinth facilitator and a long-time student and colleague of
China's. (
(click to see below
GTU course
description for more on the Black Madonna). DVDs, slides,
videos of pilgrimage sites will be shown periodically.
February 21 - May 29, 2008,
Together We Can Do What We
Could Never Do Alone
A Writing
Class with China Galland
Limited enrollment.
Admission by phone interview only.
Tuition:
$400
email or call
415/451-7497.
Eight classes. Every
other Thursday, 7:00 - 9:30 PM : 2/21, 3/6, 3/20, 4/3, 4/17, 5/1,
5/15, 6/5
Prior experience not
required, but commitment is. This class will build on the
particular energy that grows when we gather together with a shared
intention to locate and express our deepest truth. China will
offer exercises, meditations, assignments and guidelines for
responding to each other in ways that are helpful, supportive, and
clear. Students will learn strategies for disarming the inner critic
and ways to enter their own creative flow. China is particularly
interested in weaving together material from daily life with the
collective struggles of these extraordinary times, exploring the
permeability of boundaries between the spiritual, the political and
the personal.
January 28 - February 1, 2008, Monday – Friday, 1 - 5 p.m.
1
Awakening the Energy for Change:
The Black Madonna
and the Womb of God
A Graduate Theological Union Intersession course, taught by
China Galland,
M.A., Director of the Keepers of Love and Images of Divinity Projects
for CARE, the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education
Pacific School of Religion
Graduate Theological Union
1798 Scenic Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709
Mudd Building, Room 102
Class
Description
Our survey and exploration of this
more-than thousand-year old venerable Christian tradition of Black or
Dark Madonnas (Mary and the Christ Child) will be situated within the
urgency of our times. As we gather amidst newly revealed wonders of
light and teeming creation in the darkness of outer space we face ch
anges
on earth beyond our wildest imaginings. We read of exploding stars,
are confounded by the immeasurability of black holes and dark matter
in the galaxies see images of spiraling bright gases like the
photograph of the Eagle Nebula at the left taken by the Hubble
Telescope. Below, at the earth’s poles, we find that the world’s most
sophisticated scientific computer modelings of atmospheric changes
continually fall short of the real-time alterations we see taking
place. Whether we calculate the shrinkage of ice masses around the
globe or add up the number of species we lose annually --- 20,000 to
30,000 --- we cannot grasp through numbers what the heart already
knows --- we are unmoored --- from the earth and from each other.
Increasingly, dangerously, the world turns to its religions for security
when there is none. Our study of the Black Madonna is an attempt to
help us right ourselves. Rooted in the earth’s beginnings, the
celebration of this long-denied tradition of the earthy, dark,
feminine face of God can help us balance the complexities and
contradictions of our age.
The patron of Brazil is a small coal black Madonna, Our Lady of
Aparecida, venerated as the Mother of the Excluded. Whether in the New
Testament of Christians, the tales of the Hasidim (Jewish), or
of the Sufis (Muslim), medieval
alchemical texts, Buddhist tales, or in indigenous wisdom the world
over, we are told that whatever
it is that we have rejected is the only thing that will serve as the
cornerstone of a new foundation.
The ancient image of “Our Mother Moist Earth” may be the very figure
we need now. We will approach this tradition of incarnate spirituality
both academically and experientially through the daily construction of
altars, short writing exercises on the images we see and original
video footage from pilgrimages in Galland’s private collection. Seen
from perspective of a positive darkness, this fertile tradition can
help moor us and anchor us now. Thomas Berry, the visionary
eco-theologian, tells us that archetypes such as the Great Mother are
“the main instruments for the evocation of the energy needed for the
renewal of the earth.”
1On
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008, 1 - 5 p.m., the class will meet at St.
Gregory of Nysssa’s, a frescoed Episcopal Church dedicated to the arts
and liturgy, where China will be joined by trained Labyrinth
facilitators Catlyn Fendler, M.A. and Anna Cook, for a lecture, "The
Black Madonna and the Labyrinth,” and an opportunity to walk
Fendler and Cook's 7-circuit labyrinth which they will lay out
in the round on the floor of St. Gregory's. Musical
accompaniment and Taize chants will be provided by guest musician
Kayleen Abso of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Logistics
This class is open to participants
outside of the GTU for auditing. C.E.U.s are available. You do not
have to be enrolled as a GTU student to
take this class. Outside participants welcome, suggested donation is
$400. Please make your check payable to “The Center for the
Arts, Religion, and Education” (CARE), with “Keepers
of Love” (KOL) on the memo line. CARE
and KOL process non-GTU students
separately. Mail your check to: China Galland, The Keepers of Love, 20
Sunnyside Ave., Suite A, Mill Valley, CA 94941. Please call
415/451-7497 if you have questions.
For GTU students this graduate level intensive, RHHR 1118, is an
Intersession program for which academic credit is available.
Registration is through the Graduate Theological Union’s Registrar’s
office: cro@gtu.edu.
Out of town participants may be able to find housing near
campus in Berkeley at the French Hotel or at the Bancroft Hotel. Both
hotels as well as many restaurants are within walking distance of the
GTU. On Wednesday students will hopefully carpool to San Francisco.
About China Galland
Galland’s
books, from the classic, prize-winning Longing for Darkness: Tara
and the Black Madonna; The Bond Between Women, a Journey to
Fierce Compassion, to her newest non-fiction, Love Cemetery,
Unburying the Secret History of Slaves, and others, mark a
pioneer’s
path. Weaving together the seemingly disparate worlds of myth,
comparative religion, personal narrative, theology, anthropology,
history and private realms of discourse, Galland's books have
been praised by scholars and authors alike, including Bill Moyers,
Sue Monk Kidd, Barry Lopez, Jack Kornfield, Isabel Allende, Paul
Hawken, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and others. For more, visit
www.chinagalland.com.
Newsletter design by Corey Fischer;
photos: (top to bottom): Chartres Labyrinth: Cindy Pavlinek; Icon of
Sojourner Truth by Mark Dukes (One of the many "Dancing Saints" at St.
Gregory's); Earth, cgi: Jack Larmour; Eagle Nebula from
the Hubble Telescope; Ostrobramska, Lithuanian Black Madonna: photographer, unknown. Painting by Janet McKenzie: "The Keepers of
Love," from Love Cemetery; photo of China: Dan Lent and
Kathleena Gorga.