Praying Our Experiences - July 6-8, 2012

One of the best ways to pray is to turn both worry and joy into prayer.  This weekend retreat will provide the direction and opportunity to focus on our ordinary experiences and make them the context of our prayer.  We will as many saints have recommended, pray with a pen.  We will privately and prayerfully write about our experiences.  We will open the gift of our life with its trials and joys, to offer worries and gratitude to God, all in a supportive, encouraging and quiet atmosphere.  Please bring your journal and writing materials.  7 pm July 6 - noon on July 8.   Fee:  $150 includes Praying Our Experiences

Joseph Schmidt, a De La Salle Christian Brother, formerly on the staff of Sangre de Cristo, an international sabbatical program located near Santa Fe, New Mexico, has extensive experience as a lecturer, spiritual director, and pastoral counselor.  He is presently serving in Nairobi, Kenya.  Brother Joe is the author of Praying with Thérèse of Lisieux,, Praying Our Experiences, Everything is Grace, Walking the Little Way of Thérèse of Lisieux.: Discovering the Path of Love.

July 8 - 14, 2012 with Joseph Schmidt, FSC

The Heart-Qualities of Love:  Stepping Stones of Thérèse’s Little Way of Nonviolent Love.
Thérèse of Lisieux, the saint of the little way of spirituality and the most recent Doctor of the Church, lived a life that offers us an example of how to love without violence to ourselves or others.
Although as a cloistered nun Thérèse lived apart from the violence of the world, she nevertheless experienced the violence of her own feelings and the violence of others.  Over the course of her life Thérèse studied her motivation and came to know the qualities of heart that make love possible, even in the presence of  violent feelings.  She recognized these heart-qualities as the stepping stones of her little way.  These same heart- qualities can also become for us the psychological indicators that challenge us to know and to purify our own motives.

This retreat begins at 7 pm on July 8 and ends with lunch on July 14.  Presentations and time for discussion.  Add a fee of $8 to the cost of the 6 day retreat for Walking the Little Way of Thérèse of Lisieux.  Fee:  $428  Both retreats:  $568

Joseph Schmidt, a De La Salle Christian Brother, formerly on the staff of Sangre de Cristo, an international sabbatical program located near Santa Fe, New Mexico, has extensive experience as a lecturer, spiritual director, and pastoral counselor.  He is presently serving in Nairobi, Kenya.  Brother Joe is the author of Praying with Thérèse of Lisieux,, Praying Our Experiences, Everything is Grace, Walking the Little Way of Thérèse of Lisieux.: Discovering the Path of Love.

July 29- August 5, 2012 - 6 days

Moments of Grace are privileged times of special creativity.  These transformational moments shape the future in enduring the irreversible ways.  Can you think of such moments in your own life, when the hand of the Divine was particularly at work? In addition to personal moments of grace, there are also cosmological, historical, and communal ones.  During our retreat we will explore a new Moment of Grace in the Christian tradition and the call of the living Christ to enter into his spirit of unitive consciousness in this cosmological / planetary era.

Gail Worcelo, sgm, retreat leader, teacher, lecturer with degrees in Clinical Psychology and Christian Spirituality is the co-founder along with the late Fr. Thomas Berry of Green Mountain Monastery in Greensboro, VT, a new contemplative community dedicated to the evolution of Christ consciousness and carrying the beauty of Catholic tradition and work of Thomas Berry forward to its full flowering