Saturday May 23, 10 am – 12 pm
Rodger Kamenetz, MA
$50, CEUs: 2

In The Red Book Carl Jung writes of the power and necessity of imagery as a way to depth. “My speech is imperfect. Not because I want to shine with words, but out of the impossibility of finding those words, I speak in images. With nothing else can I express the words from the depths.”

How can we learn to speak in images, to think in images and to feel with images? We experience images through poetry and art, through verbal images and music. But directly, personally, we experience our own images in three ways: in dreams, in memory, and in perception. The last of these is often overlooked, but the poet William Wordsworth wrote of “the world of eye and ear” “both what we half create and perceive.” There’s an element of imagination in all three of these domains.

Working from his new book, Seeing Into the Life of Things, which is recommended as a text to be read before the class, Rodger will teach practices for cultivating the imaginative contemplation of images as they arise in perception, in memory and in dreams. He will also conduct a simple practice of morning blessing, which allows us over time to collect “blessings” in each day, and to bring them to life in imagination. We will share our images together and learn from one another their power, their beauty and their uniqueness.

Recommended Reading
Seeing into the Life of Things by Rodger Kamenetz

About the Instructor
Rodger Kamenetz is an award-winning poet and author. He wrote the international bestseller The Jew in the Lotus and the National Jewish Book Award-winning Stalking Elijah. His nine books of poetry include The Lowercase Jew (Northwestern University Press) and The Missing Jew: Poems 1976-2022. Kamenetz has been called “the most formidable of the Jewish-American poets.” His book The History of Last Night’s Dream was featured on Oprah Winfrey’s “Soul Series.” His new book Seeing into the Life of Things focuses on the power of imagination for spiritual practice. Mirabai Starr called it “a harvest of living wisdom.” Kamenetz is professor Emeritus at Louisiana State University. He is the founder of Natural Dreamwork, an international group of dreamwork practitioners. He lives in New Orleans.