Retreat Ideas?

[alwaysfallingup]

So, every year my coven puts on a retreat for women in our area. It's three days, from Friday to Sunday, and it's always lots of fun. We have women in every age group and stage of life, as well as lots of different beliefs and experiences.

This year, our theme is "Gathering the Goddesses", inspired by and in tribute to the work of Z. Budapest and the other founding mothers of modern Goddess spirituality. We always do workshops around our theme, guided meditations, and rituals, as well as having social time, drumming circles, and good food. This year, we're also setting up altars/shrines to different Goddesses from around the world and are going to have a Goddess Walk through them and then allow the women to spend time at each one as they feel called throughout the weekend and provide candles and incense, etc for them. I'm really excited, since this is new for this year.

Anyway, before I get too carried away, what I'd like to ask is if any of you have any suggestions for things you'd love to see at such a retreat if you were to attend, or any ideas for things we could incorporate. Our goal as a group is to get better every year and make it more welcoming, more experiential, more joyful, more spiritually filling, and more fun every year.

Thanks for sharing~

[LadyWillow]

This is probably going to sound weird, but I think I'd like an art activity, one where I worked with other women making what are known as pocket shrines (google it, you'll get some nice links with pictures). They can create these mini shrines to deities or to aspects of themselves, something they'd like to work on, etc. I think it would be a great bonding experience and something material they could take home after the retreat.

[alwaysfallingup]

This is probably going to sound weird, but I think I'd like an art activity, one where I worked with other women making what are known as pocket shrines (google it, you'll get some nice links with pictures). They can create these mini shrines to deities or to aspects of themselves, something they'd like to work on, etc. I think it would be a great bonding experience and something material they could take home after the retreat.

That's a great idea! We always try to break up our workshops with activities, like broom-making last year and bath herb bags so people don't get bored or tired. I think the pocket shrines are a great idea, and it fits in perfectly with our theme.

Thanks so much for the suggestion! I'm going to post it to our yahoo group and see what the other ladies in the circle think!

[LadyWillow]

You're welcome.