Programs & Retreats
2026 Programs
Please note: Ring Lake Ranch is open only from late May through early September.
Ring Lake Ranch seminars consist of four evening sessions during the week, usually 90 minutes in length. The style and content of the seminars change with each leader. Seminar leaders are usually happy to talk with guests outside of the seminars, but the topics are presented entirely within the evening sessions, to ensure that all guests have a chance to participate.
Like all activities at Ring Lake Ranch, with the exception of cabin cleaning and helping with meal clean-up, the Ranch seminars are optional for guests.
May 24 – 30: Volunteer Week
Every year, the Ranch relies on volunteers to clean, do major repair and upkeep projects, and anything else needed to prepare for guests. Please consider joining us for a week of work, fun, and fellowship!
Volunteer week is currently full. To join the waitlist, please email alli@ringlake.org
May 31 – June 6: Laura Huff Hileman– Dreamwork: a Spiritual Practice
When we fall asleep, we awake to the wild wisdom of the unconscious and its guiding, healing, transforming dreams. Contemporary seekers are rediscovering dreamwork as the ancient-but-new spiritual practice that fosters a lively relationship with the Holy, with our sacred self, and with each other. In this immersion into dream spirituality, we’ll explore basics of Jungian-oriented dream theory made simple and work, pray, and play with the practical mysteries of dreams. Alone and in groups, we’ll experience how the images and emotions in our dreams invite healing, creativity, compassion, and courage for daily life. And we’ll be invited to respond to our dreams through art, ritual, storytelling, and writing in ways that ultimately lead to a deeper relationship with the Source of all mystery.
Laura Huff Hileman has been facilitating dreamwork for over 25 years. As a certified Dream Consultant and Spiritual Director, she helps people relate more deeply with the sacred source of their dreams, integrating and expressing dream wisdom through writing, art, storytelling, and ritual. Laura trained at the Haden Institute where she later served as a mentor. Her current project is Advent Dreaming, an Advent book from The Upper Room, to be published in the fall of 2026.
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June 14 – June 20: Melanie DeMore – Songs of Comfort and Calm
Song serves in our life as food and nourishment, as expressions of our deepest selves and our emotions. We will learn songs from different traditions, write our own mantras and prayer songs. Our time together will culminate in creating a’song bath’ for all the folks who are at the Ranch. Melanie DeMore is a Grammy-nominated singer/composer, choral conductor, music director and vocal activist who believes in the power of voices raised together. She facilitates vocal and stick pounding workshops for professional choirs and community groups as well as directing numerous choral organizations in the Bay Area. She is a featured presenter of SpeakOut! – The Institute for Social and Cultural Change and was a founding member of the Grammy-nominated ensemble Linda Tillery and the Cultural Heritage Choir.
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June 28 – July 4: Kaitlyn Curtice – Journeying with Story
Following the life cycle of a story, in this workshop Kaitlin will guide the audience through how powerful stories become in the world and how we interact with and reclaim stories for love and kinship, with readings from Everything Is a Story. During our time together, we will hear snippets of stories and poetry from Everything Is a Story, and then use that to work into a guided practice of journaling and sharing with one another in groups. Together, we want to understand how stories shape our lives from the way we think about ourselves to the way we participate in and understand societies and the world around us. Kaitlin Curtice is an award-winning author, poet-storyteller, and public speaker. As an enrolled citizen of the Potawatomi nation, Kaitlin writes on the intersections of spirituality and identity and how that shifts throughout our lives. She also speaks on these topics to diverse audiences who are interested in truth-telling and healing. As an inter-spiritual advocate, Kaitlin participates in conversations on topics such as colonialism in faith communities, and she has spoken at many conferences on the importance of inter-faith relationships.
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July 12 – 18: Beth Maczka – Reclaim Mary Magdalene: An Embodied Journey through Scripture and Art History
“Truly I tell you, wherever the Gospel is preached in the whole world, what she has done will be told in remembrance of her.” Mark 14:9 NRSV. Take a journey through scripture and art history to trace the steps of Mary Magdalene as Jesus’s anointer and the proclaimer of the resurrection – the Apostle to the Apostles. Beth’s original research on Mary Magdalene began by exploring the anointing story in Mark 14. It led her on a two-month research trip to six countries to find images of the anointing of Jesus’s head. Beth discovered Mary Magdalene in Medieval and Early Christian Art, where her image was previously suppressed or made anonymous. She celebrates and commissions contemporary art that depicts Mary Magdalene’s power and authority. Evening art lectures will be enhanced through role play, collage, illuminating scripture verses, sensory exegesis, body prayer, chanting, and an anointing ritual. What is Mary Magdalene’s message for you?
Beth Maczka, a Vanderbilt Divinity School MTS graduate, centers her studies on Mary Magdalene and why she is absent from much of art and liturgy. After a long career in nonprofit leadership in Asheville, NC, Beth’s interest in the Divine Feminine led her on two two-month research pilgrimages in Europe to explore the power of images of women in Early Christian and Medieval Art. Beth’s research papers on Mary’s representation in church art were presented at the Society of Biblical Literature in 2024 and are being considered for publication in peer-reviewed journals.
