Past Events

Featuring
Housewarming and Blessing
of the Recently Renovated Historic Homestead
and a Concert of Recorder Music
by the Bath Recorder Trio of Berkeley Springs

	You are invited to participate in any or all of the events of the day. Join us for a time of friendship, of remembering, of celebration, and for sharing with each other our visions, hopes, and prayers. As always, good food and fellowship will be an important ingredient of our time together. Noon and evening meals will be provided.

Have you ever said, "If I just set aside one weekend for nothing else, I could ...

~ start that short story
~ make an outline
~ write some scenes
~ edit what I've written
~ draft an essay ..."

Well, here's your chance.

Rolling Ridge and facilitators Mary Watters and Keith Lyndaker Schlabach are inviting you to a weekend to write and do little else.

The weekend begins at 7 p.m. Friday with dinner at the retreat house. Go ahead, leave work early and come out to set up your space. We'll talk during dinner, then gather briefly for introductions to each other and the land. Then silence until Saturday breakfast. Meals are healthy and delicious, as much of the food is grown in the organic community garden at Rolling Ridge. We'll talk during meals. The rest is silence.

The weekend officially ends after Sunday breakfast and a gathering time to allow participants to talk about the process and their experience. Sunday lunch is included. Writers depart around 3 p.m. Those wanting to have a longer stay can discuss the possibility when signing up.

Each writer will have a personal workspace with an electrical outlet for a laptop but no internet connections. All genres and types of writing are fine. As this is not a workshop, it's up to you to determine what you want to work on - poetry, fiction, plays, screenplays, memoirs, essays, non-fiction, family history - it's up to you.

In fact, with most Rolling Ridge retreats, we offer "content." But in this retreat, you are the content. Your work, your vision, your goals are enough to awaken what you want to bring forth. We're just giving you the chance to do it.

But we will be in the lovely West Virginia hills at a peak autumn leaf time, so walks on the many trails are certainly possibilities. So is walking the labyrinth or taking time for personal reflection in the Meditation Shelter. If you want to have a private conversation with someone, just be mindful not to disturb others.

Facilitators will be available as sounding boards if you run into snags or want to talk through a writing concern.

If you have questions about the weekend, feel free to contact Mary at 301-277-2189 or Keith at 304-725-4301

The cost of the retreat, including lodging and five meals, is $65 per person (scholarships available). Please register by sending a $20 deposit toward the retreat fee (or the entire amount) to the address given below. Please make checks payable to Rolling Ridge (Meditative Arts Retreat October 2004). Let us know if you have special dietary needs.

The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,
Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven:
And as imagination bodies forth
The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

From A Midsummer Night's Dream

THE TRANSFORMATION OF DAILY LIFE

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How do we grow spiritually? Do we have to go to seminary, or become a monk or a hermit? Or can daily life be transformed so that our everyday lives, with all their ordinary events and relationships, become our monastery, our school, and our seminary? The events of our daily lives, and the relationships that we have, can become the primary material out of which we grow spiritually -- if we learn how to stay awake and pay attention to life as it unfolds.

What are the blockages that keep us from growing? Why are some things in our inner life so hard to change? Can we change? Why is prayer so difficult? Why is it so hard to be quiet and still? How do we better connect our inner spiritual life to our daily life?

God is not waiting around for our peak moments in order to bring us holiness. The Spirit of God is dependent neither on our timetable nor our game plan. Each day is transformative for those who can recognize the Spirit's promptings while the "stuff" of life goes on around us. How do we prepare ourselves to respond to the divine initiative of the moment? And what is to be our part in the process?

Topics discussed on this retreat include understanding spirituality in daily life, opening ourselves to transformation, everyday prayer, undertaking discernment and action, and creating a holistic-contemplative spiritual program.

ABOUT BERNIE TICKERHOOF

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Fr. Bernie Tickerhoof, TOR is a friar of the Third Order Regular of St. Francis. He is the Director of Franciscan Pathways, a ministry of spirituality and reconciliation sponsored by his religious community.

Through these ministries he offers retreats and spiritual programs in retreat centers, parishes, and religious congregations. These are tailored to the particular needs of the specific groups and organizations. He has developed a variety of programs on holistic spirituality, faith and conversion, the enneagram, and dream work.

Bernie received his Master of Divinity (MDiv) from St. Francis Seminary, formerly in Loretto, PA, in 1978, and a Master of Theology (ThM) in the Institute for Spirituality and Worship through the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, CA in 1979. He received a Doctor of Ministry (DMin) at Pittsburgh Theological Seminary in 2001. He also pursued graduate studies at the Franciscan Institute at St. Bonaventure University and at the Catholic University of America.

Bernie was ordained in 1978, and has been involved in spiritual ministry and retreat work since 1979. He has traveled widely throughout the country in a ministry of preaching, spiritual conferences, and retreats. He served on the formation team for his religious community as Vocation Director from 1993 to 1996, and has done extensive work in Franciscan Spirituality through the Franciscan Federation of the U.S. and as a spiritual assistant for the Secular Franciscan Order at the local, provincial, and regional levels. Other interests include spiritual direction, storytelling and liturgical expression.

Bernie is the author of Conversion and the Enneagram: Transformation Of the Self In Christ, and Paradox: The Spiritual Path to Transformation.

RETREAT REGISTRATION

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Cost of the retreat is $75, and includes lodging for two nights, and 6 meals. Please contact Bob Sabath for more information, or to reserve your space. Some limited scholarships are available.

Plan to arrive between 4-6 pm Friday evening, August 20. We will have a meal at 7:00, followed by an evening session. We will conclude with lunch on Sunday.

Join us for stimulating discussion with Bernie, delicious home cooked meals, time to walk and hike and be alone, daily worship, and energizing conversations with other retreat participants.