Art, Darkness, and the Womb of God
A four-day intensive class with China Galland, Professor in Residence and Guest Teachers
Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education
At the Graduate Theological Union (GTU)
2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley 94709
January 19th-22nd, 2010
Tuesday - Friday, 1- 5pm
Tuition:
$295 Deposit:$100
email: info@chinagalland.com or call
415/451-7497
CARE, the Center for the Arts, Religion, and Education, an Affiliated Center at the GTU, is offering this four day-long graduate level intensive byyy China Galland, M.A., CARE adjunct faculty and author. Galland is one of the world's foremost scholars on the Black Madonnas. She will be joined by guest lecturers and artists: Catlyn Fendler, M.A., M.F.A., on the Black Madonnas and the Labyrinth. Trained Labyrinth facilitators, Catlyn Fendler and Anna Cook, will lead a Chartres-style Labyrinth walk. Carla De Sola, M. A., Omega Dance West, CARE Board, and adjunct faculty, will help co-create a Liturgy of the Excluded. Kayleen Asbo, M.M., M.A., San Francisco Conservatory professor of music, will perform and teach chants from pilgrim's songs to the Black Madonna. Ancient ritual Bulgarian songs and dances by Barbara Framm, Jana Mariposa and Karen Guggenheim, in in honor of the Honey Bees, now endangered world-over. Galland's lectures are illustrated with original images and film clips from pilgrimages around the world.
Class Description
This multi-media, experientially-oriented, cross-cultural course begins with an overview of the mainstream Christian tradition of depicting Mary and the Christ Child as powerful dark or black miracle workers and healers in European Catholicism and move into comparison with dark female images of the divine in Hinduism, Tibetan Buddhism, Indigenous cultures, and others. The Womb of God, this divine darkness, is also “the cornerstone of the new foundation” that we need now. Reknowned as powerful healers and miracle-worker, the Madonnas are black or dark because they are the Mother of All. No one is to be left out, least of all the Earth itself, the mother of us all. Bill McKibben, environmental activist and author, notes that clean technology and alternative energy is not enough to meet the planetary challenges of global warming. We have to turn back to the technology of building community. We have to “tap the energy for change” as Thomas Barry says. This figure of the Dark Mother, the class, the music, art, dance, ceremonies and songs to her, can be alchemical vessels for transformation.
During this class we will co-create liturgy for the Excluded among us and within us. We will research growing scholarship, write, reflect upon and discuss the Dark Mohter cross-culturally. Simultaneously we will be constructing a new understanding of darkness as positive, powerful and divine – as the Womb of God.
Students taking this course for credit, including those from other universities with whom Galland has established a cooperative agreement, must either complete an original 8-12 page research paper, or an original work of art, subject to instructor's approval in order to receive credit for this class.
This class is open to outside auditors. You do not have to be a student at the GTU. Acceptance subject to Instructor's discretion.
To Register: people outside the GTU need, contact China Galland directly about taking the class: chinagalland@yahoo.com or telephone 415/451-7497. Admission at her discretion. GTU students need to contact John Seal, the GTU Registrar: jseal@gtu.edu. Class meets at GTU in Berkeley. Course fee for auditors is $295. $100 deposit required. This is a very popular class, enrollment limited. Some scholarship funds are available.
Upcoming in 2010-2011
May 22-May 28, 2010: Pilgrimage to Sts. Maries de la Mer on the Mediterranean, Southern France, for the annual Feast of St. Sara-la-Kali, and/or a week-long pilgrimage to Compestella in Spain, June, 2010. We are currently compiling a list of people interested in going.
Spring 2011: Look for the new semester-long Womb of God class, as well as an accompanying Art Exhibit of Black Madonnas co-curated by China Galland and CARE Director, Carin Jacobs. Exhibit in CARE's new Doug Adams Gallery in the Bade Museum at the Pacific School of Religion at the GTU.
