from
China Galland
Dear Friends:
What a pleasure to write to
you again and send you my greetings as we begin the New Year.
Thank you for all the support you gave me to launch Love Cemetery
and the new edition of Longing for Darkness. I am sending you
this notice of the first class I'm teaching this year, in the hope
that some of you might still be able to join us. I will be leading a
monthly Black Madonna study group with my friend and colleague, Catlyn
Fendler, starting on February 20, 2008; I'll also be leading a
twice monthly women's writing group for eight sessions starting
February 21, 2008. I'll send another newsletter with details on
these offerings and more news soon, but meanwhile, let me know by
email if you're interested
in the class below or either of these new groups.
January 28 - February 1, 2008, Monday – Friday, 1 - 5 p.m.
1
Awakening the Energy for Change:
The Black Madonna
and the Womb of God
A Graduate Theological Union Intersession course, taught by
China Galland,
M.A., Director of the Keepers of Love and Images of Divinity Projects
for CARE, the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education
Pacific School of Religion
Graduate Theological Union
1798 Scenic Ave., Berkeley, CA 94709
Mudd Building, Room 102
Class
Description
Our survey and exploration of this
more-than thousand-year old venerable Christian tradition of Black or
Dark Madonnas (Mary and the Christ Child) will be situated within the
urgency of our times. As we gather amidst newly revealed wonders of
light and teeming creation in the darkness of outer space we face ch
anges
on earth beyond our wildest imaginings. We read of exploding stars,
are confounded by the immeasurability of black holes and dark matter
in the galaxies see images of spiraling bright gases like the
photograph of the Eagle Nebula at the left taken by the Hubble
Telescope. Below, at the earth’s poles, we find that the world’s most
sophisticated scientific computer modelings of atmospheric changes
continually fall short of the real-time alterations we see taking
place. Whether we calculate the shrinkage of ice masses around the
globe or add up the number of species we lose annually --- 20,000 to
30,000 --- we cannot grasp through numbers what the heart already
knows --- we are unmoored --- from the earth and from each other.
Increasingly, dangerously, the world turns to its religions for securety
when there is none. Our study of the Black Madonna is an attempt to
help us right ourselves. Rooted in the earth’s beginnings, the
celebration of this long-denied tradition of the earthy, dark,
feminine face of God can help us balance the complexities and
contradictions of our age.
The patron of Brazil is a small coal black Madonna, Our Lady of
Aparecida, venerated as the Mother of the Excluded. Whether in the New
Testament of Christians, the tales of the Hasidim (Jewish), or
of the Sufis (Muslim), medieval
alchemical texts, Buddhist tales, or in indigenous wisdom the world
over, we are told that whatever
it is that we have rejected is the only thing that will serve as the
cornerstone of a new foundation.
The ancient image of “Our Mother Moist Earth” may be the very figure
we need now. We will approach this tradition of incarnate spirituality
both academically and experientially through the daily construction of
altars, short writing exercises on the images we see and original
video footage from pilgrimages in Galland’s private collection. Seen
from perspective of a positive darkness, this fertile tradition can
help moor us and anchor us now. Thomas Berry, the visionary
eco-theologian, tells us that archetypes such as the Great Mother are
“the main instruments for the evocation of the energy needed for the
renewal of the earth.”
1On
Wednesday, January 30th, 2008, 1 - 5 p.m., the class will meet at St.
Gregory of Nysssa’s, a frescoed Episcopal Church dedicated to the arts
and liturgy, where China will be joined by trained Labyrinth
facilitators Catlyn Fendler, M.A. and Anna Cook, for a lecture, "The
Black Madonna and the Labyrinth,” and an opportunity to walk
Fendler and Cook's 7-circuit labyrinth which they will lay out
in the round on the floor of St. Gregory's. Musical
accompaniment and Taize chants will be provided by guest musician
Kayleen Abso of the San Francisco Conservatory of Music.
Logistics
This class is open to participants
outside of the GTU for auditing. C.E.U.s are available. You do not
have to be enrolled as a GTU student to
take this class. Outside participants welcome, suggested donation is
$400. Please make your check payable to “The Center for the
Arts, Religion, and Education” (CARE), with “Keepers
of Love” (KOL) on the memo line. CARE
and KOL process non-GTU students
separately. Mail your check to: China Galland, The Keepers of Love, 20
Sunnyside Ave., Suite A, Mill Valley, CA 94941. Please call
415/451-7497 if you have questions.
For GTU students this graduate level intensive, RHHR 1118, is an
Intersession program for which academic credit is available.
Registration is through the Graduate Theological Union’s Registrar’s
office: cro@gtu.edu.
Out of town participants may be able to find housing near
campus in Berkeley at the French Hotel or at the Bancroft Hotel. Both
hotels as well as many restaurants are within walking distance of the
GTU. On Wednesday students will hopefully carpool to San Francisco.
About China Galland
Galland’s
books, from the classic, prize-winning Longing for Darkness: Tara
and the Black Madonna; The Bond Between Women, a Journey to
Fierce Compassion, to her newest non-fiction, Love Cemetery,
Unburying the Secret History of Slaves, and others, mark a
pioneer’s
path. Weaving together the seemingly disparate worlds of myth,
comparative religion, personal narrative, theology, anthropology,
history and private realms of discourse, Galland's books have
been praised by scholars and authors alike, including Bill Moyers,
Sue Monk Kidd, Barry Lopez, Jack Kornfield, Isabel Allende, Paul
Hawken, Jean Shinoda Bolen, and others. For more, visit
www.chinagalland.com.
Newsletter design by Corey Fischer;
photos: (top to bottom: Earth, cgi by Jack Larmour; Eagle Nebula from
the Hubble Telescope; Ostrobramska, Lithuanian Black Madonna,
photographer, unknown. Painting by Janet McKenzie: "The Keepers of
Love," from Love Cemetery; photo of China by Dan Lent and
Kathleena Gorga