2018 GSV Winter Meditation

Picture of total solar eclipse

Bringing Darkness to the Light

January 12 – 14, 2018

at The Mountain, Highlands, NC

Cost: $235.02 – Double Occupancy | $309.74 – Single Occupancy

Life’s waters flows from darkness.
Search the darkness, don’t run from it.
-Rumi

Dear Siblings,

Come gather during the darkest time of the year with a loving community of men who love men for a weekend of supportive exploration of the dark corners of our collective consciousness. Surrounded by loving siblings, we will create a safe vessel to share, listen, and celebrate the delicious darkness that both terrifies and inspires us.

We will explore mystical texts, such as Dark Night of the Soul by Juan de la Cruz, tales from world mythologies, and contemporary personal stories to enrich our understanding of the wisdom that is found in darkness.

We will experience different styles of meditation, including silent and guided meditation, walking meditation, and lectio divina, or divine reading. There will be plenty of time for reflection, writing, healing arts, and labyrinth walks, weather permitting.

You are invited to share your gifts during this retreat by proposing a workshop, offering massage, playing music, or whatever you feel called to bring! Contact the Winter Convener with your ideas, dreams, and questions. More information will be available in the coming weeks.

In gratitude,

Andy Foskey, Convener

Register for the 2018 Winter Meditation

2017 GSV Winter Meditation: Cocooning & Transformation

GSV 2017 Winter Meditation

GSV 2017 Winter Meditation

Cocooning and Transformation

January 13 – 15, 2017
at The Mountain, Highlands NC

Cost is $ 226.47 – Double Occupancy
$301.20 Single Occupancy

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Dear Brothers,

Come join with a loving community of your GSV brothers for a time of mindful
presence and gentle celebration. The long nights of January will offer us space
for quiet and inspiration–think of ancient farmers who honored the dark and
silence of a season long past harvest. We seek the wisdom of all creatures who
wrap themselves in a mantle of repose, awaiting a transformation into new life.
We’ll bundle our individual memories together and lay them on the altar. Guided
meditations will help us take stock of our present lives, and especially of patterns
that no longer serve us well. We’ll envision new directions for the coming year:
our intentions and our hopes, both as individuals and in community.
Come create strings of meditation flags to surround us in our gathering. Help
decorate a communal shawl to wrap ourselves in our visions for the days and
months ahead. In the season of cold and darkness, we’ll honor fire, warmth, and
light. Share in creating an evening of poems, songs, performance, costume, and
dance.

Registration for the GSV 2017 Winter Meditation is now open to all men who love men. Early registration will assure your place. Programming for the Winter Meditation will conclude on Sunday afternoon, but some of us will stay on to savor the winter beauty and spend more time with our brothers. For an additional charge, you can register to stay on at The Mountain until Monday afternoon.

As a spiritual director, Kurt Schreiber helps others heal discordant conditions, clarify goals, and respond to (or initiate) change. He approaches this and the rest of his life on a basis of fundamental spiritual principles and a related practice that draws mainly on Christian and Buddhist traditions. Often, he works with individuals, groups, and organizations on problems resulting from what he sees as broadly held misconceptions of cultural, religious, gender, or sexual identity. For about thirty years, Kurt worked more than full-time in the corporate world, where he was a senior officer and general counsel of large companies. While he no longer practices law or works in companies, his business background is sometimes useful, especially when he is asked to help inter-religious, charitable, and business organizations. Kurt’s home is in Nashville, where he’s now lived longer than anywhere else. There are many there whom he holds dear, including his two grown children.

David Townsend first made friends with the GSV community at the Fall Conference in 2004. He’s spent over thirty years as a teacher. Now he’s making more space for his calling as a spiritual companion, ritualist, and sacred intimate. Last August, he co-led a retreat in Maryland, under the auspices of the DC-based group Jonathan’s Circle. The program helped nineteen men create personal and shared-ritual to support the integration of their spiritual and erotic lives. David believes we’re all happiest when we live our lives with gratitude, and with a desire to give back. A slut who will pray with anybody, he’s fascinated by how ritual works across cultures and religious traditions. He keeps his blog on queer men’s spirituality at www.anchorholder.blogspot.com. David lives in Toronto and on the East End of Long Island with his partner Jonathan and their cat Bracket.

