Sponsored Weekend Retreats

PANDEMIC RETREAT FUNDRAISER FOR MARY & JOSEPH RETREAT CENTER
This year, I want our online retreat to be a Fundraiser for the Center; I'm donating my services and suggesting a $50/person donation to benefit Mary & Retreat Center. And, as this is strictly a donation, no one is excluded. You may join, and invite friends to join us, for free. However, in order to participate, you must register and provide an email address in order to receive the Zoom ID and passcode. ALL 12 STEP FELLOWSHIPS ARE WELCOME! Peace, John

This retreat is based on the latest work of Cistercian Abbot Thomas Keating, founder of Contemplative Outreach. We will view selected videos from his series God is Love: The Heart of All Creation. Themes to be explored include: Cosmology; Human Evolution; Christ, Evolution and All Creation; Into Unity Consciousness; and Surrendering to Love.

This retreat will center on renewal in the Holy Spirit with special times provided for healing prayer. “O Holy Spirit, renew your wonders in this our day, as by a new Pentecost” ~ St. Pope John XXIII. “The human and Christian attitude is: enable people to live; enable life to flourish; let life not be diminished or confined or crabbed anywhere; let it thrive and bring forth branches and bear fruit” ~ Samuel Rayan, The Holy Spirit.

The purpose of this retreat is to provide those who practice contemplation the time and space to deepen their practice (call it centering prayer, Christian meditation, the great Mindfulness - these labels do not go as deeply as we go). By sitting together in supportive silence at intervals throughout the course of the day, we deepen our contemplative practice by releasing ever more generously into it. By not attending to the powerful habits of our own inner noise that sustain the illusion of separation from God and create so much suffering, these habits gradually lose their gripping power. The immensely vast silence already within us continues to expand as we are un-selfed of self only to realize (not acquire) ourselves ever hidden with Christ in God (Col 3:3).