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There is always light.
If only we're brave enough to see it.
If only we're brave enough to be it.
Amanda Gorman
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Dear Creative Friends,
I love how we bring the twinkle lights out of storage when this season of long nights and short days comes around again. We know there is nothing like candlelight, fire light and Christmas lights to help us see the world around us in a magical new light.
These quotes by Amanda Gorman (above) and Maya Angelou (below) make me wonder how I can share that light all year round. It is a question I'm taking into the new year with me, together with the question I shared in my last newsletter: How can we create refuges of beauty, imagination, and care all over the world?
I'll be starting 2025 by immersing myself in an art retreat in the Himalayas, learning about traditional Nepali art forms and meditating and making art in the foothills of the Himalayas with Lora Murphy of Essence of Mulranny, the beautiful retreat center in Ireland that I was fortunate enough to teach at earlier this year.
In case you want to plan an art retreat for yourself closer to home, you'll find the retreats I'm offering in the first half of 2025 below. I go on retreats to allow myself time for deep reflection and a fresh perspective on my journey of life. I always hope the retreats I offer give the gifts of time and space to reflect and clarify, in addition to opportunities to learn new ways of creating.
May your holiday season be gentle, peaceful and calm. May you be with those you love, and hold the memory of loved ones in spirit close to your heart.
May your inner light always shine bright.
With my love and holiday blessings,
Catherine
www.creativepilgrimage.com
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Nothing can dim the light that shines from within.
Maya Angelou
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Remember to make sure there is water in your bird baths this Winter!
You may be rewarded with beautiful scenes like this one in our yard.
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What if imagination and art are not frosting at all,
but the fountainhead of human experience?
Rollo May
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February 23rd to 27th, 2025 in NC
Creating with the Muses: Exploring Mixed Media Techniques for SoulCollage® Cards and Visual Journals
Start your year with creative immersion in community to inspire your inner Creative Muse to come out and play!
In this retreat we will invite the Muses to join us as we play, experiment and create one of a kind mixed media backgrounds and embellishments to use on our SoulCollage® cards or in our visual journals.
Creative techniques will include gelli printing, watercolor, rubbings, scratch art, creating with shapes, embossing, using gold and silver papers and tape, drawing, transfers, and more. Each participant will receive a gelli printing kit to take home with them so you can continue playing with this fun monoprinting technique.
The Artist Archetype works with the alchemy of transformation by taking raw materials and turning them into something new. These are times that call for rethinking old ways and imagining new ways of doing and being, and the Archetypes of Creativity and Imagination can lead us to find answers to questions we did not even know we were asking.
This retreat includes a 90 minute sound healing session led by Carli Webb.
More information and registration here
Four spaces still available in this retreat.
The retreat center requires me to confirm the number of bedrooms needed for this retreat by December 20th.
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The role of the artist is to awaken that which has fallen asleep.
Kim Krans
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March 30th to April 3rd, 2025 in NC
Exploring the Archetypes of Circle, Spiral, and Labyrinth through Visual Journaling
In this five day, four night contemplative retreat, we will be exploring the Archetypes of the Circle, the Spiral and the Labyrinth with paint, paper and pattern. We will be using these archetypes in a visual journal to find our rhythm as we slow down and engage with these patterns.
We will walk both the eleven circuit medieval labyrinth and the five circuit classical labyrinth at the retreat center, and use our creative practices as pathways for integrating our labyrinth walks.
In addition, we will create a set of Spirit Stones using images and words. You could also call these stones Alchemy Stones, Symbol Stones, Vision Stones, Story Stones … they are a meaningful way to bring metaphor and symbols into a labyrinth walk.
This retreat includes a 90 minute sound healing session led by Carli Webb.
More information and registration here
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Self-care is never a selfish act -
it is simply good stewardship of the only gift
I have, the gift I was put on earth to offer to others.
