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Readling List
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Container of Welcome: Season of the Father Retreat, September 19-22, 2025
6 sessions of movement, processing prayer, and experiential learning (8 sessions if you are a WoC).

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If you’re longing for a place to unwind, ground yourself, and rediscover the quiet wisdom of your body in a welcoming space, the Season of the Father Retreat at Bethany Beach was designed for you. This is a rare opportunity to create a unique sense of safety that opens the door to deeper, less conscious healing — by honoring boundaries, releasing long-held shame, and exploring how ancient monastic practices meet modern somatic movement.

You’ll be invited experience a special awareness of your own body, supported by a caring community. By moving, breathing, and expressing yourself at your own pace, in your own way, you’ll have the chance to let go of old stories held in the body and to receive more fully from God an awareness of who you already are.

The theme is creating a “container of safety” — like an inner father — that transforms how we live, feel, and connect. Through practices such as time with the land, creative rituals, and embodied prayer, you can shed old masks and live in a more authentic, embodied relationship with yourself, others, and Father God.

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Below is a wealth of source material we will be drawing from (though not covering all, of course), presented for you to review.

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THEMATIC EMPHASIS 1: CREATING A CONTAINER OF SAFETY

  • How the boundaries of our territory are the set-up for cultivating inner abundant fruit of self safety.

  • Coming to somatic work as adults, sometimes for therapeutic reasons, often around pursuits toward wellness, one of the bigger themes is safety.

  • In somatic and therapeutic work, there is something called “a good container”.

  • The ultimate goal is to create a good container within oneself. This might even be described as an inner father, an inner protective sense of boundaries and safety.

  • One thing to note is that boundaries are VERY individual. They are very specific to a person. And that what is right for one person may be wrong for another.

Zia’s Movement Path Story

I have often asked myself since starting movement work – what is a good container?

In my personal journey, having a good container, set up by good leaders, making the group safe for all participants, felt almost like a life and death necessity.

Because let’s be honest, movement work can be scary. Bodies interacting with other bodies can feel high stakes.

It has the potential to bring up shame, fear, vulnerability, and a general sense of “potential for harm” – esp when boundaries are messy or undefined. Especially when we’ve never done this before. Especially when there are so many associations with the body that are not addressed by Christian or Western culture.

Movement work also has the potential to unlock big emotions like JOY, ECSTACY, and DEEP CALM.

This may seem like no biggie, but for anyone who’s ever done this work, unlocked joy can be a lot to handle.

Even, especially, for the person feeling it. Also, any reversions to our childlike selves in company can be connect unconsciously to shame, even if on the surface, the emotions seem “positive”.

When unfiltered joy happens, this can be a short runway to other big emotions like GRIEF, SHAME, REGRET, IMPUSE TO HIDE, ANGER/RAGE, etc.

We can ask questions like: Why did I show my real self? Why did I trust myself with people I barely know? How could I let this happen?

If those feelings are handled properly in community – without projections of unhealed shadow material that can translate into toxic judgment, fear, shame, self-hatred, rage, comparison, jealousy, envy, etc. it is only then that we get some deeper payoff that is incredibly rewarding.

Now this can be tricky, because the projections of the community WILL surface.

But the key is being READY and WILLING to deal with those things as they surface. Being ready to recognize and be accountable to the process. Being ready to flow into non-judgment after dismantling the blocks and barriers to acceptance and welcome.

Payoffs like intimacy, trust, connection, care, softness, oneness are the incredible result.

In this retreat we hope to start to understand how to create containers of safety that allow the collective to relax into these more tender experiences of community connection.

The pathway is not easy, but it is possible and precious when it arrives.


THEMATIC EMPHASIS 2: How our bodies have been exiled by our communities and now ourselves

Many of us have had formative experiences with the body that were traumatic.

Whether these involved actual physical contact or involved experiences of social shaming or even humiliation, these experiences can scar us for a lifetime if we let them.

