Men’s Wisdom Council
June 14-19, 2009
The Rowe Men’s Wisdom Council is unique. Men return year after year to re-new themselves and drink from the rich waters of the male spirit, drawing sustenance from the deep emotion and passionate spirituality that take root and flower in this unusual and extraordinary environment.
This community creates nurturing yet provocative processes for us to unmask and unburden ourselves, face our fears, speak our truths, and heal from wounds we have carried for decades. Our stories brim with passion, pain, and power. Among us, we’ve faced death, battled depression, been through divorce and dating. We’ve lost jobs, love, and hope and then found reasons and resources to be happy again. Children, cancer, partners, parents – someone here shares your struggle or has found a solution outside the box.
We come, committed to break open that box whose walls separate us from ourselves and each other. As modern men, untrained and unfamiliar with the deep root of the soul and the great rhythms of nature, we’ve lived in the smallest psychic space of anyone in history. The limited role of material provider leaves us alone and isolated. Lonely or lost, we sacrifice ourselves and labor, often at the expense of our health, in a meaningless pursuit of a success defined by the ability to buy more stuff.
Each summer men come to Rowe and find stories to tell and wisdom to share. A spark ignites; the wind picks up; something long-smoldering bursts into flame. The Men’s Wisdom Council invites men to open the door to all they have forgotten, reclaim their potential to be heroic, and connect with a larger sacred story. Men arrive, excited and nervous, longing for friendship and community, eager to renew the excitement and exuberance they felt as children, ready to find a dream worth living. Each year they leave laden with gifts, both planned and unexpected. Many rediscover their creativity and depart having found a poem, mask, story, or song waiting within. Others find their way from the head to the heart and are shocked, even stunned, by the richness of their inner life as ritual, breathwork, community, and communion bring them face to face with a self far larger than the self they thought they knew. As one man said, “The Men’s Wisdom Council showed me my real life and gave me the courage to start living it.”
We invite you to come and join us for a week of wonder, a week of wildness, and a week you won’t forget. Click on the link above to register online. There is a campership (scholarship) fund available for those of limited means who want to attend.
The week will be directed by Sparrow Hart, who co-founded this camp 15 years ago and has been involved in men’s work for over 25 years. Sparrow is the creator of the Mythic Warrior Men’s Training and leads vision quests and workshops that focus on living from our core truths and authentic selves. The staff includes Blasé Provitola, founder of Men’sWork, Inc., which brings emotional awareness to those behind prison walls; Larry Murphy and Tim Dalton, poets extraordinaire; Dan Roden, spiritual pilgrim, healer, and warrior; and Leo Horrigan, poet, performer, and wild man.
“Men’s Wisdom Council introduced me to my real life and gave me the courage to start living it.”