WORDS on FIRE:

A Retreat for Writers in Emergency

For all writers and artists now -- under threat of censorship, with incubator institutions losing funding, and the proverbial pen feeling a lot weaker than the fast-moving sword – staying resilient in heart, mind and practice is a tall order. “WORDS on FIRE” is a weekend replenishment retreat for writers. Using the Work That Reconnects (WTR) – a group process developed by Joanna Macy and collaborators over 50 years --, you will restore to your purpose of heart, your purpose with words. You’ll share rituals of gratitude and grief and imagination. You’ll be offered prompts for writing, and you’ll write freely from your emboldened hearts. In short, you’ll restore to the power of the word, the sentence or line, the truth that runs like a river of fire through you and out into the world.

“WORDS on FIRE” is for writers: published and unpublished, experienced, stalled and aspiring. All word forms are welcome: poetry in all its forms, prose in its variety and genres, and plays/ performance texts. “WORDS on FIRE” is also for dissertators, researchers, journalists and polemicists. If you write, if the idea of retreating for a weekend in October feels like sanctuary or necessity for you -- then come and restore, explore and write your WORDS on FIRE for a world in need.

Location: East Side Freedom Library, 1105 Greenbrier, St. Paul, 55106

Participants: this workshop limit is 16.

Dates and Times: Indigenous Peoples’ Weekend

Fri evening, October 10, 7 – 9 p.m.

Saturday, October 11, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

Sunday, October 12, Noon – 5:30 p.m.

Optional: Monday, October 13, 9:00 – 5:00, a full day of quiet writing at ESFL. (Also Optional on all days: 8:30 – 9:00 a.m. yoga, no experience necessary)

Attendance: The Work That Reconnects (WTR), which will hold and inspire the writing in this retreat, is a group process involving steps in a spiral form. It is not possible to come and go, or miss sections of the process. Community is key, and the spiral steps cannot be re-ordered. Your commitment to WORDS on FIRE is Friday evening through Sunday at 5 p.m.

Cost:  Free! If you are inclined, donations are accepted and shared between ESFL and Twin Cities Work That Reconnects (TCWTR).

Your Facilitator:  Beth Cleary, writer and trained facilitator of the Work That Reconnects

Questions and to Register: bethclearyawake@gmail.com

The basic unit of storyteller-and-witness is ancient and necessary for human thriving. The stage -- whether inhabited by one performer or thirty -- is a living system of communication and witness among audiences, onstage performers, playwright/devisers and backstage technicians. As audience members, we watch ourselves when we watch performance: ourselves working, storying, aspiring and destroying. We watch ourselves reach, cry out, crumple and leap. It is onstage where we imagine ourselves past and future in our shared present, remind ourselves of our capacities for movement, change, invention, voicing our truths. We dream ourselves anew onstage, and possibly better.

This workshop is meant as a gift to all performance workers: dance and theater, onstage and offstage, employed, unemployed, retired. These times need you and your knowledge, and yet the structures that barely support you are disappearing. "The Green Room" -- the place backstage where performers and technicians gather -- is your workshop day to replenish, to quake and grieve in these arts-hostile times, and to fortify your deepest capacities for believing that the show has always gone on, indeed must go on, for the sake of humanity. You are an essential worker, a culture-bearer. Come restore to that root of who you are, with others in your root system.

Further details will be posted by mid-September. If you're not involved in an extended holiday show on January 2, please save the date. Venue TBA. 

Places in five. You're welcome, five. 

“Winter sowing” is the planting of seeds in small homemade greenhouses – re-using plastic milk containers, plastic deli containers, other forever-chemical containers piling up in your basement – and setting these little greenhouses directly into the snow. Many of us set these out in late February, early March, depending on conditions. Not only does winter sowing work as a way to start seeds, but winter sowing is an homage to seed ingenuity, a faith in their emergence from dormancy into germination. Winter sowing is literally the planting of hope in darkness.

This “Winter Sowing” Practice & Study Group will involve a 10-week exploration of the Work That Reconnects (WTR), with support at each in-person session in yoga practice and philosophy. We will meet alternate Saturday afternoons in person, and then practice and study on our own and in duos in between, using WTR texts, suggested yoga sequences (videos provided), and duo meetings for conversation and support.

A fuller description and details will be posted by October 1, 2025.

Active Hope for the New NOW

July 19, 2025, 1:00 - 4:00  (afternoon workshop)

Unity Church-Unitarian, St. Paul

attended: 26

Note: this is a regular, seasonal offering by Twin Cities Work that Reconnects (TCWTR) at Unity Church. TCWTR facilitators rotate leading this workshop. Please consult the TCWTR website for next dates!

Inter-Dependence Day: A Workshop for Active, and Activist, Hope

July 4, 2025, 10:00 - 4:30  (one-day workshop)

East Side Freedom Library, St. Paul

attended: 24

Yoga and Active Hope

November 23 & 24, 2024 (two-day workshop)

Unity Church-Unitarian, St. Paul

Co-Facilitator: Nancy Nair, TCWTR

attended: 26

Seeding the Future: A Work That Reconnects Workshop

October 19 & 20 (two-day workshop) 

East Side Freedom Library, St. Paul

Co-Facilitator: Ryan Brownlow, Chicago, IL

attended: 8

Yoga and Active Hope

April 20 & 21 (two-day workshop)

Olivet Congregational Church/The Breathing Place, St. Paul

attended: 20