[LGBTQIA+/BIPOC ONLY] Honoring the Grieving Heart through Ma Tara: A Late-Autumn Teaching, Practice, and Ceremony of Caretaking

**In support of this year’s experience, we are prioritizing participation from the LGBTQIA+/trans and BIPOC communities. This unlisted registration page is for individuals who identify as either LGBTQIA+/trans and/or BIPOC only.**

We are living through a period of decolonization, an apocalyptic period of truth telling and unveiling. Many of us are struggling to make sense of the impact we are experiencing in our personal lives, relationships, and in our communities. To move through this period, we must rely on our capacity to grieve, to touch into the sadness of change and loss and tend to it with compassion. In this compassion we can allow our hearts to break and in the breaking be held by the understanding that we are not alone in this grieving.

Once we allow ourselves to be in relationship with our grief, then it can begin to teach us how to move through sorrow and hopelessness into clarity and connectedness. Yet most importantly, our relationship to grief through compassion opens the space for joy and gratitude. Through evoking the sacred lineage of Ma Tara, the female Buddha of liberatory compassion, Lama Rod Owens will invite us to explore this liberating relationship with grief through guided ritual and energetic practice in order to open and resource our hearts to keep moving on.

This daylong retreat is open to all practitioners of all levels.

This event will be offered in person in Asheville on Saturday, December 7th at Unitarian Universalist Congregation of Asheville (1 Edwin Pl, Asheville, NC 28801), in their beautiful Sanctuary space. Check-in will begin at 9:30am, with a lunch break from 12pm-1:00pm, and the program will conclude at 5pm. Your registration fee is offered on a sliding scale ($25 – $75); kindly offer to pay at the highest amount that you are able. All proceeds will be offered to our teacher as dana. Participants will have the opportunity to offer the teacher additional contributions at the event if they choose to.

We will not be requiring or administering Covid-19 tests for this program, but please bring mindfulness to your activity in the days leading up to the retreat out of consideration for our staff, teachers and participants. Masks will be optional. Avoiding higher risk situations and making use of masks whenever possible will minimize the likelihood of transmitting viruses to others while on site. We strongly encourage folks to stay home if they are symptomatic of any communicable illness.