A 24 hour retreat experience
3 pm Friday, April 6 - 3:30 pm Saturday, April 7, 2012
Experience the ancient Stations of the Cross anew as we pilgrimage through the forest and sacred spaces of Rolling Ridge in a walking meditation with pauses for reflection, prayer and awareness.
In the hushed anticipation of Holy Saturday consider the deeper meaning of this interlude in the Easter story. What happened during those forgotten, sacred hours when Jesus lay in the tomb?
Led by Lindsay McLaughlin, who is a writer, contemplative dance artist and member of the residential community of Rolling Ridge Study Retreat.
Sisters of Mercy foundress Catherine McAuley once said: "We have one solid source of happiness in all our journeying - we can keep our hearts fixed on God."
"It's like jumping or being thrown into a life-changing stew where you simmer for five days in the transformational mix of silence, wilderness and ritual."
This retreat is designed to help refill the reserves of people suffering from burn-out that results from compassion fatigue, overwork, or (as is often the case) a confluence of the two. We will explore gratefulness as a way of life with specific practices that restore our sense of sufficiency and wonder in the present moment - the only moment fully given to us - thus easing our anxiety about whether we have enough money, friendship, and other resources to get by. Through guided meditation, journaling, dialogue, life review, music, quiet space to breathe, and other tools, we will reconnect with what most inspires us. This is a non-judgmental retreat in which it is okay to be ungrateful, which is sometimes a necessary step in peeling off layers to a fundamental gratitude that springs from simply being alive.
How do we live with our daily experiences, the good and the bad? The proverbial wheat and tares co-mingled populate the landscape of human experiences. Indicators of flourishing beauty jostle with reminders of diverse disheartening evil, near and far away, often conveyed by a media intent on informing us daily.
The weekend will draw on elements from Belden's work with Richard Rohr's Men as Learners and Elders and with the Mankind Project (including their call to accountability, a man's openness to his feelings, the true and the false self, and the importance of dying before you die). More particularly, we will explore the spirituality of the Desert Fathers, focusing on their realization that the wound and the gift are one. The desert place of breakdown in our lives is invariably the place where we're invited to a new wholeness. As Leonard Cohen puts it, "the cracks are where the light comes in." From a Christian perspective, this is the core of the paschal mystery.