New Year's Retreats
Welcome the New Year at Pendle Hill
Celebrate the New Year at Pendle Hill, one of our most popular events. Choose one of two workshops led by maestro Karl Middleman and certified yoga teacher Valerie Brown.
- Music, Mazes, and the Artistic Spirit with Karl Middleman
- Open Heart, Peaceful Mind: A Retreat for Rest and Reflection with Valerie Brown
New Year's Eve Soirée
Join us for a joyous, alcohol-free celebration featuring hors d'oeuvres, an inspired home-cooked dinner with local organic ingredients, musical entertainment, an ice cream social, and a candlelight Meeting for Worship to welcome the New Year.
Seasonal Sojourns
Enjoy the bookstore, library, art studio, and common spaces without participating in a program. New Years sojourners are welcome at worship, meals, snack times, and evening entertainment.
Celebrate the New Year!
December 31, 2012 – January 1, 2013
Join us for a joyous alcohol-free New Year’s Eve Celebration featuring hors d’oeuvres, an inspired home-cooked dinner with local organic ingredients, a chamber concert with Maestro Middleman and family and surprise guest performers, and a candlelight Meeting for Worship to welcome the New Year.
Open Heart, Peaceful Mind: A Retreat for Rest and Reflection
December 28, 2012 – January 1, 2013
Valerie Brown
Relax into a time of serene rest and renewal. Open to the new year’s unfolding with a retreat that honors your heart, mind, and soul. Practice mindful meditation in the rhythms of daily life with sitting, walking, and eating meditation, as well as mindful dialogue. Savor sustained periods of silence, quiet reflection with poetry and stories by the fireplace, small and large group discussion, an afternoon in the art studio, laughter, gentle Kundalini yoga, and deep relaxation. Restore your spirit and enter the new year with greater calm, clarity, and energy – and ways to sustain them in the coming year.
Tumbleweeds and Mountains: The Idea of Great Land and Space in American Art and Music
December 28, 2012 – January 1, 2013
Karl Middleman
Using landscapes from the Woodmere Art Museum as touchstones for inspiration, Maestro Karl Middleman presents a unique look-and-listen course. For many Americans, the far-flung sentiments of America the Beautiful, Katherine Lee Bates’ patriotic song of 1893, embodied popular assumptions about America’s grandeur, innocence, and unlimited potential. Such beliefs still fuel the American Project today. Written the same year, Antonin Dvorak’s New World Symphony added to the image of America’s greatness and novelty. It also referenced the contributions of African Americans and American Indians. Successive composers brought increasingly nuanced views of America’s changing landscape. Beginning with Dvorak’s epic masterpiece, our journey will include treasures of American and European music that aimed for bigness and boundlessness. Rare film and audio clips and live demonstrations will highlight each presentation.