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July 19 – 25: Julie Mavity Maddalena and Heidi Carrington Heath - Bodies of Worth: Social and Spiritual Resistance to Diet Culture and the Religion of Thinness
How do diet culture and the “religion of thinness” shape our perceptions of bodies, worth, and spirituality? How do we, often unintentionally, reinforce this harmful culture through our conversations, habits, and systems? In this session, we will reflect on how oppressive cultural ideals about beauty and body size run counter to personal and communal visions of life that celebrate the inherent goodness of all bodies. This session is grounded in the belief that all bodies—regardless of size, shape, or ability—are worthy of care, respect, and celebration. Through dialogue and reflection, we will invite participants to embrace a wholistic understanding of health that includes mental, emotional, physical, and social well-being and a liberative theology challenging the death-dealing confines imposed by the religion of thinness.
Heidi Carrington Heath is an ordained UCC minister who serves as Executive Director of NH Outright, New Hampshire’s oldest LGBTQ+ organization. She offers webinars and has written on diet culture and spirituality for the SALT Project, the Young Women’s Clergy Project, Medium, and Working Preacher and has been a guest on the Dancing Pastor Ministries podcast. Julie Mavity Maddalena is Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Ethicist in Residence, and University Chaplain at Lakeland University in Plymouth, Wisconsin. Her research interests, teaching, and advocacy focus on feminist, womanist, and liberation theologies and intersections of class, race, gender, and sexuality. For many years she has given talks and presentations on weight stigma and diet culture in a wide range of settings and her article, “Resurrecting the Crucified Fat Body: Envisioning a Theology of Fat Liberation” appeared in the summer 2024 edition of the Journal for the Society of Christian Ethics.
July 26 – August 1 Carrie Newcomer and Helen Blier - What We Need Is Here
This session will be an exploration of the inner work that supports our outer walk in the world. Using music, poetry, spiritual text and the power of story Carrie and Helen will help us examine how we experience the sacred within us, between us and at the vibrant edges and liminal spaces between established areas or poles of certainty.
Carrie Newcomer is an international touring and recording artist, poet, activist, and retreat facilitator. She has won an Emmy and is a songwriter on Nickel Creek’s Grammy Award-winning “This Side” album. Carrie has 20 nationally released albums, including A Great Wild Mercy and The Beautiful Not Yet, and three books of poetry and essays, including Until Now: New Poems.She co-hosts The Growing Edge Podcast with beloved author Parker J. Palmer. Spiritually and Health Magazine naming her as “One of the 20 spiritual leaders for the next 20 years.” She currently authors one of Substack’s top five music offerings, “A Gathering of Spirits.”
Helen Blier is something of a vocational mutt, having served in a number of theological teaching, research, and administrative roles, all of which have been expressions of her basic curiosity in what makes people tick and how they can live lives of integrity in light of that. Helen also brings a love of nature and lifelong advocacy for the inner work that supports our outer walk for a better, more just world. For more than a decade, she has been leading lifelong learning programs; these days you can find her doing that work at Columbia Theological Seminary in Decatur, GA.
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August 2 – 8 Felicia Murrell Living Wholeheartedly: The Practice of Compassionate Listening
The intention of Compassionate Listening is to access our deepest wisdom to transform separation and conflict into an opportunity for connection, healing and peace. In this workshop, we will explore together Compassionate Listening as a personal practice to cultivate inner strength, self-awareness, self-regulation and wisdom. We will also explore how the practice of Contemplation enlarges our interior spaces to listen more compassionately to ourselves, the Divine and to one another. Felicia Murrell is a spiritual director and the author of AND: The Restorative Power of Love In An Either/Or World. With over 20 years of church leadership experience, her writing has been featured multiple times in the Center for Action and Contemplation’s Daily Meditations and their biannual journal ONEING. As a contemplative thought leader, Felicia has spoken at the Black Contemplative Prayer Summit and other widely recognized organizations. She believes Love is the source of our authentic power and that a love ethos can be embodied as a way of being in the world. For Felicia, the Way of Love (agape) is to consciously participate with the Divine in how we live, move and have our being. Mom to 4 adult children, Mimi to 1 grandchild, she and her husband Doug make their home in Woodbury, Minnesota (USA).
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August 9 – 15: Paul Wallace - Science, Religion, and the Strangest Book of the Bible
Usually, when one thinks of cosmic biblical passages, the first few chapters of Genesis come to mind. However, the cosmos appears in a number of biblical contexts. Perhaps the strangest such appearance is found in the book of Job. This book reveals a cosmos that accords with certain aspects of modern scientific thought: it values experience over tradition, offers a radical critique of anthropomorphic views of God, and removes human beings from the center of all things. These similarities make Job a promising point of departure for those who seek dialogue between biblical traditions and modern science. Paul Wallace teaches physics and astronomy at Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia, and has recently served as Pastor for Adult Education at First Baptist Church of Decatur. He writes and speaks at the intersection of religion and science. A churchgoing science nerd since childhood, he holds a PhD in physics from Duke University and an MDiv from Emory University’s Candler School of Theology. In addition to Agnes Scott, he has taught at Hampden-Sydney College, Berry College, Candler, and Columbia Theological Seminary. For three years he was a NASA Faculty Fellow at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., and has twice served on the faculty of the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative in Dharamsala, India. His books and articles range from the scientific to the popular.
