Ray McGinnis

5/14 to 5/16/2010
6:30 Fri Dinner thru Sun Lunch
$335

The Hebrew Psalms express a raw and beautiful longing for God. In the sweep of what the Psalms bring before the Creator - gratitude, lament, trust, vision, justice, relationship with the God and creation - the Psalms can be for us a living language, a poetic language vital for today, meeting us in all our humanness.

Together with a wide range of poets including Hafez, Rilke, Mary Oliver, Emily Dickinson and Leonard Cohen, Ray McGinnis leads you with a poet’s eye into the zone that is your sacred center. Whether you keep a writing practice or have never put pen to paper, you are invited to infuse your spirituality with the artistry of poetry. Psalms, journal writing and other poems serve as catalysts to help you reclaim your soul’s voice as you write your own new Psalms and sacred poems.

In a world where our passion for justice, determination for forgiveness, resolve to restore what is broken can falter, poetry can be a soaring path back to an enlivened journey inward as well as a tool to embolden our participation in our challenging, pluralistic world.

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Ray McGinnis is author of Writing the Sacred. He has served as national staff for youth & young adult ministries in the United Church of Canada, and as program staff for the Naramata Centre for Continuing Education in British Columbia, Canada. He is a graduate from the Centre For Christian Studies in Winnipeg, Canada, and in Religious Studies from the University of Toronto. Ray has also studied at the Banff Centre for Fine Arts Writing With Style program in Banff, Alberta, Canada, and the Center for Journal Therapy in Lakewood, Colorado. Since 1999 he has taught across North America leading journal writing, poetry and nature walking workshops, prayer writing and Psalm/sacred poetry workshops. Ray has been invited to lead his workshops to a wide range of settings including health-care, educational, retreat, public libraries, and Christian, Jewish, Buddhist and Inter-faith contexts. He lives in Vancouver, Canada. For more information about his work visit www.writetotheheart.com

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