Celebrating, Honoring, Healing

We gathered ONLINE and in person at DeKoven Center in Racine, Wisconsin for a weekend with Rev. Selena Fox!

Ancestral Pathways

Our keynote via Zoom for the 2021 Fall Retreat was Rev. Selena Fox. She is senior minister and high priestess of Circle Sanctuary, a Nature Spirituality church, Pagan resource center, and nature preserve with a worldwide Ecospirituality ministry that includes networking, publishing, education, environmental preservation, counseling, events sponsoring, and other work.

Rev. Selena Fox’s keynote address was “Ancestral Pathways"
We discovered ways of working with the realm of ancestors for healing, wisdom, inspiration, and spiritual development. Explored some approaches for connecting with and honoring family, cultural, and spiritual ancestors, including through ritual, meditation, pilgrimage, traditions, stories, symbols, and lore. Learned how to create and work with personal and household ancestral altars and shrines on special occasions and throughout the year. We brought a white votive candle in a votive glass to kindle, plus a photograph, heirloom, or other representation of a deceased family member related by blood or adoption that we wished to honor.

Fall Retreat 2021 was multi-platform!

For our 2021 Fall Retreat at the DeKoven Center on the shores of Lake Michigan in Racine, Wisconsin we were multi-platform. If you chose to stay at home you could attend virtually. Our keynote, Rev. Selena Fox gave her keynote address – “Ancestral Pathways” via Zoom.

After lunch, our first workshop was Zoom-based. Virtual and In-Person registrants could attend this workshop which was a follow-up to the keynote address by Rev. Selena Fox. Kathleen Miezio moderated a discussion of what traditions we use to connect with our ancestors. What ideas from the keynote presentation would we like to incorporate into our spiritual practices?

For those attending the Fall Retreat In-Person, the schedule included an in-gathering ritual Friday night, Saturday’s keynote, workshops in the afternoon, a croning ritual Saturday evening, and a closing ritual Sunday morning – and of course – drumming!

The Direction that we honored was WITHIN. Our theme for the Fall Retreat was Celebrating, Honoring, Healing. Our in-gathering ritual on Friday night and our closing ritual on Sunday morning both spoke to Healing. Our source for these two rituals comes from Suzanne Reitz and Sandy Hoyt’s book – Celebrating Honoring Healing.

Following the Zoom-based workshop, Sage Hagy presented a workshop on making UU Meditation Beads. This workshop is available for viewing to women who registered to attend the Fall Retreat virtually.

The last afternoon In-Person workshop was Feel Like a Goddess. It was facilitated by Diana DeWeese. You learned how to make your own goddess gown. Those women attending virtually were sent a copy of the instructions to make a goddess gown at home.

Saturday evening we had a Croning Ceremony – a celebration which recognizes that a woman has achieved the status of crone, elder or wise woman.

August 13-15, 2021

Ten of us gathered in Trilogy Lodge, a dorm-style lodge that sleeps up to 20. Catered gourmet vegan meals (from Water & Wheat), wildflower walks, and worship circles made up this weekend "back to the land" on the 400+ acres of woodland and lake within the spirit-filled place called Ronora.

Our theme "We Gather Together" came from our desire as sisters to come together after 18 months of following "social distancing" strategies to limit the spread of the COVID-19 virus. We’ve had to cope with social isolation and loneliness. We enjoyed spending time together on the back deck of Trilogy Lodge, exploring, relaxing, drumming, singing and communing with nature and each other.

We could attend because we were all vaccinated against the COVID-19 virus.