Pause/Play Annual Gathering 2025

PAUSE Workshop Descriptions:

Befriending Our Nervous Systems in Rest, Play, and Creativity with Colleen Runty and Ayrika Watson

Silence, Rest, Play, and Creativity all have a way of allowing unspoken and unrecognized content below the surface of our consciousness to rise into our awareness. These processes reveal buried unmet needs, traumas, wounds, and pain. These hurts activate stress responses in our nervous systems that pull us away from the rest, play, and creativity we need for healing. By understanding and befriending our nervous system, we can learn to navigate our different nervous system states with compassion and care. Using Deb Dana’s book, Anchored: How to Befriend Your Nervous System Using Polyvagal Theory, guided practice, and storytelling, this workshop will help participants understand their stress responses and how to rest, play, and create in ways that support nervous system health.

Mental Rest and Movement with Amy Shoemaker

Are you someone who struggles to meditate by sitting still, taking a deep breath, and detaching from your thoughts? Amy is too. Movement has always been a more accessible way for her to rest her mind and find clarity in the wisdom of her body. Join her to experience a time of facilitated movement where she will lead you through the movement practices enjoyed by countless congregations, clergy, and lay leaders over the past fifteen years of her performance art ministry.

Collage Meditations with DeAnna Skedel

DeAnna's eclectic, wide-ranging studio art practice has been akin to the practice of reading tea leaves: an act of both divination and meditation. By taking time to pause with collage and visual art you will engage the space beyond words, finding release in fuller expression. Discover ways to find rest in spontaneous creativity in a space held by DeAnna, collage artist, professor, and mystic.

PLAY workshop descriptions:

Sand Tray Play with Colleen Runty and Ayrika Watson

Sandtray is a practice that uses simple, tangible objects (a box, sand, small figures) to create space for exploring our intangible inner world (emotions, memories, and spiritual wrestlings). This reflective method uses symbolic imagery to help make clear to us our stumbling blocks in loving others, our stuck points in loving ourselves, and the unexpected places we find God’s love amid the mess. This workshop introduces the concept of sandtray, its psychological roots, and demonstrates how to use sandtray methods as an individual or group spiritual practice.

Play Saves the World with Daniel Hilty

Play at the intersection of board games, game theory, deep thoughts, and spirituality. Learn how play is essential to a flourishing preaching practice - what play is, what it means, and how to maintain a playful life.

Party Arty with DeAnna Skedel

Are you familiar with the wonderful world of Process Art? Following this workshop, you will be! Learn how focusing on the process changes how you feel about the product. Notice how playing with visual art frees your creativity to flow into your preaching.

Grow Your Church Board Game with Chris Davies

Roll the dice and move about a garden path with your church friends! This game is designed to get people talking about church vitality through the Marks of Faithful and Vital Local Churches. It will help deepen relationships with each other and with the congregation’s covenantal partners while laughing, thinking creatively and having critical conversations. This workshop will have you dreaming about what games you could create for yourself and your communities!