August 16 – 22: Pam Houston – Reconnecting with the More Than Human World
People can be scary, especially lately, and many many of us are finding solace these days in the more than human world. In our dogs, cats and horses, in osprey and antelope, elk and bear, in mountains and meadows, sky and the snowflakes, maybe in some deep druidic faith in the Earth. My relationships with the beings that make up the more than human world is more than just a theme I turn to again and again in my work; those relationships also comprise something like my deep spiritual center. Something I might call my soul. In this series of conversations we will talk about how we make relationship with the more than human world, how to notice, not just without eyes but with all of our senses alert and receiving. We will investigate how and when humanity lost touch with our animal compatriates on this planet, how to re-center them and Mother Earth in our lives, and open ourselves to the lessons she has to teach us. We will try writing about animals, domesticated and wild; trees, individuals and entire forests, oceans, mountains, clouds, weather. That time (more than once for most of us) the beauty and power of the natural world saved our lives.
Pam Houston is the author of the short story collection Cowboys Are My Weakness, the memoir Deep Creek: Finding Hope In The High Country, and six other books of fiction and nonfiction. She teaches creative writing at The Institute of American Indian Arts and UC Davis and is cofounder and creative director of the literary nonprofit Writing By Writers and fiction editor at the environmental arts journal Terrain.org. She lives on a homestead at 9,000 feet near the headwaters of the Rio Grande. Her book, Without Exception: Reclaiming Abortion, Personhood and Freedom, was published by Torrey House Press in September.
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8/23 - 8/29: Sanctified Art Collective - Created for Creativity: Art as Spiritual Practice
We are all born with the drive to create, but along the way we learn to overthink creativity: Is my art good enough to share? Are my creative pursuits really productive? Can I even consider myself an artist? Rather than focusing on the end product or evaluating the worthiness of our pursuits, what if we let go of our overthinking and just created art for the sake of creating? In our evening sessions this week, we will use guided visual art projects as a way to process the events of the day and investigate our beliefs about God, ourselves, and the world around us. No experience, skill, or supplies are needed to participate.
Anna Strickland (she/her) serves as a Creative Partner and Operations Support for A Sanctified Art. Anna looks for the Divine in the everyday like treasure in clay jars and first encountered God in the integration of her spiritual self and artistic self. She is a former teacher and college minister, a proud Texas Longhorn and graduate of Iliff School of Theology, a Baptist to the core ministering in ecumenical spaces, and a lover of chaos anchored by the belief that the Spirit is most active in the spaces between us. Haley Sommerfeld (she/her) serves as Operations Support for A Sanctified Art and Director of Spiritual Education at Trinity Church of Austin. Haley is a colorful creative and minister-in-formation. A Texas native, she grew up south of Houston before moving to Austin almost a decade ago, where she now lives with her scientist spouse and their chatty cat. She is a Member-in-Discernment with the United Church of Christ and plans to pursue ordination after finishing seminary in 2026.
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8/30 - 9/5: The Wind River Reservation: Contemporary Perspectives
Understanding the history of the Eastern Shoshone and Northern Arapaho tribes is important to those who value the Wind River area and its people but equally important is having a sense of the richness of contemporary Shoshone and Arapaho lives. We’ll consider the varieties of gifts, joys, and struggles of life on the Wind River Reservation. Invited speakers include Scottie Ratliff (Eastern Shoshoni), former Wyoming state representative, Lynnette St. Clair
(Eastern Shoshoni), an advocate for the teaching and preservation of native language, Jackie White (Northern Arapaho), a tribal food advocate, and Cherokee Brown (Northern Arapaho), who offers presentations on the native experience of boarding schools.
Volunteering at the Ranch
Volunteers are a vital part of the Ranch!
Outside of volunteer week, we have a couple of volunteer spaces available every week for those who want to pitch in by setting tables for meals, staining cabins, or doing small maintenance projects. We ask for about 20 contribution hours for the week in exchange for fees covered. No construction experience is required to volunteer, and we’ll never ask a volunteer to take on a project beyond their skillset!
Please note that volunteer spaces are not available in the off season (mid- September – mid-May), and official registration is required.
If you have any further questions regarding volunteer opportunities or expectations, please email us at info@ringlake.org.
Group Retreats
The Ranch is a great place to book a group retreat! Whether your group would like to reserve a block of cabins during a seminar week, or book the entire Ranch to run your own programming, we’re happy to work with you to meet your needs. We’ve hosted non-profits, family reunions, and school groups! We have a number of flexible meeting spaces and can include our standard activities in your fees. For details and pricing, please email our director at info@ringlake.org.
