Category: Fall Conference

Queer Bodies/Gay Spirit

September 28 – October 1, 2023

The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center, Highlands NC

4 Day/3 Night Package (Thursday through Sunday)

Bunk House (shared room up to 4 people) $285.00

Lodge or Duplex Cabin (double occupancy) $330.00

For All Rooms, Add Mandatory GSV Program Fee $100.00
Check out the Registration System for Optional Extra Nights Before and After the Conference

Register Now!

Convener: Jonny “Mothra” Gray
Keynote Speaker: Tim Miller

Greetings, Siblings!

This is the “last call” for participation and registration for the Gay Spirit Visions 2023 Fall Conference! Tim Miller, our keynote speaker, is excited to work with us on community building through the stories in our bodies. And our GSV siblings have really stepped up to offer a great slate of workshops.

If you are curious about the kind of work Tim Miller has been doing for the queer community, the following URL includes the Canadian documentary, “Tim Miller: Loud & Queer.” The documentary chronicles Tim’s work with gay men’s groups in New York City in the early 1990s. https://vitheque.com/en/titles/tim-miller-loud-queer

Important Information

The conference begins on Thursday, September 28. Check-in at The Mountain begins at 3:00 p.m. EDT. There will be an informal reception at 5:00 p.m., new attendee orientation at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 6:00 p.m., and opening ceremonies will commence at about 7:30 p.m.

The conference ends with lunch on Sunday, October 1. We anticipate lunch will be served between 12:30 p.m. and 1:00 p.m. If you don’t have to hit the road right away, you are welcome to stay after lunch and assist the various working circles with clean up, but we understand many of you may have a long commute.

Finally, you may be following the summer uptick in COVID-19 cases in some parts of the U.S.; so are the GSV Council and the Fall Conference Convener. GSV and The Mountain are currently following CDC guidelines for dealing with large group gatherings, which emphasize personal responsibility. Those guidelines and our plans can change; we will keep you notified if they do. As with other elements of GSV, we encourage you to attend the conference at your own comfort level. You are strongly encouraged to be up to date on your vaccines and boosters, mask if you need to, notify close contacts, and isolate if you have been exposed and/or test positive for COVID-19. https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/prevention.html

Scholarship Information and Application Deadline

Financial assistance in the form of scholarships is available. The financial assistance application submission deadline is September 16. We hope that anyone who resonates with our mission and community, and who has the desire to attend, can join us at our gatherings. To that end, we offer financial assistance through the Raven Wolfdancer Financial Assistance Fund. Please go to the Financial Assistance page on the Gay Spirit Visions website for more information and for a link to the GSV financial assistance application form. Remember, the financial assistance application submission deadline is September 16.

Registration

While the Fall Conference is currently full, we anticipate that some slots will be opening up. You are encouraged to join the waitlist by following the prompts on The Mountain’s registration system or call the registrar at (828) 526-5838 x218. No payment is required to join the waitlist.

The GSV Council has asked me to remind all who plan to register that single occupancy requests must be cleared with the Council and require a medical excuse. For private room consideration please email [email protected].

Registration closes Saturday, September 23 at 5:00 p.m. All questions about the conference should be directed to the Council ([email protected]) rather than The Mountain.

The GSV 2023 Fall Conference schedule is coming together, and our time together will be heartwarming, thought-provoking, and fun. I am so looking forward to seeing you all there!
Warmest regards,
Jonny “Mothra” Gray
2023 GSV Fall Conference Convener

Register Now!

Queer Bodies/Gay Spirit

September 28 – October 1, 2023

The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center, Highlands NC

4 Day/3 Night Package (Thursday through Sunday)

Bunk House (shared room up to 4 people) $285.00

Lodge or Duplex Cabin (double occupancy) $330.00

For All Rooms, Add Mandatory GSV Program Fee $100.00
Check out the Registration System for Optional Extra Nights Before and After the Conference

Register Now!

Convener: Jonny “Mothra” Gray
Keynote Speaker: Tim Miller

Hello Friends!

You’ve seen the email about the GSV 2023 Fall Conference. We’ve got some good things planned already, and I am getting excited about the conference.

Call For Workshops

As usual, there are times on the schedule for break-out workshops and activities. If you have a break-out workshop or activity you would like to facilitate (and, well, you are planning to attend the conference), please send me the following information: your name (as you would like it listed in the conference schedule), the title of the workshop/activity, a brief description for the conference program, facility/set-up requirements, and an explanation to help me understand what you want to do. I can’t guarantee I can accept all submissions, but I’ll do my best to provide a variety of options. Remember: we like these break-out workshops and activities to be more interactive and participatory than presentational.

Please email your proposal to me at [email protected] by August 15th. Ideas half-baked and in-process are also welcome.

Let’s see what we can cook up together.

