A PLACE FOR FAITH Retreat focuses on blending nature, spirituality

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Author Terry Tempest Williams has spent the better part of two decades exploring her beliefs in the intimate relationship between the natural and spiritual.

A Westerner by birth and by choice as an adult, Williams often focuses her writings on the people and landscapes of that region.

She has also passed enough time with her husband at their beloved Hancock County farmhouse to see similarities between her native Utah and Maine.

“People in Maine are passionate about the forests, are passionate about the coasts,” she said this week from her home near Salt Lake City. Mainers, like “Utahns,” have a deep economic, personal and even spiritual connection to their home state’s natural resources.

She then added rhetorically: “What would Maine be without the land?”

Williams and dozens of other people will probe those concepts and more during the 2006 Spirituality, Ecology and Peace conference and retreat July 15 at the University of Maine in Orono. Williams is one of two keynote speakers at the event, which is sponsored to the university’s peace studies program.

The conference is open to the public. The $65 fee covers breakfast, lunch and snacks.

Hugh Curran, who teaches in the UM peace studies program and is conference co-organizer, said the word “spirituality” in the title is meant to imply “connectedness” or “empathy” with the environment.

Curran said many past cultures and societies had closer spiritual and religious ties to the landscape than today, as evidenced by the reverence paid to such places as Mount Olympus in Greece, the Ganges River of India or even Maine’s Mount Katahdin. Implicit in this reverence, Curran said, is the need to protect and conserve those lands.

“It’s only in this modern era that we feel this disconnection” with nature, Curran said.

The conference is meant to explore ways to experience nature spiritually and develop a deeper love or respect for the natural world, Curran said.

The day will begin at 6 a.m. with a sunrise ceremony led by representatives of the Penobscot Nation and the Christian faith.

The keynote addresses will be delivered by Williams and Kyriacos Markides, a UMaine sociology professor and author of works on spirituality and mysticism. Markides’ talk is entitled “The Wisdom of Eastern Christian Elders and Mystics: What They Can Teach Us About Inner and Outer Peace.”

Morning and afternoon sessions will follow on a wide variety of topics, including poetry and writing, nature preserves, organic farming, meditation and environmental “bioneers.” The day will conclude with an evening performance by Masanobu Ikemiya, founder of the Arcady Music Festival in Maine and a winner of the United Nations Peace Award.

Williams, who is a friend of Curran’s, cited a long list of U.S. authors as examples of the recurring theme of spirituality and nature in this country, names like Emerson, Thoreau, Dickinson, Hemingway and, more recently, Rachel Carson.

Williams is arguably best known for her 1991 book “Refuge: An Unnatural History of Family and Place” in which she relates the Great Salt Lake flooding of the Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge to her family’s struggle with cancer believed to be caused by the U.S. government’s nuclear tests in Utah.

She has since written extensively on the desert, peace, religious and spiritual connections to the land and many other topics.

Her 2004 book “The Open Space of Democracy” is a response to what Williams sees as a stifling of public “engagement,” whether in politics, the environment or the United States’ increasingly militarized role in international affairs.

Williams said she is deeply alarmed by what she describes as the Bush administration’s profit-driven attitude toward the environment. But she believes the country, as a whole, is beginning to realize that the environment is not just a political issue. It is also a deeply spiritual one.

“For me, it’s about seeing the world whole,” Williams said. “So often we see a world that is disconnected: politics in this corner, spirituality in that corner, poverty, economics and science all in their own rooms. And what I think ecology tells us is they are all connected.”

To register for the conference, or for more information on the events and possible financial assistance, contact the University of Maine’s peace studies program at 581-2609.

Fast Facts:

What: 2006 Spirituality, Ecology and Peace Conference and retreat

Where: University of Maine, Orono

When: July 15, beginning at 6 a.m.

Why: To explore ways to experience nature spiritually and develop a deeper love or respect for the natural world

How Much: $65 registration fee covers breakfast, lunch and snacks

Contact: The University of Maine’s peace studies program, 581-2606