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Summer Courses In Glenstal 2008

Course Title: Creative Writing Course with Fanny Howe.
24th June to the 4th July
The  courses  below are part of the Certificate in Theology and Religious Studies offered by M.I.C. 12 credits are awarded for each course.

Course Title: Icons, Chant, Cinema and Symbolism – new ways of seeing and hearing.
Dates 14th to the 19th July 2008
The primary aim of this course is to foster spiritual growth and a sense of the symbolic in our lives and thereby open our eyes and ears to new ways of seeing and hearing.  It aims to develop a liturgical vision of reality with transforming consequences for spiritual growth and our engagement with the world.
It will do this by exploring Liturgy and Symbolism using the Glenstal icons, chant, and cinema as ways to connect with a forgotten world. The course will lead participants to a greater appreciation of worship as the source and summit of the Christian life. Participants will join in the liturgy of the monastic community and participate in seminars aimed at unpacking the meaning contained in ritual and symbolism.
Course Directors :  Noirin Ni Rian;  Mark Patrick Hederman;  Gregory Collins; Simon Sleeman.

Course Title: Music, Mysticism and Religious Imagination.
Date: 4th to 9th August 2008.

‘The Christian of the future will be a mystic or she or he will not exist at all.’ Karl Rahner
The aim of this course is to foster spiritual growth through a study of music, mysticism and religious imagination. The course will lead participants to an understanding of the imagination as providing privileged access to the world of creativity as worship as well as worship as creativity.
Participants will attend the liturgy of the monastery and study it as an unconscious manifestation of the Church (as opposed to the conscious formulation of dogmas and creeds etc.)
From the other side of the equation we will study ways in which we try to connect with the Divine: the psalms as poetry; poetry and art as outpourings of the religious imagination; music and song as essential elements of liturgical prayer; the connection between theatre and liturgy; the gap between mysticism and these other attempts to connect with or express the Divine
Course Directors:  Noirin Ni Rian;. Mark Patrick Hederman;  Gregory Collins;  Paul Nash; Simon Sleeman.

Course Title: Ecology, Education and Eucharist.
Dates: 18th to the 23rd of August 2008
The aim of this week is to lead participants to an understanding of the world as God’s work of art, and our role, as fellow artists, helping to bring this artwork to completion.
Ecology  is understanding the world as God’s temple. The abbey gardens, forests and geological sites will be used to introduce participants to the planet as a living and breathing organism, an extension of our bodily selves rather than an object for our exploitation.
Education is the key to exchanging our natural biological domineering way of being in the world for a more enlightened appreciation of our appropriate place and posture on the planet. Workshops for developing such attitudes and artistry will include nature walks, approaches to the development of sacred spaces such as gardens, sanctuaries, labyrinths, appreciating nature as a work of art. Here the emphasis should be on imagination, imagining the world as God dreamt it might be. We ourselves are also God’s work of art and education should help us to achieve the beauty which is our goal as human beings; alongside maintenance of the heritage we should be handing on to our children.
Eucharist means to give thanks – the goal of education is to teach us to give thanks for everything that exists in the universe, to change what may appear to be drudgery into gratitude; the ordinariness of our lives transformed into the marvelous, water changed into wine.
Every fragment of the planet is potentially an element of the Eucharist and every day we should be celebrating a Mass of the universe. A study will be made of the various kinds of eucharistic liturgies - their forms and rites – and an attempt will be made to connect these with various artistic and cultural manifestations: rituals, literature and artworks of various kinds.
Course Directors:  Noirin Ni Rian; . Mark Patrick Hederman; . Gregory Collins; . Paul Nash; Simon Sleeman.
Each course costs 350 (TBC) euro (includes lunch each day). Limited accommodation is available in the monastery guesthouse (all rooms en suite). Email:  margaret@glenstal.org