Kurt Schreiber, Co-Convener
David Townsend, Co-Convener

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2017 GSV Winter Meditation: Cocooning and Transformation

GSV 2017 Winter Meditation

GSV 2017 Winter Meditation

Cocooning and Transformation

January 13 – 15, 2017
at The Mountain, Highlands NC

Cost is $ 226.47 – Double Occupancy
$301.20 Single Occupancy

Dear Brothers,

We invite you to join with a loving community of your GSV brothers for two days of stillness, peace, mindfulness, and gentle celebration. Our models include ancient farmers who honored the dark and quiet of winter long past the season of harvest. The wisdom we seek is that of all creatures who wrap themselves in a mantle of repose to await a transformation into new life.

We’ll seek through guided meditations to understand more clearly our 2016 lives, and especially the patterns that no longer serve us well. We’ll envision new directions for the coming year. We’ll explore our intentions and our hopes, both as individuals and in community. We’ll bundle our individual memories together and lay them on the altar.

We’ll create strings of meditation flags to surround us in our gathering. We’ll decorate a communal shawl to wrap ourselves in our aspirations for the days and months ahead. In the season of cold and darkness we’ll honor fire, warmth, and light. We’ll celebrate together with poems, songs, performance, costume, and dance.

An option to stay on an extra day after the Sunday close of the gathering is pending. We’ll have more information in a subsequent e-mail.

Kurt Schreiber, Co-Convener
David Townsend, Co-Convener

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For online registration help or to register by phone, call:
The Mountain Retreat & Learning Center
828-526-5838

2016 Winter Meditation: The Purpose of Our Lives is to be Happy

Dear Brothers,

If you are not already registered, please consider joining us for a heart-centered, energizing, and enlivening community experience. Renew, replenish, and restore yourself at the 2016 GSV Winter retreat.

Positive emotions play a key role in invigorating all human endeavors, and cultivating positive emotion is one strategy that generates benefits in every area of a person’s life.

Every single one of us is capable of a lot more happiness than we have experienced so far.

There is scientific evidence that happier people are kinder and more generous. They are healthier, live longer lives and they’re smarter and more creative. They have happier relationships and marriages, and have a wide range of friends. They are also more resilient, more productive at work, and enjoy greater financial comfort.GSV 2016 Winter Meditation

Happiness does not happen by chance, it happens by choice. It is a practice, like exercising, the more you practice, the better you get at it. That simple.

So come join us for fun, camaraderie, solidarity, and some interesting conversations of happiness, true happiness.

 

“The purpose of our lives is to be happy.”
–Dalai Lama, The Art of Happiness

“Be happy, for your only function here is happiness.”
–Course in Miracles, Lesson 102.

“Unconditional happiness is the highest technique there is…This is truly a spiritual path, and it is as direct and sure a path to Awakening as could possibly exist.”
–Michael A. Singer, The Untethered Soul

Tony James, Convener
Cami Delgado, Keynote Speaker & Co-Creator
Jim Stratton, Co-Creator

Register for the 2016 Winter Meditation/Planning Retreat >>


 

2016 Winter Meditation: Conversations on Mindfulness

Dear Brothers,

Everything you have ever done is because you thought it would make you feel better. Every purchase you made, every interaction you have had with another person, and every life decision you took is because you, at that moment, hoped it would make you feel better. That’s how important positive emotion is.

And at times, it didn’t quite work out as well as you expected…right?

At our upcoming winter retreat, we will have conversations on how to mindfully and intentionally create a more sustainable positive energy flow. Meditation, mindfulness, and owning joyful and creative response-ability for your life experience are just some of the many core practices that elicit and cultivate that energy flow.

And then we’ll talk about how that energy flow enhances our lives, how it makes us more generous and loving people, and how it empowers us to make significant contributions to dear friends, the LGBT community, the world, and maybe even GSV.

Please join us for what will be an uplifting, enlivening, energizing, and upbeat conversation on the most important topic in life.

“To be (happy) … or not to be (happy) … THAT is the question.” — Shakespeare/Delgado

Tony James, Convener
Cami Delgado, Keynote Speaker & Co-Creator
Jim Stratton, Co-Creator