This Year's Conference Theme:
KEYS FOR THE ROWDY PRISONERS
Economies of the Imagination
Gather with us for Robert Bly's 38th annual Conference on the Great Mother and New Father.
To speak of economy is to acknowledge that we are engaged in many systems - magical, monetary, fluid and fixed, acknowledged and secret. When we consider our unending commerce with the inner life, and the challenge of maintaining relationships, it becomes apparent that each of us is a crossroads of multiple negotiations, that we are in a constant state of barter, gain and retreat.
Economies of the Imagination will be the subject of the 2012 Great Mother Conference. How consciously do we operate within our many systems? How do we sabotage them? In a time of widespread dis-connect, what kind of deal making complements the wider psyche, and what kind causes inner conflict and unease? If, as the old stories suggest, we are filled with many characters , desires, and fears, how do we get them talking to each other?
We will entertain these and other questions playfully, and - with wit and a certain amount of rashness --we will ask: what would be an imaginative economy that we would want to be a part of?
Over nine days we will gather by a lake in Maine and through poetry, discussion, storytelling, astrology, time outdoors, music, movement and private reflection we will go deeper into these questions.
Martin Shaw will conduct a five day expedition into the Parzival Grail Tale. Caroline Casey will dazzle us with her synthesis of astrological, ecological, spiritual and political possibilities. Ecologist Ellen La Conte, author of Life Rules, will escort us deep into the intelligent economies of nature. Philosopher Jacob Needleman brings ideas, both practical and esoteric, to the theme of "Economies of the Imagination", many from his best selling book Money and the Meaning of Life. Doug Von Koss, singing master, will lubricate the collective spirit. Violinist, Corrin Evans takes us on a new musical journey. The amazing young poet Matthew Dickman will wow your metaphorical hemispheres. And Tony Hoagland, poet and trickster acupuncturist, will be monitoring the scene for signs of spiritual inflation.
Other teachers pending ..... (TBA)
Conference participants who work with the visual arts will have an opportunity to show their work in a Conference gallery.
Rumi wrote:
What was said to the rose
that made it open
was said to me
here in my chest.
(translated by Coleman Barks)
Read the complete poem,
and see Coleman Barks perform a recitation of it!