UMaine Peace Studies Program Presents Day Conference, Retreat July 15
Contact: Hugh Curran, 581-2609 or 667-7170 (or hugh.curran@umit.maine.edu)
George Manlove, 581-3756
ORONO – The UMaine Peace Studies Program has scheduled a nationally recognized environmentalist, naturalist and author and an international authority on Eastern Orthodox Christianity as main speakers for its 2006 Spirituality, Ecology and Peace conference and retreat July 15.
Keynote speakers are Terry Tempest Williams of Utah, a nationally known environmentalist, naturalist and author of “The Open Space of Democracy,” and UMaine sociology professor Kyriacos Markides, author and international authority on Eastern Orthodox Christianity, spirituality and mysticism.
The conference will explore methods of experiencing nature from a spiritual perspective and engender “a sense of love and respect for the environment, which goes beyond what would normally be expected in a scientific study or objectification of nature,” says Hugh Curran, adjunct professor of peace studies. Curran is a conference co-organizer with Phyllis Brazee, director of the peace studies program. Speakers and interactive panel discussions and workshops will help participants attune themselves more perceptively to their environment, Curran says.
The public is invited to this biennial event. A conference fee of $65 covers breakfast, coffee and tea breaks and lunch. Registration and additional information, including scholarship assistance, is available by contacting the Peace Studies Program at UMaine at 581-2609.
Participants are expected to come from throughout the state and beyond. “For the last conference, we had people from all over the country,” Curran says. “There’s no other peace studies program in the state of Maine and nobody that I know of is offering anything like this in Maine.”
The conference will begin at 6 a.m. with a sunrise ceremony at the ornamental gardens, next to University Credit Union on Rangeley Road, with Arnie and Jane Neptune and the Rev. James Gower. Arnie Neptune is an elder within the Penobscot Nation, and Gower, of Bar Harbor, is a member and former head of Maine Pax Christi, who will give a ceremonial talk from the Christian perspective.
Registration and breakfast from 7:30-8:45 a.m. at D.P. Corbett Business Building, behind the Maine Center for the Arts, follow the morning ceremony. Keynote speakers Williams and Markides speak at 9 a.m. and 1 p.m., respectively.
Following the morning keynote address will be panel presentations whose themes include poetry and writing, permaculture, artists speaking out, nature preserves and land trusts, ecology and Native American perspectives, creative myth and ecology, environmental “bioneers” and a presentation on MOFGA (Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.) Afternoon workshops exploring topics including personal transformation, Qi (Chi) Gong, mindfulness meditation, the healing powers of music and igniting personal creativity will follow the afternoon address.
The day wraps up with an evening performance at 7 o’clock in Minsky Recital Hall in the Class of 1994 Hall by Masanobu Ikemiya, founder of the Arcady Music Festival in Maine, winner of the United Nations Peace Award and a classical jazz pianist.
Williams, a Utah native descended from five or six generations of Mormon pioneers may be best known for her book “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place” (1991), in which she examines the rise of Great Salt Lake and the flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge in 1983. “The Open Space of Democracy,” published in 2005, evaluates breaking down partisanship and polarization in society to help solve political and environmental problems.
Markides, who studies and teaches sociologies of religion, theory, mental illness and violence, and international terrorism, has written two trilogies about Eastern Orthodox Christianity and associated spirituality and mysticism. His latest book, “Gifts of the Desert,” was published in 2005. The talk is titled “The Wisdom of Eastern Christian Elders and Mystics: What They Can Teach Us about Inner and Outer Peace.