COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.: One new face and two familiar ones will serve as speakers at the Anselm Society's 3rd annual Rocky Mountain Artists’ Retreat 2019, to be held 8am to 5pm Friday, September 20, 2019, at Glen Eyrie Conference Center in Colorado Springs, Colo. This year's theme is “why, and for whom, do we create?”

Jeromie Rand, an Anglican priest and computer professor, will kick off the first of the day's three presentations, entitled “Loving God: Integrating Faith and Craft.”

Session two, “Loving Neighbor: Experiencing Creation as a Gift of Love,” will be the topic of Anselm Society board member Lancia Smith. Amy Lee, co-director of the Arts Guild of the Anselm Society, will helm Session 3, a panel discussion on “Crosses and Critics: Overcoming Obstacles to Healthy Creativity.”

The event is open to all, whether beginning or established artists or art-lovers. “This is a gift of love from our sponsoring Colorado churches,” said Brian Brown, director of the Anselm Society. “For one beautiful day, we can explore the way God uses the imagination to enrich our approach to Him.”

Participants will have ample free time in between presentations. “We have intentionally built in spaces for discussion or private reflection,” said Brown, who started the Anselm Society in 2013. He said a staff pastor or spiritual director will be on hand for conversations.

“We invite participants to walk the beautiful grounds, pray, create, or just take a break from cell phones and responsibilities,” said Brown. “This is not a workshop where artists will be left with a list of ways to improve, but rather an invitation for people to receive and reflect on the many ways God imaginatively loves us and hopes to use our imaginations as a space to bring us closer to Him.”

The retreat will be held in the Glen Eyrie Carriage House, to the left of the road as you approach the world-famous Glen Eyrie Castle. On-site parking is plentiful. Out-of-town visitors are invited to book a room for the night at the Castle.

Lunch, which is included in registration, will be served at the Carriage House dining room, to the right of the bookstore and coffee shop in the Carriage House.

General admission tickets are $45 plus a service fee. Tickets for Arts Guild members are $30 plus fee. Last year’s retreat sold out.

Sponsoring churches include Holy Trinity Anglican Church, International Anglican Church, New Life Downtown, Sanctuary Church, Church of the Advent (Denver), and Wellspring Church (Englewood).

Learn more at www.anselmsociety.org/events/2019/9/20/rocky-mountain-artists-retreat-2019

About the Anselm Society: Founded in 2013 by Brian Lawrence Brown and an ecumenical group of artists and art lovers, the Anselm Society is a Colorado-based nonprofit that seeks to encourage conversation and community around an ideal of the good, the true, and the beautiful. Everyone is welcome. The society regularly offers social events, workshops and lectures, an Arts Guild for working artists, partnerships with churches, and educational resources.

The Anselm Society was named after the archbishop of Canterbury (c. 1093) who defined theology as “faith seeking understanding”—that is, as a work of the imagination, diving deeply into the character of the Creator Himself.

For more information, visit www.anselmsociety.org