Parker Palmer
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April 4th to 6th, 2025 in Cape Charles, VA
Women's Wellness Weekend
The Women's Wellness Weekend is a unique experience in my beautiful home town of Cape Charles designed to provide women with an opportunity to unwind, reconnect with themselves, and explore holistic practices that nurture the mind, body, spirit, and soul. Participants will engage in inspiring classes, workshops, and sessions led by holistic practitioners, creating a space for personal growth and self-discovery.
Catherine will be teaching a SoulCollage® workshop on Saturday entitled Exploring the Ebb and Flow of our Lives with SoulCollage® and will be leading the labyrinth walk on Sunday morning.
More information and registration here
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Let yourself be silently drawn by the strange pull of what you really love.
It will not lead you astray.
Rumi
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May 25th to 30th, 2025 in the Netherlands
SoulCollage® and the Labyrinth as Portals of Transformation
This six day, five night retreat led by Lucy Schaaphok and Catherine Anderson is a time to pause and clarify the path you are on.
Both the labyrinth and the SoulCollage® process can be used as doorways of transformation awakening us to our unique gifts. Both modalities give us ways to access our own inner resources and intuition. Using one of them alone will make a difference in your life, but used together they amplify and deepen each other because they are both languages of the soul. They enable us to access our inner world, deepen our understanding of ourselves and expand our consciousness.
Both processes allow us to create a sense of order out of the information that bombards us from all directions, and both encourage us to develop a higher level of awareness which enables us to thrive in the complex and ever-changing world in which we live.
More information and registration here
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We are the creators of these times,
and every word we say, every action we take is a creative act.
Jan Phillips
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June 29th to July 2nd, 2025 at Mercy-by-the-Sea in Connecticut
Finding the Mystic Within Through Contemplative Creativity
I'll be teaching this retreat with Jan Phillips!
When the outer world is chaotic, it helps to have a contemplative practice and a creative outlet to keep our inner balance. Jan Phillips knows how to guide us toward our inner mystic. Her new Book of Hours "Stop Seeking, Start Finding" is the culmination of years of exploration on the spiritual path. In this retreat Jan will facilitate ways of harvesting personal wisdom as a map to a mystical and meaningful life.
Using the themes of Stillness, Awakening, Letting Go, Non-Duality, Conscious Creativity, Prophetic Action and Building Community, from Jan's Book of Hours, Catherine Anderson will guide us to create our own personal Book of Hours which can act as a gateway to contemplation and connection to the beauty and mystery of the cosmos. Our creative practices will include making SoulCollage®cards, writing poetry and simple book making. All supplies needed to create your Book of Hours will be provided.
To integrate our creative and spiritual practices we will also have the opportunity to walk the beautiful labyrinth overlooking the ocean at our retreat center on the Connecticut coast.
More information and registration here
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We have two lives, and the second one starts
when you realize that you only have one ...
Mario de Andrade
Brazilian poet and novelist
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July 27th to 31st, 2025 in NC
Visual Journal as Invitation to Creative Possibility
In this retreat, our visual journals will lead us on a journey of self-discovery as we play with possibilities. Unexpected revelations can arise when we allow our creative self a time of spaciousness to play with the things it loves with no expectations and with an openness to seeing things in a different way.
I’ll share with you the basics of visual journaling: creating word libraries as sources of intuitive wisdom and creating a library of painted pages without a paintbrush. Your inner artist will experiment with creative processes that will encourage it to play with the shapes, symbols and colors that express what it loves. Our focus will be on listening to our inner voice and giving it time and space to be heard.
I will show you how to use Photo Apps on your iPhone to create your own unique images that you can print out and use in your journal when you get home. This is a way to bring your own photographs or copyright free imagery into your journal, along with fun techniques that add unexpected and unique creative elements to your images.
This retreat includes a 90 minute sound healing session led by Carli Webb.
More information and registration here
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I believe that the group is the art form of the future.
In our present culture the main need is for a form that can enable
human beings to share their perceptions…and through that sharing,
to become a conduit for the appearance of spiritual intelligence.
Jacob Needleman
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