Clergy Annual Retreat

JANUARY 11-13, 2012

Download the Winter Gathering 2012 Flyer

Our Presenters:      

• Mary Elizabeth Moore is Dean of the School of Theology and Professor of Theology and Education, Boston University. Her passion is to journey with others to cultivate deeper faith and a more just, peaceful, and sustainable world. She feels privileged to work toward those ends with her BU colleagues, especially in the practices of knowing the Holy, building justice, resisting violence, and caring for the earth. Her most recent books include: Teaching as a Sacramental Act, Ministering with the Earth, and Teaching from the Heart, plus two co-edited volumes, Children, Youth, and Spirituality in a Troubling World and Practical Theology and Hermeneutics. Mary Elizabeth is married to Allen, and they have five wonderful children and eight fabulous grandchildren.

• Nisha Purushotham is a multi-instrumental musician, artist educator, and ritual designer born in New Delhi and raised in New England. She is a vocalist, classically trained pianist and skilled world percussionist, studying with Caribbean and Indian master drummers in the United States and Cuba. In 2000, Nisha founded The Rhythm and Roots Project which offers workshops, presentations and retreats that build community, animate creative expression, nurture cultural knowledge, and inspire cultural transformation.Through The Rhythm and Roots Project, Nisha has worked extensively with United Methodist Conferences, churches, and programs interested in integrating global music into their ministries of worship, outreach, education, spiritual formation and social justice. As a performing artist, Nisha explores the human condition and the natural world through original songs, polyrhythmic drumming, silence, spoken word, chant and communal expression. In 2009, she released her debut CD, Living Water.

• Priscilla Dreyman is a United Methodist elder, a sculptor, and a teacher of visual arts. She has worked in urban, rural, and suburban settings in hospitals, churches, prisons, and social services since 1972. A graduate of the Maine College of Art, she has integrated her interests in art, creative expression, spiritual growth, outreach to disenfranchised people of all ages, community building, personal and societal transformation, and healing, in the work of SPIRAL Arts for the past 20 years. She is the founder of SPIRAL Arts, a community arts organization/ministry and member of the National Guild of Community Arts Education. She has extensive experience working with children, youth, adults, and elders in arts, educational, religious, and recreational programs. She has served Maine churches in rural Washington County, an island parish, and in Greater Portland. Her education includes a Master of Arts in Education and Theological Studies from Union Theological Seminary (N.Y.), a Master of Divinity from Episcopal Divinity School (Cambridge, MA), and a BA in Urban Politics from Allegheny College (Meadville, PA).

  In the local community, Priscilla was a founding member of the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance (PACA) and served on the steering committee of the Community Cultural Plan. She was a fellow in the “Building Community through Culture” initiative of the New England Foundation for the Arts, where arts and civic representatives from across New England met to explore issues relating to art and community building. She served on the Greater Portland Children’s Leadership Council, seeking to improve services for our children and the life of our community. She is a 2002 recipient of the Jefferson Award and a 2004 recipient of the Arthur Hall Award for an artist who is working to improve the life of the community. She was part of the 2002-2003 Kappa class of the Institute for Civic Leadership. In October 2005, she participated in an international Building an Inclusive Society Through the Arts conference in Belfast, Northern Ireland. In the spring of 2006, she received an award from the Children’s Advocacy Council in Portland for the work of SPIRAL Arts in the prevention of child abuse and neglect. In 2008, she was the lead artist in the My Life, My Journey pilot program at the Iris Network, a program that serves people who are blind or visually impaired. Since 2009, Priscilla has been the pastor of West Scarborough United Methodist Church in Scarborough, Maine, as well as the program director of SPIRAL Arts, now a program of The Opportunity Alliance, a large social services organization and community action program.

Plenary Sessions:

MARY ELIZABETH MOORE:

Cultivating a Passion for Life.  We will explore biographies and Wesleyan traditions to construct a life-centered theology and a life-bearing spirituality. These ideas and practices run counter to dominant cultural patterns, but can potentially yield radical transformation of our own lives and the lives of others.

Caring for our Global Home: Spiritual Practice as Cosmic Action.  We will explore the intimate relationship between the daily spiritual life of individuals and communities and the wellbeing of the planet. Drawing from this, we will identify practices that strengthen our Christian vocation to care for God's creation, whether living well with our families and neighbors or addressing global violence and injustices.

NISHA PURUSHOTHAM:

The Rhythm and Roots Project: Listening at the Margins.  For more than a decade, Nisha Purushotham has offered community arts workshops to populations living on the margins of US mainstream culture because of class, race, gender, age, immigration status, imprisonment, and/or physical and mental disabilities. In settings such as urban schools, grassroots leadership trainings, the Rhode Island state youth prison and a vocational center for young people with disabilities, Nisha engages people in expressing their perspectives through the mediums of folkloric drumming, community singing, creative writing, dialogue and performance. Through listening to voices who speak from the margins, Nisha’s worldview and understanding of her role in the movement for peace with justice have developed and transformed.

In this plenary, Nisha will share stories from her experience with those living on the margins of US mainstream culture. Participants will be invited to see connections between these contemporary individuals and communities and people on the margins in the Hebrew Scriptures and Christian Gospel. Participants will sample some experiences of The Rhythm and Roots Project rooted in collective music making, creative writing and dialogue. This plenary will also offer reflection questions for participants to take back to their congregations to begin or strengthen their practice of listening at the margins within their own communities.

PRISCILLA DREYMAN:

Art and Creativity – Gifts of the Spirit.  How can the arts and creative expression enhance our spiritual lives, our ministries, and our communities? For the past 25 years, Priscilla Dreyman, founder of the SPIRAL Arts ministry in Portland, Maine, has been exploring these questions and experiencing the profound, mysterious gifts that God has given us all through art and creativity. In this session, Priscilla will share the story of SPIRAL Arts and its community building work. And she will share how the arts have affected her own spiritual journey. She will share ways churches can integrate the arts and creative expression into their ministries and use these experiences as vehicles of church growth and community building. We will then try our hands at creating something amazing! No art experience required.

Schedule Highlights:

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