GSV 2023 Fall Conference Post 3

2023 Fall Conference Logo

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

Dear Friends,

This may be the last official communication before the attendee letter drops next month.

As you consider attending and making travel plans, I wanted to offer some information that might be useful and offer some gratitude to those who have requested this information. First, 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.

Second, 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.

Third, 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.
(CDC Guidelines: COVID-19 Prevention Actions)

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.

The 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!

GSV 2023 Fall Conference Post 2

2023 Fall Conference Logo

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!

GSV 2023 Fall Conference Post 1

2023 Fall Conference Logo

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 MillerTim 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

Johnny GrayI 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!

GSV 2023 Spring Retreat Post 3 – Last Call

GSV Spring Logo

From Vulnerability to Intimacy: Exploring the Threshold

May 12-14, 2023

The Mountain Retreat and Learning Center, Highlands NC

3 Day/2 Night Package (Friday through Sunday)


Bunk House (shared room up to 4 people): $190.00


Lodge or Duplex Cabin (double occupancy): $220.00


Single Occupancy (private room): $340.00


For All Rooms add Mandatory GSV program fee: $35.00

Register Now!

On the threshold, the entire past and the endless future rush to meet one another.
—Gunilla Norris

Dear Siblings,

The time of our Spring Retreat gathering is getting closer and the anticipation of being with you all is growing stronger. I am eager and excited to share mutual experiences of intimate and vulnerable conversations during our time together. I hope you are eagerly anticipating this as well.

As a reminder, our opening time together on Friday evening will honor our GSV traditions, followed by simple, meaningful conversations, and gentle touch; tea and biscuits may even be involved!

On Saturday you will be invited into experiences that will allow you to explore the thresholds we cross as we journey from vulnerability to intimacy. These will include clothed sacred touch, an exploration of sacred wisdom, and a discussion of how our identity is itself a threshold into deeper intimacy. Finally, there will be an invitation to have a socially nude experience through boundary setting and ritual. On Saturday evening we will share in drumming and camaraderie around our sacred fire.

Throughout the weekend there will be plenty of unstructured downtime to allow you an opportunity to encounter The Mountain and our siblings in whatever way you desire.

I know many of you may be expecting organized higher levels of sacred and erotic touch during our time at The Mountain. To be clear, the Spring Retreat will not have an organized massage event, puppy pile, dedicated intimacy space, or other types of higher-level touch opportunity. What you will have, if you wish, is an opportunity to seek and create higher levels of touch on your own—good practice for being vulnerable, intimate, and asking for what you need from your siblings. It is, perhaps, a different way of encountering the presence of your fellow siblings and the energy of The Mountain.

Financial assistance, in the form of scholarships, is available. The financial assistance application submission deadline is April 30. 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 about financial assistance (scholarships) and for a link to the GSV financial assistance application form. Remember, the financial assistance application submission deadline is April 30.

Registration is now open via the GSV website, so please join us. To inquire about the availability of private rooms, which are available on a limited basis, please call The Mountain office at (828) 526-5838.

So, come—enter into your vulnerability and discover intimacy. Come—stand on your thresholds and listen to how they are calling you deeper into new manifestations of yourself. Come—your siblings and The Mountain await you.

Douglas Argue
GSV 2023 Spring Retreat Convener

Register Now!

GSV Survey—Virtual, Hybrid Events

Dear GSV Family,

The Gay Spirit Visions Council continuously explores how to make involvement with GSV as inclusive as possible. So, we would like you to take a brief survey and give us anonymous feedback and thoughts on your interest in virtual and hybrid event programming formats. Your responses are essential to help us refine and focus further on this topic. At this stage, the Council does not have plans for virtual or hybrid programming. So, this survey only shows your interest and helps guide our discussions. It does not indicate future actions or decisions.
Click here to complete the survey before 11:00 PM EDT, Sunday, April 30, 2023.

We sincerely appreciate your help.

John Schendel (Karma),
on behalf of the Gay Spirit Visions Council