As young and middle-aged people of faith we embarked on an inner and outer journey to live intentionally, listening to the Spirit within and connecting with the world around us. We sought to do good work, to live honestly and passionately with partners and community, to raise children with love and understanding. Now we find ourselves in the wilderness time between adulthood and eldership: our children are adults, the ground of our work is shifting, and we are simultaneously overjoyed and overwhelmed by new roles within the family.
We invite you to a conversation about this wilderness time amid an actual wilderness space. In a safe and sacred place apart, surrounded by the winter woodlands of Rolling Ridge which are themselves a metaphor of beauty in the slowing phase of life’s cycle, we are enabled to explore the challenges and the possibilities opening before us. Helped by resources such as Creative Aging by Marjory Bankson and Looking Back and Giving Forward: Finding Common Ground for Positive Aging, a workbook published by Lumunos, we can ask wide-ranging questions such as how we can balance the allure of new options with the necessity of letting go; how can we come to terms with physical limits; can we envision alternatives to the way aging is typically seen by contemporary society; can we grow old together?
Our conversation will be facilitated by a member of the Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community and will include time for individual reflection, silence, and rest as well as sharing, discussion and gathered prayer. Lindsay McLaughlin is an educator, writer and newly minted grandmother; a dancer all her life, she is motivated by a desire to find the gift of maturity in a field built on the fire of youth and to gather friends to harvest the wisdom of years gone by and uncover hope for the years to come.
We will be offering this retreat from dinner on the evening of Friday, February 4, 2011 through lunch on Sunday, February 6. The cost is $125 and covers all sessions, meals and lodging (mostly dorm-style). Space is limited. To register send $50 deposit made out to RRSR to Rolling Ridge Study Retreat, 120 Jubilee Lane, Harpers Ferry, WV 25425. Include your name and contact information. Feel free to call 304-724-1069 or email community@rollingridge.net.