But we don’t have to let them.

Engagement with our physical bodies could have involved events of ridicule, rejection, awkwardness, embarrassment.

If we live in female bodies, we might have been targeted as sinful or shameful just for developing into our natural selves or expressing ourselves physically. If we live in male bodies, we might have experienced a sense of shame around our bodies being less developed, less strong, less “manly” than they were “supposed” to be by a certain developmental age.

Maybe skin problems or not being as athletic as others was part of that experience. Maybe being taller or less tall than others around us was a source of external and internal rejection. Maybe lack of coordination was a factor. Maybe hygiene was another.

Maybe poverty disallowed us to be as aesthetically put together as others around us.

Teens and young adults can experience difficulties understanding how their bodies work, and unfortunately, in Christian circles, body shaming is common. Important conversations don’t always happen. Important protections and supports don’t get erected, especially from a place of building consent, boundaries, and safety.

For many, developmental years are a source of shame, covering over, hiding out.


In this seminar, we will be engaging through learning, movement, and touch

  1. How to break down the shame-based engagement of the body during formative years. Where the body becomes, especially in adolescence, a commodity owned by the external religious judgment or commodified for the sexualized gaze. Where experiences of abuse can cause us to fold in even further into ourselves.

  2. How to unravel the way this gets encoded into our being-ness and doing-ness. Where our adult years are codified into frozenness, scripted movement, and also overly covering our bodies and self expression. Where we end up hiding out, neutralizing our physical impact, withdrawing from physical presence.

  3. How to unravel where somatic authenticity is stifled, to engage where we learned NOT to take up space.

  4. How to face the masks we put on to protect ourselves from the shaming of the community over our bodies, movement, performance. How to honor how those masks and self protections have both helped and harmed us. How to funeralize these masks.

  5. We will engage how Father God, the community, and ourselves might rereconnect to the body. We will observe and honor how the body needs to be protected in order to come forth authentically. We will learn how to “listen” to the body and move toward what it wants or says. We will learn how to “listen” to other’s bodies as well.

  6. We will start learning how to actively build and maintain protective containers of Fathering for the body to move in community with confidence, safety, and connection with others.

  7. The Ultimate Goal — To learn how to build a container of safety within ourselves with God, and in community with God and others, around how we live in our bodies.


THEMATIC EMPHASIS 3: Land, body, timelines, portals, realms

  • How the body and our inner wounds are connected to “outer wounds” of land, timelines, portals, realms, etc. Where cultural wounding and betrayal takes place and uses our bodies as conduits to express. Where we are meant to unravel the larger cultural macro wounds using our bodies as indicators of these patterns.

  • We’ll explore what these are and how “prepared places” affect these elements

  • Altars and Anchors - What is a “land” altar? How do you build an altar? How does it serve as an anchor? What does it mean to anchor time, gravity, materiality, portals? How do realms (land/sky/water) hold the place/body/time dimensions?

  • Movement - How does movement “fill the house”? What does it mean to make “holy ground”?

  • Touch - How is touch a portal?

  • Attention - How is attention an anchor? How do we put boundaries on it?

  • Time - Achoring time by commitment to first fruits. Exploring the schedule as an anchor, and the alignment w/ the Body as an anchor.

  • Place - What does it mean for ”the Lord build the house”? Place as an anchor for time, gravity, materials, attention. seafood and iconic Boardwalk Fries.


THEMATIC EMPHASIS 4: Trajectory of De-masking from the False Father (the through-line of the whole plot)

The seminar theme is Somatic Healing — that is, allowing Jesus to not only heal the body, but to heal through the body. There is some healing that can only happen through the body. These are places we can cooperate with Christ, that are too frequently downplayed in traditional Christian environments, yet affect all aspects of who we are.

