Immersive Evening: Facing the World with Soul & Why It Matters
Live Event Program
Thursday, March 21st, 2024
Presenter: Francis Weller
Francis Weller is a psychotherapist, writer, and soul activist. He is a master of synthesizing diverse streams of thought from psychology, anthropology, mythology, alchemy, indigenous cultures and poetic traditions. Author of the bestselling, The Wild Edge of Sorrow: Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief, and In the Absence of the Ordinary: Essays in a Time of Uncertainty, he has introduced the healing work of ritual to thousands of people. He is the Founder/Director of WisdomBridge, an organization that offers educational programs that seek to integrate the wisdom from traditional cultures with the insights and knowledge gathered from western poetic and spiritual traditions.
Francis received two Master’s Degrees from John F. Kennedy University in Clinical Psychology and Transpersonal Psychology. His work was featured in The Sun magazine, The Utne Reader and most recently he was a guest on “All There Is” with Anderson Cooper. He is completing his third book, Facing the World with Soul and Why It Matters.
Limited copies of Francis’ books will be available, with a signing after the program.
Live Music: Jared Ray Gilmore
Jared is a classically trained pianist gone rogue. He has been creating music for 25 years as a music producer and audio engineer and has a handful of albums on all streaming platforms under the name “Jared Ray”. Jared is also a prolific content creator and a Jungian Depth Coach. He’s very excited to share his love of piano with our community!
Featured Artist: Britta Baker
“Invest in the living world” pretty much sums up Brittas’ entire outlook on life – how we create inside, for and from it. They are a color-obsessed experimental artist, painting mostly with bleach and CMYK printer ink, but will never be found without a sketchbook and clutch of homemade fude pens in hand, ready to play cartographer to the strange geography of being.
Opening Circlesong: Carl Rabke
Carl Rabke is a Somatic Naturalist and a tender of soul and living culture. For the last 25 years he has practiced and taught where the streams of somatics, soul-work, and a deep love of this living Earth meet. He is a Feldenkrais and Structural Integration practitioner and loves to support people in remembering our natural, inherent intelligence in movement, meditation, ritual, song, rhythm and community.
Opening Poet: Lisa Bickmore
Lisa Bickmore is the author of three books of poems. The second, flicker (2016), won the 2014 Antivenom Prize (Elixir Press). She won the 2015 Ballymaloe International Poetry Prize for the poem ‘Eidolon,’ which appears in her third collection, Ephemerist (Red Mountain Press). She is the founder/publisher of the new independent nonprofit Lightscatter Press. In July 2022, she was named the Poet Laureate for the state of Utah, and in 2023 was awarded a fellowship from the Academy of American Poets for poets laureate.
Limited copies of Lisa’s book, flickr, will be available, with a signing after the program.
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Opening Poem: in the clearing
a squirrel maybe two of them
spiral the tree trunks
sketch the line
the shortest distance between
two points
they consider whatever consideration
looks like how to get
into the little cabin
my brother only son
has assumed the care
of this place
I see the fishing tackle waders
my father’s I mean
although
my brother also uses them
hanging from a nail
inside the screened in
porch hear
the dryer turning
towels and underclothes
heave and fall
the shed to my right
stacked
with paints poisons
along one side the hammocks
inner tubes camp chairs
along the other
we need
a conference to discern
what should stay
and what go
yesterday my mother
combed my hair
first time since I was a child I think
she wanted
to see how its waves
behaved she said
to sit in patience
for her hands
my old urge to flee
that tenderness that only here
in the house my father made
with his father is it possible
the moon waxes
so at night
the stars we can see
depend upon
whether the moon
has risen
but there are still
always stars visible or no
my brother likes to trim the trees
that shade the house
he wants to see the house’s face
from the road they used to wear
their long skirts and now
their legs are bare
a long-legged spider threads
its way over the clearing floor
in the neighbor’s driveway
asters thrive with moths
grey with one blue eye
orange and black
I feel lonelier here
where we can speak
with the dead because
their handiwork
is everywhere
the bright
windows of the house glow
even in deepest night
and the river where no one
takes fish anymore moves
and the waders gleam
as if they had stepped just now
to shore
Thank you to Desert Morning Counseling for generously sponsoring this special evening!
Thank you to our in-kind partners:
