Tree Top Spa
The outdoor spa is open between 8am and 9:30pm and includes an open-air hydrotherapy pool, hot tub, sauna, steam room, and relaxation area.
SPECIAL GUESTS
Tianna Blue is a Los Angeles–based perfumer, educator, and founder of Aiotima, a creative perfume development studio working across fragrance, design, and experience. She is Head Perfumer at The Perfumer’s Studio LA and has served three times as a judge for the Art and Olfaction Awards. Her work explores scent as something shaped by perception: memory, place, encounter, and relationship. For Spark, Tianna used her knowledge of aromatherapy and aromacology to develop a natural fragrance for the retreat.
Margot Brouwer is an astrophysicist and the author of 'We Are Stardust', a book that explores our deepest existential questions through the lens of contemporary physics. Their work invites readers to encounter the scale, strangeness and beauty of the cosmos while making complex scientific ideas accessible beyond the specialist world. At Spark Margot will draw from 'We Are Stardust' to lead us into a very different kind of contemplation of heaven: not as a religious destination, but as the extraordinary physical universe in which we already find ourselves.
Leonie McDonagh is a comedian, dancer and good time merchant who is a founding member of ponydance theatre company - one of the most ognisable and acclaimed theatre companies in the country. Successfully marrying comedy, dance and theatre, they have won audiences, awards and critical acclaim locally and internationally.
Barry Taylor is writer, speaker and public intellectual as well as the chair of theology for GCAS .His work focuses on the intersections between religion, theology and culture, with a particular emphasis on the impact and interplay of contemporary digital life on religion and belief (particularly Western Christianity).
Program
SUNDAY 11TH OCTOBER
15 | CHECK IN AND RECEPTION | FRONT DESK
Guaranteed check in is from 3pm, however your room might be ready before then. Get unpacked, explore the groups and join us in the Gallery to meet and mingle with the other Sparkers.
16 | WELCOME | LOAF
We’ll begin by getting everyone together, introducing the broad trajectory of the retreat and giving you a chance to see who you’ll be sharing the next few days with.
17 | DINNER AND SPA
20 | INTRODUCTION | GALLERY | PETER
Our opening talk introduces Spark as a space of communion, exploring how grace and forgiveness might allow us to encounter ourselves and one another without the demand to appear whole. I will be setting out the retreat’s movement through alienation in ourselves, in others and in the systems that shape our lives, inviting curiosity about what unsettles us.
21:3 | THE BREAKFAST CLUB | C.S. LEWIS SUITE
This movie captures something of the whole purpose of the retreat. So, this is a chance to relax, and ease your way into the event We’ll watch the film through the lens of communal alienation: what becomes possible when we risk sharing something of our lack with others.
MONDAY 12TH OCTOBER
7:3 | BEACH WALK/SEA SWIM | BARRY | MEET IN LOBBY
For people who would like to start the day with a walk or swim, we will meet in the lobby of the hotel, and dander down to the beach.
7:3 | BREAKFAST AND MORNING SPA
Breakfast is served anytime from 7:30am and the spa opens at 8am.
10 | ENCOUNTERING | PETER | GALLERY
Through reflection, conversation and a simple ritual with a wooden container, we explore the ways we do not quite coincide with ourselves. Participants are invited to notice what their identities reveal, what they leave out and where familiar patterns create difficulty. The session offers space to become curious about what remains unresolved, without needing to explain or repair it.
11:3 | COFFEE BREAK | LOAF
There is a beautiful little coffee shop across the road from the hotel, which will be providing tea and all your espresso coffee needs.
12 | SECRET OF THE LACK | PETER | GALLERY
Who am I, and why does no answer ever quite capture me? Drawing on philosophy and psychoanalysis, I will explore how language, culture and identity shape us while never fully accounting for who we are. This talk asks what becomes possible when we stop searching for a hidden, complete self and begin attending to the division within us.
13 | LUNCH | Hotel
14:3 | Earth | tianna | GALLERY
For Spark, Los Angeles perfumer Tianna Blue has created a fragrance specifically for the retreat. In this session she’ll introduce us to the world of scent, talk about the process of creating the Spark fragrance and explore the strange power fragrance has to evoke memory, place and experience.
16 | IDENTITY AND ITS LIMITS | PETER | GALLERY
What becomes difficult when something important to us is questioned? Working in small groups, participants explore a belief, practice or situation in which they feel personally invested. Through careful questioning and attentive listening, we practise remaining curious about the disturbance itself, noticing the impulse to defend, explain or retreat without needing to settle the argument.
17 | DINNER AND SPA
20 | MUSIC AND REFLECTION | BARRY & PETER | GALLERY
Barry and Peter will close the day with an evening of music, conversation and reflection on the theme of communal alienation. Through songs, stories and a little conversation, we’ll explore what it means to live with the distance between ourselves and others, and what becomes possible when that distance is shared rather than denied.
21:3 | PUB
TUESDAY 13TH OCTOBER
7:3 | BEACH WALK/SEA SWIM | BARRY | MEET IN LOBBY
For people who would like to start the day with a walk or swim, we will meet in the lobby of the hotel, and dander down to the beach.
7:3 | BREAKFAST AND MORNING SPA
Breakfast is served anytime from 7:30am and the spa opens at 8am.
10 | COMMUNION | PETER | GALLERY
Sitting together in a circle, we make space to share aspects of our lack and listen to what others carry. Through words, silence and music, we explore what it means to hold another person’s unresolved experience without needing to provide an answer.
11:3 | COFFEE BREAK | LOAF
There is a beautiful little coffee shop across the road from the hotel, which will be providing tea and all your espresso coffee needs.
12 | NON-MEMBERSHIP | PETER | GALLERY
We often look to others for the wholeness we cannot find in ourselves. But what happens when we discover that they, too, are divided? Exploring love, desire and belonging, I will consider how communion can emerge through sharing what remains unresolved in each of us. Non-membership names a social bond that makes room for the ways we never entirely fit.
13 | LUNCH | MEET AT LOAF
We have a special event planned for lunch, so dress up warm and bring something you can sit on (towel, blanket, coat etc.)..
16 | HOLDING THE OTHER’S LACK | PETER | GALLERY
Returning with the containers received that morning, participants discover whose they are carrying and who is carrying theirs. As these connections become visible, the room forms a series of unexpected circuits. Through movement and reflection, we explore a form of belonging in which giving and receiving extend beyond any single pair, creating bonds among people who remain distinct and incomplete.
17 | DINNER AND SPA
20 | MUSIC AND REFLECTION | BARRY & PETER | GALLERY
Barry and Peter will bring the final full day to a close with music, conversation and reflection on the theme of the big Other. Together we’ll explore what it means to live without the fantasy that somewhere there is a person, system or authority holding everything together, and what kind of freedom might emerge when that fantasy begins to fall away.
WEDNESDAY 14TH OCTOBER
7:3 | BEACH WALK/SEA SWIM | BARRY | MEET IN LOBBY
For people who would like to start the day with a walk or swim, we will meet in the lobby of the hotel, and dander down to the beach.
7:3 | BREAKFAST AND MORNING SPA
Breakfast is served anytime from 7:30am and the spa opens at 8am.
10 | THE LACK IN THE BIG OTHER | PETER | GALLERY
What happens when a religious, political or cultural framework can no longer hold our experience? Using the wooden containers as a focus, participants reflect on moments when a source of meaning or certainty revealed its limits. Through sharing and listening, we make room for the questions, losses and possibilities that emerge when an organising story begins to break down.
11:3 | COFFEE BREAK | LOAF
There is a beautiful little coffee shop across the road from the hotel, which will be providing tea and all your espresso coffee needs.
12 | CROSS OF CONTRADICTION | PETER | GALLERY
Religious, political and cultural systems can promise an ultimate answer to our uncertainty. What happens when those promises break down? Through the cross, the cry of abandonment and the image of the torn curtain, I will explore a radical reading of Christianity in which contradiction reaches into the Absolute itself, transforming how we understand faith, doubt and alienation.
13 | LUNCH | MEET AT COFFEE SHOP
14:3 | HEAVEN | MARGOT | GALLERY
Physicist Margot will introduce their book We Are Stardust and take us on an exploration of the universe through contemporary physics.. A chance to step outside the language of psychoanalysis for a moment and encounter the strangeness, scale and beauty of the world described by science.
16 | LITURGY OF LACK | PETER | GALLERY
Drawing on poems, prose, images, music and other materials brought by participants, we work in small groups to create a short liturgy of lack. These shared rituals give expression to abandonment, uncertainty and contradiction without requiring a reassuring resolution. The session explores how art and collective practice can help us inhabit experiences that resist explanation.
17 | WOOD-FIRED PIZZA | LOAF
For the last night we will be having pizzas at the little cafe across the road from the hotel. This has become a little tradition at Spark.
20 | QUIZ | LEONIE | GALLERY
THURSDAY 15TH OCTOBER
7:3 | BREAKFAST AND MORNING SPA
10 | GO IN PIECES | GALLERY
Our closing session brings the week together through a question: what kind of life becomes possible when we no longer require ourselves, others or reality to be whole? Moving from grace to the Grin Reaper, I will explore how an encounter with lack can open possibilities for love, creativity and communion. The session culminates in receiving the Pyrotheology coin and returning to the unfinished lives that await us.
14 | COFFEE AT PETER’S | BELFAST
For anyone still around, we’ll finish with an informal coffee at Peter’s place in Belfast.