Christ in Myth, the Body, and Authenticity

God frees us to be ourselves and to fully live our story. Myth serves as a guiding narrative, similar to a hero's journey, that helps individuals contextualize their life experiences. The body is presented not merely as a vessel but as an active agent that facilitates this journey, enabling individuals to embody and act out their personal myths. This process is essentially a journey from the "mask"—a protective, often toxic, false self—to one's authenticity. The discomfort and pain often experienced during this transition are seen as part of the process of shedding the mask and allowing the true self to emerge.

The "False Father" and the Shadow

Wherever we didn’t receive healthy fathering, we believe — in particular in the body, that God will not protect us in the world. The result is places where we incorporate a "false father," which refers to restrictive structures, often internalized from figures like one's literal father or societal norms, that hinder authentic self-expression. This "false father" is supresses hidden places within, often called the shadow—the unconscious, unacknowledged parts of oneself. When the shadow is denied and externalized, it can manifest as a toxic protection system, essentially becoming the "mask."

This idea is further elaborated through the work of M. Scott Peck, particularly his book People of the Lie, which is described as a seminal work on sickness and evil given permission to express due to shadow repression. Peck's perspective suggests that evil arises from a fundamental refusal to meet reality as it is, leading to self-deception and harmful actions towards others. This denial of authenticity, often cultivated through family patterns or church dynamics, creates conditions for sickness and evil and to take root.

Jungian Thought and Diverse Perspectives

Healing of the bodoy and less conscious child parts can be aided by a Jungian lens through which these concepts are explored. Figures like Richard Rohr, a key figure in the mythopoetic men's movement (along with Robert Bly, James Hillman, Michael Meade, and Robert Moore), and feminist Jungian writers like Tokopa Turner and Sharon Blackie, comparing and contrasting their views with the men's movement. The comparison explores areas of alignment (critique of patriarchy, deep ecology) and clash (e.g., differing approaches to external change versus internal feeling).

Beyond these movements, the conversation seeks to connect other seemingly disparate thinkers:

  • Joseph Campbell: A prominent figure in myth studies, whose work, though not strictly Jungian, is deeply influenced by it.

  • Marilynne Robinson: A novelist and theologian whose work, despite its focus on Protestant tradition, is seen to have significant Jungian and archetypal undertones, particularly concerning feminism and theology.

  • Kimberly Johnson: Linked to Jungian thought, especially through themes of death and the unconscious.

  • Ken Wilber: A philosopher whose work on the unconscious becoming conscious and humanity's cultural development resonates with the overall theme of maturation and awareness.

The aim is to demonstrate how diverse writers, despite their different fields, are ultimately exploring similar themes of personal transformation, the journey to authenticity, the integration of the unconscious, and the cross and ressurrection.


THEMATIC EMPHASIS 5: Monasticism, Somatics, and Creative Practice

A particularly insightful topic is the parallel drawn between monastic traditions and contemporary somatic practices. Monastic disciplines, with their emphasis on physical and ritualistic actions (like chant, breath, and daily rhythms) to dismantle the ego and connect to the spiritual, are seen as analogous to modern somatic healing work.

Specific examples of somatic work are given, with their monastic parallels:

  • Authentic Movement: Akin to individual monastic contemplation.

  • Contact Improvisation: Compared to communal liturgy or choral prayer.

  • Contemplative Movement: Similar to contemplative breath practices.

  • Somatic Experiencing: Parallel to confession and purification.

  • Dance Movement Therapy: Aligned with monastic ritual drama.

This connection underscores the idea that physical engagement can be a powerful pathway to spiritual and psychological transformative healing.

Similarly, art and craft-making are not hobbies but "thresholds" for personal growth and rebirth. The process of creation, especially when approached without a fixed outcome in mind, is seen as a ritual practice that facilitates the dismantling of the mask and mirrors the Jungian/alchemical phases of death, purification, and resurrection.

The overall intention is to synthesize these concepts into a practical framework for a seminar or retreat, where participants can actively engage in movement and craft to explore their own journey from mask to authenticity.


God loves the whole you.