{"id":2774,"date":"2012-06-22T19:30:14","date_gmt":"2012-06-22T23:30:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=2774"},"modified":"2013-11-30T16:04:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-30T21:04:31","slug":"retreat-with-matthew-fox","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/?p=2774","title":{"rendered":"Retreat with Matthew Fox"},"content":{"rendered":"

The weekend of May 25-27 I went to Adelynrood<\/a> for a weekend retreat with Matthew Fox. When I went into the chapel on the tour of the place, it felt just like Iona. I first remembered the other chapel, a small one where we had sung, and then remembered it was on Iona.\u00a0 I told Tiziana, and she looked into the distance for a moment, and then said \u201cYes!\u201d\u00a0 The art on the walls is fun.\u00a0 Many medieval type pictures, also some wonderful primitives.\u00a0 I hear a bird saying \u201cPeter, peter, peter\u201d \u2014 familiar from Ohio.\u00a0 Maybe a cardinal.\u00a0 A beautiful time of year to be here.\u00a0 The breeze blows familiar scents my way, I think it must be lilac, again evocative of Cincinnati in the spring time.\u00a0 (Momentary flash of the screen porch and the terrace where I grew up \u2014 I\u2019ve been having odd flashes of the past \u2014 places, songs \u2014 parts of me waking up and integrating?)<\/p>\n

The group is interesting.\u00a0 Many people are priests or ministers.\u00a0 There\u2019s even a woman priest ordained as Catholic (by a bishop who’s name is being kept quiet, on a boat in the middle of the Ste Lawrence River because the original church had received a bomb threat.)\u00a0 There\u2019s another woman, very intense, with a South American flavor, I wish I knew her story. (She was Tiziana, I asked her about herself, and she said that among other things she had developed a new kind of healing and was trying to make sure it got taught to enough people so it could keep going.)<\/p>\n

Tonight he quoted Bede Griffiths \u201cDon\u2019t fight existing reality.\u00a0 Build a new model that makes the old one obsolete.\u201d\u00a0 I realized that that\u2019s what Neskaya IS, a model of the new reality!\u00a0 I wanted to raise my hand and say I was Priestess of a small fringe congregation.\u00a0 That we have no dogma, no god, no allegiance one must swear to.\u00a0 The only requirement is that you like to dance.\u00a0 Our defining metaphor is a circle.\u00a0 Although Neskaya, Inc has a Board of Trustees, and a President, there is no hierarchy of power.\u00a0 The President of Neskaya has been seen cleaning bathrooms.\u00a0 When one of our Circle Dancing community was murdered last summer, we held a memorial service to which 50 people came.\u00a0 There was no structure, we began with a dance that brought us into a circle, and after that it unfolded organically.\u00a0 People offered poems, stories about our friend, and asked for and offered dances.\u00a0 I think that\u2019s a testament to the energy field we have created.\u00a0 Many people say they feel welcomed and at home as soon as they walk into the building.\u00a0 At Neskaya, we are living the world we want to see.<\/p>\n

Matt Fox told us yesterday, that someone he respected from the South American Liberation Christianity had told him \u201cDon\u2019t worry about the Vatican.\u00a0 It\u2019s going to crumble and collapse like the Berlin Wall did.\u201d\u00a0 Matt also told us Mussolini\u2019s definition of Fascism: when the corporations and the government are working together.\u00a0 He also told us about a \u201csecret\u201d group within the Catholic church, called \u201cOpus Dei,\u201d a very fascist organization that apparently has its tentacles in every branch of government.\u00a0\u00a0 When he talked about the Vatican crumbling, I had a sudden sense of the chaos we\u2019re living in, the whole thing could crumble and realign in the twinkling of an eye.\u00a0 It\u2019s all suddenly much more fluid, not so rigid as I had been imagining.<\/p>\n

Matthew quotes Hildegarde of Bingen: \u201cBe strong like a tree.\u201d\u00a0 Each of us is born with a \u201cgolden tent\u201d folded up inside, and our life is a journey to set up our tent.<\/p>\n

Matthew says a prophet\u2019s primary function is to shake up denial.\u00a0 He\u2019s good at that.<\/p>\n

We did an exercise in communal grief Saturday night.\u00a0 We got down on the floor on hands & knees, put the top of our heads on the floor to create a sounding chamber.\u00a0 Then we allowed ourselves to make whatever sounds wanted to come from our solar plexus.\u00a0 At the end we sat up and toned \u201cAhhhhhhh….\u201d\u00a0 At one point we read all the names of people who had been silenced or killed by the Vatican.\u00a0 There were 101.\u00a0 The list went around the room, and readers added two more names. Afterward we lined up with candles in our left hands, right hand on the left shoulder of the person in front.\u00a0 We processed out to the dancing lawn and our firepit with the \u201cpilgrim step\u201d \u2014 three steps forward and one step back.\u00a0 The music was from Ray Price\u2019s Suite about the killing of the Cathars by the Inquisition.\u00a0 We walked into a circle and continued moving until the music was over.\u00a0 Then we faced the center and sang \u201cBy the Waters of Babylon\u201d while the young people placed 103 small stones (for the silenced) in the sand in the firebasket.\u00a0 Then we added our candles one by one.\u00a0 Some people stayed around the fire singing, but I went to bed.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re here to create communities of resistance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sunday morning was Pentecost.\u00a0 We went to the Chapel for what was called a \u201cRebaptising\u201d service.\u00a0 The chairs were set in a circle, a table in the center with the Bread and Wine.\u00a0 A big blue pottery bowl full of water stood at the chancel rail and completed our circle.\u00a0 The service was very similar to the one I had gone to earlier.\u00a0 At one point there was a chance to share.\u00a0 The words were in the service booklet, so I showed them the body prayer I learned so many years ago.\u00a0 \u201cCome Holy Spirit!\u00a0 Fill our hearts with your fire.\u00a0 Then send us forth, send us forth, and we will renew the face of the earth.\u201d\u00a0 Then we went up in two lines to the bowl of water, to \u201crebaptise\u201d ourselves.\u00a0 Most people dipped their fingers in the water, put it on their foreheads and went on the make the sign of the cross.\u00a0 I took a double handful of water and tossed it up into the air.\u00a0 I could see the drops sparkle in the light.\u00a0 The final dance was a very simple one to a recording of Anya singing \u201cLord of the Dance.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The weekend of May 25-27 I went to Adelynrood for a weekend retreat with Matthew Fox. When I went into the chapel on the tour of the place, it felt just like Iona. I first remembered the other chapel, a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,6,11,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-activism","category-circle-dance","category-present-day","category-spirit"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jennydeupree.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}