PROGRAM
Friday, March 13: Doors open 6pm for refreshments and book sales. Program featuring AZ poet laureate Alberto Ríos begins at 7pm, book signing to follow.
Saturday, March 14: Doors open at 9 am; retreat day featuring the Rev. Dr. Travis Helms, begins at 9:30am Lunch provided (RSVP REQUIRED, register by clicking the above button).
Sunday, March 15: Rev. Helms will preach at 7:45 am and 10:15 am services.
All events are free; see registration buttons above. Lunch requires RSVP
Location: Saint Barnabas on the Desert, 6715 North Mockingbird Lane, Scottsdale, AZ 85253
A Note from the Rev. Dr. Travis Helms
Dear Friends,
Poet William Carlos Williams wrote, “it is difficult to get the news from poetry, yet people die miserably every day for lack of what is found there.” Williams, a 20th-century poet and pediatrician, knew that poetry, like all art, could be a balm. And yet many of us grew up with the idea that poetry is something to figure out or decode. We were asked to answer “what is the meaning of this poem?” and now dismiss poetry as impenetrable and irrelevant to our lives. Yet poems not only soothe our souls with the beauty of their music, they can also help us expand our world view. In moments of intense cultural upheaval and confusion, poems can help us navigate uncertainty and see the world more clearly and empathically.
We invite you to join us in cultivating such a way of seeing.
On Friday March 13, please join me in conversation with acclaimed poet and author Alberto Ríos for a celebration of beauty and our shared humanity. Ríos’ poems and novels are replete with wonder, with a reverence for mystery–the mystery that surrounds, and the mystery that we hold within us. He is a poet who kindles us to new curiosities around what is possible and catalyzes us into action.
Our theme continues on Saturday, March 14, with a day-long retreat to cultivate the art of attention more intentionally. We are what we attend to. By perceiving the world through the lenses of mysticism, poetry, and imagination, we will deepen an appreciation for the presence of the divine woven into the world around us.
There will be talks and generative exercises, and also moments for reflection and integration. The ideas we will explore will be accessible for people of all faith traditions, or none–as well as for writers and readers of poetry, and even those for whom poems have little appeal. Above all, this retreat is intended to pique our curiosity and deepen our sense of wonder at the mystery embedded in the bone and loam of things.
We invite you to join us. To pause. To take a breath. To experience a moment of community connection in which we celebrate the power of art to help us recalibrate and re-center in what truly matters.
In Wonder,
Travis
The Rev. Dr. Travis Helms
After serving with the Peace Corps, Travis attended seminary at Yale Divinity School, then received his PhD in theology and literature from the University of Cambridge. Focused on the intersection of ecology, spirituality, and art, he serves on the board of EcoTheo Collective and is the founder and principal of the LOGOS Poetry Collective, a liturgically-inflected reading series that hosts events online and throughout the country.
Travis is the author of Blowing Clover, Falling Rain: A Theological Commentary on the Poetic Canon of the American Religion, and his poems and essays have been widely published. He currently serves as priest at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Jackson, WY.
“A finely written and deeply perceptive examination of the roots and resonances of the transcendentalist tradition in American literature … with a keen ear for echoes of some surprisingly central theological themes. It is a rich and original essay by a writer with a keen poetic sensibility.”—Praise for Blowing Clover, Falling Rain by Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury, 2002–2012
Alberto Ríos
Alberto Ríos, Arizona’s first poet laureate, is the author of 15 books of poetry, three collections of short stories, and a memoir. The son of a Mexican father and an English mother, Ríos was raised in Nogales, Arizona, and earned two bachelor’s degrees and an MFA from the University of Arizona.
His awards include fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, the Walt Whitman Award, and the Western States Book Award for Fiction. A former Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets, Ríos’ work has been published in 250 national and international literary anthologies. Ríos hosts the Arizona PBS productions Art in the 48, and Books & Co.
A Regents Professor at Arizona State University, Ríos serves as the Katharine C. Turner Endowed Chair in English, the Virginia G. Piper Chair in Creative Writing, University Professor of Letters, and Director of the Virginia G. Piper Center for Creative Writing.
”Ríos’ poems follow a path of wonder and gently move us to emotional truths that grab our breath and link our inner and outer landscapes. His alchemy works a transformation in the inner vision, turning us toward the deeper mystery of life itself.”—American Book Review
We Are of a Tribe
by Alberto RÍos
We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
Together, we are a tribe of eyes that look upward,
Even as we stand on uncertain ground.
The earth beneath us moves, quiet and wild,
Its boundaries shifting, its muscles wavering.
The dream of sky is indifferent to all this,
Impervious to borders, fences, reservations.
The sky is our common home, the place we all live.
There we are in the world together.
The dream of sky requires no passport.
Blue will not be fenced. Blue will not be a crime.
Look up. Stay awhile. Let your breathing slow.
Know that you always have a home here.
“We Are of a Tribe” is from Alberto Ríos’ 2020 poetry collection, Not Go Away Is My Name, published by Copper Canyon Press.