Learn More about Mark Nepo and His Work and Teaching
Join Mark on a River Cruise in France
The Gift of Deepening and The Radiance in All Things
May 18-24, 2024
Click here for registration details.
Join Mark in Costa Rica
Saying Yes to Life: The One Life We’re Given
December 8-14, 2024
Click here for registration details.
Welcome! I hope this finds you safe and well during these trying times. Times like these heighten our care for one another and affirm how much we are, at heart, the same. As we move closer to some form of normalcy, we are being called, as well, to remake our sense of humanity, to be fierce and tender in our call to love. As we enter this work together, I wish you and yours a quiet a passage full of truth, kindness, and ease. And I greatly look forward to seeing you, virtually and, at long last, in person again. I hope we can journey together somewhere along the way. In the meantime, many blessings to you in facing what’s before you and to more deeply discovering what you are being called to.
—Mark
Announcing Mark’s New Book
Falling Down and Getting Up:
Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength
St. Martin’s Essentials, Sept 5, 2023
Amid this luminous new collection of wisdom, Mark Nepo offers one of the most robust and tender teachings on grief I have come across. In Mark’s hands, pain becomes poetry, and enlarges our hearts enough to carry what we may have thought we couldn’t.
—Mirabai Starr, author of Caravan of No Despair and Wild Mercy
Drawn from Mark’s many years of teaching, this book explores the perennial practices and choice-points we all face such as surviving and thriving, managing risk and enhancing risk, opening and closing, giving and receiving, living a balance between solitude and community, enlarging our sense of things when pain and fear make us small, and the never-ending practice of course-correcting and tuning as we go.
Falling Down and Getting Up explores the archetypal rhythm that is inherent to every life in every stage of its growth. While no one likes to fall down, no one is exempt from this part of the human journey. From a longer and deeper perspective, falling down and getting up is the inevitable rhythm of transformation. In fact, each step we take forms a dance of falling down and getting up. This book focuses on the individual’s transformative journey with all its ups and downs and twists and turns. In essence, how do we learn the dance of falling down and getting up?
Mark’s teaching is committed to introducing his students and readers to their own gifts and wisdom. If you haven’t had the chance to sit in one his magical circles, this book is the next best thing.
“The Hindu Upanishads offer the image of how a caterpillar bunches up before moving forward as a symbol of this kind of growth. Similarly, a nurse, who prompted me to get up and walk immediately after surgery, announced, “Two steps forward, one step back!” This is the rhythm of life we are asked to accept in order to live. Falling Down and Getting Up explores these timeless rhythms and the essential skills needed to fully live our lives.”
—Mark Nepo
THE HALF-LIFE OF ANGELS
THREE BOOKS OF POEMS
Now available wherever books are sold.
“What a beautiful journey this book is. I was moved in some places beyond what I can adequately convey. Mark’s capacity to speak such universal truths through poetry is stunning. He is a master.”
—Brooke Warner, author, editor, and co-founder of She Writes Press
In Mark new collection of poetry, The Half-Life of Angels, you have three books of poems gathered in one volume. All the poems in this volume explore and praise the spark of becoming that is the synapse between living things. This spark of becoming is the half-life of angels that arcs between the deer’s nose and the thawed stream, between Sappho’s heart and the poems she uttered, between God’s finger and Adam’s hand, and between the Ocean of Source and the lips of every soul. In time, the soul’s journey in the world strips away all that is extraneous—the way a meteor is stripped to its essence of light as it catapults toward Earth. It can take a lifetime to burn off what doesn’t matter until we face each other—spark to spark. The three books of poems in this collection explore and praise this life-giving spark.
“Now in my seventies, I am committed to putting my life’s journey with poetry in order. The result will be the publication of several volumes of poetry. The Half-Life of Angels is the first of these volumes. I confess that reading through fifty years of poems has been like stepping through holy sites and ruins in order to map the learnings of all my former selves. As any poet, I gather these poems as a way to retrieve a deeper, more ancient knowledge that transcends any one self. And yet, such knowledge can only surface through an authentic self. All these expressions have shaped who I am.”
—Mark Nepo
Mark’s 2023 Calendar:
In the coming eighteen months, I will be teaching and speaking both in-person and online. I believe it’s important to stay connected and to keep growing in whatever way we can. I remain committed to our journey together and hope to see you somewhere along the way, both in person and online. Stay safe and be well. Many blessings.—Mark
2023
DEC 8-10: St Andrews, Jackson, MS, Weekend Retreat, Falling Down and Getting Up. Register here.
2024
FEB 5-10: Mastery Week: Falling Down and Getting Up: Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength, Weeklong Retreat, The Modern Elder Academy, Baja, Mexico Campus. RETREAT IS IN PERSON. Registration details here.
APRIL 26-28: Reading and Weekend Retreat, Saying Yes to Life: From Brokenness to Tenderness, The Sophia Institute, Charleston, SC, or call 843-720-8528. Event is in person.
JUNE 28-30: Omega Institute, Rhinebeck, NY, Falling Down and Getting Up: Discovering Your Inner Resilience and Strength, Weekend Retreat. Event is in person. Register here.
AUG 16-18: Mercy By the Sea, 167 Neck Rd, Madison, CT, Publication Retreat centered on You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: The Net of Friendship, Fri 7-9:30PM EST Sat 9:30-5:30PM EST, Sun 9:30-12:30PM,
SEPT 6-8: Reading and Weekend Retreat, You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: The Net of Friendship, The Sophia Institute, Charleston, SC, or call 843-720-8528. Event is online.
SEPT 16-21: Mastery Week: You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: The Net of Friendship, Weeklong Retreat, The Modern Elder Academy, Santa Fe Campus. Event is in person.
NOV 1-3: Harmony Hill Retreat Center, Union, WA, Weekend Retreat, You Don’t Have to Do It Alone: The Net of Friendship
Dec 8-14: Saying Yes to Life: The One Life We’re Given, Weeklong Retreat, Global Journeys, Costa Rica. EVENT IS IN PERSON. Registration details here.
