The Art of Gratefulness

The Art of Gratefulness

A Meditative Arts Retreat at Rolling Ridge

with Patricia Campbell Carlson,
Margaret Wakeley,
and Lindsay McLaughlin

Friday April 11 - Sunday April 13, 2008

"I have been in Sorrow’s kitchen
and licked out all the pots.
Then I have stood on the peaky mountain
wrapped in rainbows,
with a harp and a sword in my hands."
— Zora Neale Hurston

What does it mean to be grateful through the ups and downs of life? How can we appreciate the gift of each day without minimizing the challenges that face us personally and as a global community? Through the mediums of music, movement, poetry, conversation, and collage we will explore how we even come to ask such questions. In the delicate beauty of the awakening springtime forest and the sacred embrace of encircling hills and streams we will ponder how gratefulness applies to our losses, to our everyday lives, and to our relationships.

Participants are welcome to arrive at the Retreat House between 5 and 7 pm on Friday night. Dinner will be served at 7 pm. The retreat will end with lunch on Sunday. Cost for the weekend is $100.

Please send a $25 deposit to reserve your space. Checks should be made payable to Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community (RRSRC) and mailed to Lindsay McLaughlin, 120 Jubilee Lane, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425. Meals will be healthful and vegetarian. Please let us know if you have any special dietary or other needs. For more information call or email Lindsay McLaughlin at 304-724-1069, lmclaughlin@rollingridge.net.

Workshop leaders:

	Patricia Campbell Carlson serves as Executive Director of A Network for Grateful Living (ANG*L), a nonprofit dedicated to gratefulness as the core inspiration for personal change, international cooperation, and sustainable activism in areas of universal concern. She works closely with ANG*L’s founder Br. David Steindl-Rast, a pioneer in the interfaith movement, and greatly values the time she spent in the 1980s as part of Sojourners community in Washington, DC.
	Margaret Wakeley wears many hats at ANG*L: administrator, designer, researcher, and first contact for visitors. She has worked extensively as a vocalist across the U.S. and Europe. Now, sticking closer to home, she gets great satisfaction tailoring her repertoire for cabaret benefits for local organizations, where she serves in many volunteer capacities, including Hospicare, the Community School of Music and Arts, and the Unitarian Church in Ithaca, NY.
	Lindsay McLaughlin lives and works at Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community and is the arts coordinator for an alternative school for students with emotional disabilities in Silver Spring, MD. She dances professionally with Carla Perlo at Dance Place in Washington, DC and with St. Martin's Liturgical Dance Ministry. She is a writer, editor and mother of three grown sons.

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community – "Nurturing Persons and Communities" – is an ecumenical Christian retreat center on 1400 acres of forested land between the Blue Ridge and the Shenandoah River, near Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.

Make your plans now to attend these other retreats sponsored by Rolling Ridge in 2008:

• Cultivating a Listening Heart: A Silent Retreat At Rolling Ridge, February 8-10, 2008
• A Day Away for Pastors and Church Leaders: February 11, March 10, April 14 (second Monday of each month)
• Easter Quiet Days for Holy Week and Stations of the Cross: March 17-21, 2007
• Children and Ecology: May 9-11, 2008
• Straw Bale House Building Retreat: June 20-22, August 15-27, 2008
• Rolling Ridge Music Festival: July 4-6, 2008
• Straw Bale House Building Retreat: August 10-12, 2008
• Annual Labor Day Work Retreat: September 1, 2008
• Meditative Arts: October 10-12, 2008
• Rolling Ridge Annual Meeting: November 15, 2008
• Waiting in Darkness, Carrying the Light: An Advent Retreat on Transition, Loss, Grief and Healing: December 5-7, 2008
• Or create your own private retreat during the week. We offer spiritual direction and directed retreats for individuals during the week days. Call us for details.