Scholarship Information and Application Deadline

Financial assistance in the form of scholarships is available. The financial assistance application submission deadline is September 16. We hope that anyone who resonates with our mission and community, and who has the desire to attend, can join us at our gatherings. To that end we offer financial assistance through the Raven Wolfdancer Financial Assistance Fund. Please go to the Financial Assistance page on the Gay Spirit Visions website for more information and for a link to the GSV financial assistance application form. Remember, the financial assistance application submission deadline is September 16.

Registration

Registration for the GSV 2023 Fall Conference is open now. The GSV Council has asked me to remind all who plan to register that single occupancy requests must be cleared with the Council and require a medical excuse. For private room consideration please email [email protected].

Registration closes Saturday, September 23 at 5:00 PM. We remind you that recent fall conferences have reached capacity long before registration closes, so you are encouraged to register as soon as possible. All questions about the conference should be directed to the Council ([email protected]) rather than The Mountain.

Jonny “Mothra” Gray
GSV 2023 Fall Conference Convener

Register Now!

Queer Bodies/Gay Spirit

September 28 – October 1, 2023

The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center, Highlands NC

4 Day/3 Night Package (Thursday through Sunday)

Bunk House (shared room up to 4 people) $285.00

Lodge or Duplex Cabin (double occupancy) $330.00

For All Rooms, Add Mandatory GSV Program Fee $100.00
Check out the Registration System for Optional Extra Nights Before and After the Conference

Register Now!

Convener: Jonny “Mothra” Gray
Keynote Speaker: Tim Miller

Theme

You are cordially invited to join us for the Gay Spirit Visions 2023 Fall Conference. Building on recent GSV gatherings addressing the power and place of story in our lives, our fall conference will dig deep into the connections between stories and bodies. We will ask ourselves: What are the stories we want to keep that connect us with others? How are these stories etched into our skin, muscle, and bone? How can we use these stories to locate spiritual insights in bodily experiences? Author and performance artist Tim Miller will guide us, as he has guided many other queer gatherings, to strengthen our community ties by sharing our experiences in artful, embodied, and ritualized ways.

Keynote Presentation: A Body in the O — Sex/Body/Self

Building off his recent book and solo performance, A Body in the O, Tim Miller offers reflections of the place of embodied experience, queer connections, and spiritual growth. Beginning with a day in 1984 when Miller scrambled up inside the O of the Hollywood sign and imagined the performance space tree house of his dreams (what would become Performance Space 122 in New York and Highways Performance Space in L.A.), A Body in the O journeys through the hoops of the Department of Homeland Security, a queer boy’s truth-telling, a performance at Performance Space 122 in 1980, and finally a wedding day in NYC in 2013, as Miller imagines the full possibility of performance that changes the world inside these wooden Os!

Workshop: Queer Body Maps

Our work will be a fun and charged exploration into creating and claiming the stories from our personal lives: from our dreams, obsessions, peeves, memories, and desires. We will be especially exploring that charged border between our bodies and society…our narratives and our politics…ourselves and others. Telling our OWN story doesn’t separate us from other people, it connects us.

The goal of the workshop is to share some pathways to create original story sharings from the tremendous energies and narratives that are present in our lives. Using our own memories and myths as a jumping-off point, we will see where a deep sense of personal story creates tellings that jump out from our bodies and conjure new queer communities.

Please bring your hearts and brains and hopes and fears. No performance experience is necessary.

Tim Miller

Tim Miller is an internationally acclaimed performance artist. Miller’s creative work as a performer and writer explores the artistic, spiritual, and political topography of his identity as a gay man. Hailed for his humor and passion, Miller has tackled this challenge in such pieces as Postwar (1982), Cost of Living (1983), Democracy in America (1984), Buddy Systems (1985), Some Golden States (1987), Stretch Marks (1989), Sex/Love/Stories (1991), My Queer Body (1992), Naked Breath (1994), Fruit Cocktail (1996), Shirts & Skin (1997), Glory Box (1999), US (2003), 1001 Beds (2006), Lay of the Land (2009), Rooted (2016), and A Body in the O (2019).

Miller’s performances have been presented throughout North America, Australia, and Europe in such prestigious venues as the Yale Repertory Theatre, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), the Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and the Brooklyn Academy of Music. He is the author of the books Shirts & Skin, Body Blows, 1001 Beds, which won the 2006 Lambda Literary Award for best book in LGBT Drama, and A Body in the O.

Miller and three other artists, the so-called “NEA 4,” successfully sued the federal government of the United States with the help of the American Civil Liberties Union for violation of their First Amendment rights and won a settlement where the government paid them the amount of the defunded grants and all court costs. Though the Supreme Court of the United States decided in 1998 to overturn part of Miller’s case and determined that “standards of decency” are constitutional criteria for federal funding of the arts, Miller vows “to continue fighting for freedom of expression for fierce diverse voices.”

