About This Year’s Theme:  Quiet Courage, Creative Mourning & Radical Hope

Those of us paying attention what is transpiring in the ‘socio-political surround’ in our worlds must come to terms with our experience of deep and profound disruption and dislocation taking place in the discontent of our world today.

On this retreat, we will gather together in the ‘tavern’ to listen deeply to the needs and expressions residing within our own hearts, and the hearts of our fellow travelers.

We will cultivate a renewed ‘strength of heart’ in the tender and steady presence of one another, attending to a resilient and beating heart capable of withstanding the conflicts and confusions in the ‘burning furnace’ of the world.  We will practice saying ‘yes’ to life as it is; ‘yes’ to ourselves as we are.

With encouragement and support, we will affirm the best in one another, look deeply into our own shadows, and find the inspiration to grow from the places of our lesser developed aspects of our being – a place where we can finally let into our hearts ‘the authority that only tenderness can bring‘.  

Ask Me
William Stafford

Some time when the river is ice ask me
mistakes I have made. Ask me whether
what I have done is my life. Others
have come in their slow way into
my thought, and some have tried to help
or to hurt: ask me what difference
their strongest love or hate has made.

I will listen to what you say.
You and I can turn and look
at the silent river and wait. We know
the current is there, hidden; and there
are comings and goings from miles away
that hold the stillness exactly before us.
What the river says, that is what I say. 

An Orientation To The Soul Tavern Experience

In this kind of Tavern, we work and play to tap the soul-inspiring ‘Presence’ that wants to shine through our persona.  

We will begin each morning with both guided and silent meditation times, followed by short presentation of the day’s theme, and subsequent large group reflection/discussion.

The afternoons consist of small group breakout discussion to deepen the individual reflections and sharing, and time to be in nature, and walk on the land.

Our evenings consist of more ceremonial and ritualized ways of deepening our engagement with truth and beauty, and to speak directly from the aliveness of our newly lived experiences.

Sunrise over Mohonk Preserve, on top of Bonticue Crag.

This is often an early morning hiking activity during the Men’s Soul Tavern Retreat.

Wild Geese

By Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

AMONG STRONG MEN IN THE TAVERN

Among strong men in the Tavern
I can speak a truth no one will laugh at: My heart
Is like a wild alley cat
In heat:
In every possible way we conspire to know
Freedom and love.
Forget about the common reason, Hafiz, for it only
Enslaves–there is something holy deep inside
Of vou that is so ardent and awake
That needs to lie down naked
Next to
God.

– Hafiz