If you’re in need of care for your own soul—as a pastor, chaplain, or soul-care worker of any sort—our annual one-day retreat awaits you!
Come find the kinship and renewal you need for your work in the world. Come and connect with like-minded people to play, pray, and be together with old and new friends. Together we will share our lives and wisdom in the art of soul tending and companionship.
In the tradition of Seasoned Call’s shared wisdom format we will have opportunities to:
Experience group spiritual direction sometimes referred to as friendship circles. When asked by a friend how she prayed for her, a thirteenth-century anchoress, Julian of Norwich, responded “I look at God, I look at you, and I keep on looking at God.” Put simply, the group’s challenge is to keep on looking at God for each person in the group. It is a process in which people gather together on a regular basis to assist one another in an ongoing awareness of God in all of life.
Spiritual Imagination and Spiritual Companionship
W.B. Yeats has said that “In Imagination only, we find a human faculty that touches human nature at one side, and spirit on the other.” Our “religious imagination” lies at the heart of our experience between the Divine Other and ourselves. It is our imagination that empowers and emboldens us to transcend our concrete external world and create new images that can open us to possibility, growth, and promise in the spiritual life. Our imagination is our inherent and hardwired capacity to receive and respond to the Divine in our lives. It is an essential component of our work as spiritual companions to assist others in opening to the imaginal potential inherent within them. This workshop will explore the imaginal realm and consider and share ways we might assist those we companion to open into a greater fullness of creative life.ReWilding the Soul: Opening the Book of Nature in Spiritual Direction
Eco-spiritual direction is an ancient and emerging practice that honors the vital role of nature in listening for the presence of God in our lives by immersing the spiritual-direction relationship into the heart of the natural world. This session will provide foundational framework for the emerging field and offer opportunities to experience and practice spiritual direction in relationship with the natural world that can be experienced as a container, a mirror, and a soul-to-soul conversation both in individual and group and individual spiritual direction. An opportunity for you to explore your own deepening relationship with an untamed God, the natural world and your own wild soul.Practice Presence by strengthening our capacity to deeply listen to the language of our bodies and finding how this communion with ourselves facilitates spiritual growth, decision making and stress reduction.