You can find additional information about Tim’s work at his website, timmillerperformer.com

Jonny “Mothra” Gray

I am an associate professor of Communication Studies at Southern Illinois University in Carbondale where I specialize in Environmental Communication with a particular focus on arts-based environmental advocacy and education. The intersection of LGBTQ and environmental advocacy is also central in my work, fostering a keen interest in Queer Ecology. I have been attending GSV gatherings since the fall of 2016. I had originally hoped to convene with Tim Miller as the keynote speaker in the fall of 2020, but a global pandemic forced us to consider a more online-friendly conference keynote and theme. We are happy to finally share Tim’s incredible work and insights this fall.

In addition to my academic career, I am proud to serve my community as Sister Mothra Stewart, a member of the SOIL Sisters, a fully professed House in the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence. My path into the Sisterhood began at the GSV 2017 Fall Conference — a reminder that the seeds we plant at these gatherings can yield some delicious fruit.

Scholarship Information and Application Deadline

Financial assistance in the form of scholarships is available. The financial assistance application submission deadline is September 16. We hope that anyone who resonates with our mission and community, and who has the desire to attend, can join us at our gatherings. To that end we offer financial assistance through the Raven Wolfdancer Financial Assistance Fund. Please go to the Financial Assistance page on the Gay Spirit Visions website for more information and for a link to the GSV financial assistance application form. Remember, the financial assistance application submission deadline is September 16.

Registration

Registration for the GSV 2023 Fall Conference is open now. The GSV Council has asked me to remind all who plan to register that single occupancy requests must be cleared with the Council and require a medical excuse. For private room consideration please email [email protected]

Registration closes Saturday, September 23 at 5:00 PM. We remind you that recent fall conferences have reached capacity long before registration closes, so you are encouraged to register as soon as possible. All questions about the conference should be directed to the Council [email protected] rather than The Mountain.

Jonny “Mothra” Gray
GSV 2023 Fall Conference Convener

Register Now!

Who do you think you are?

September 22 – 25, 2022

The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center, Highlands, NC

4 Day/3 Night Package (Thursday through Sunday)

Lodge (shared room) $315.00

Cabin (shared room) $315.00

Bunk House (shared room up to 4 people) $270.00

Register Now!

“A thought is harmless unless you believe it. It’s not our thoughts, but our attachment to our thoughts, that causes suffering.” — Byron Katie

Dear Siblings,

In just a few weeks, we will be gathering once again at The Mountain! You will be welcomed home to the summit of magical possibilities and embraced in nurturing serenity. Our time of introspection will be spent exploring the potential of our thoughts, those that guide our human development, and those we choose to create for our spiritual evolution. This journey called life is our creation and limited only by the constraints of our own making.

Remember an early childhood memory and how that is still with you today. Are you still scared of the flying monkeys in The Wizard of Oz? Do you still sleep with a light or TV on? Do you still have visions of people burning in hell? Do you still long to wear a crown and walk the runway? Have you reframed that memory to something that has enhanced your journey? You can spend a lifetime trying to forget a few minutes of your childhood.

“The only person you are destined to become is the person you decide to be.”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson

With adulthood comes the realization that we have a choice in the thoughts we create. Thoughts created in the present moment and thoughts created long ago. In many ways reframing conditioned thoughts is a return to your essence. Your true self is right there, buried under cultural conditioning, other people’s opinions, and inaccurate conclusions you drew as a child and adult that became your beliefs about who you are.

Our keynote speaker will be David Ault. David is an award-winning author, leadership coach, and global education advocate. His books include the bestseller Where Regret Cannot Find Me and the multi-award-winning book The Grass is Greener Right Here. David is known by many in Gay Spirit Visions as the former Spiritual Director at Spiritual Living Center of Atlanta. He loves leading through example and abides by the motto that people would rather “see a lesson than hear one.”

COVID-19 and Monkeypox Information

To help make this event safe and healthy for everyone attending, please review the following hyperlinked documents:

2022 Fall Conference COVID-19 Safety Protocols
2022 Fall Conference COVID-19 Notice of Actions Taken
2022 Fall Conference COVID-19 General Liability Waiver
2022 Fall Conference Monkeypox Information

Please reach out to [email protected] if you have any questions or concerns.

Financial assistance, in the form of scholarships, is available. The financial assistance application submission deadline is September 7. We hope that anyone who resonates with our mission and community, and who has a desire to attend, can join us at our gatherings. To that end, we offer financial assistance through the Raven Wolfdancer Financial Assistance Fund. Please go to the Financial Assistance page on the Gay Spirit Visions website for more information about financial assistance (scholarships) and a link to the GSV financial assistance application form. Remember, the financial assistance application submission deadline is September 7.

Make plans to return home to The Mountain in September, as you have been missed.

In gratitude,
Bill Harris
GSV 2022 Fall Conference Convener

Register Now!