Way of the Rose
Led by Clark Strand
Friday, June 17 – Sunday, June 19, 2016
Roses are older than human beings, millions of years older, and the rosary’s roots are deep in the earth. Emerging in the Middle Ages as a way of grafting devotion to the Virgin onto older forms of Goddess worship, the rosary spread quickly throughout the world—a subtly subversive folk practice that is both dirt simple and sky high. For those confronted by the frightening realities of ecological collapse…for Catholics who seek a saner relationship to the body…for pilgrims on the path of the divine feminine—here is an ancient devotion that offers intimacy with nature and each other and ourselves. Held in the rosary—with its circular pattern of birth, death and rebirth—is the path of sanity and ecological sobriety we traveled on for a million years or more—a path we can still find our way back to once we take up a rosary and allow Our Lady to lead us by the hand. This is The Way of the Rose.
This workshop will invite participants to experience a Way of the Rose fellowship meeting. We will make rosaries together and share the prayers that allow us to feel held by our Mother, the Mother of all. This workshop is appropriate for people of all religious persuasions—and anyone who feels the need in their lives for something to hold on to.
Clark Strand, a former senior editor at Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, has been studying the world’s spiritual traditions for more than thirty years. The author of Waking the Buddha, Meditation Without Gurus, How to Believe in God, and Seeds from a Birch Tree, Strand has written for The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post/Newsweek “On Faith” blog. He is the founder of Way of the Rose, a growing nonsectarian rosary fellowship open to people of any spiritual background, with members around the world. He lives on a dark road with no streetlights in the southern Catskill Mountains.
Cost: $295, deposit: $80