Are You Longing For Soul Rest?
Laura Longville
In January, our blog posts focused on enriching our support network as well as how to be intentional with our spiritual formation. Most of us plan how to care for ourselves physically by exercising, eating, and sleeping well. Yet, we don’t think of making plans to grow spiritually.
One blog post shared how a four-letter word can lead us to a deeper relationship with ourselves and God. Both blog posts offer several suggestions for cultivating our spiritual life. Dallas Willard states in his book, Renovation of the Heart,
“Accordingly, the greatest need you and I have—the greatest need of collective humanity—is renovation of our heart. That spiritual place within us from which outlook, choices, and actions come has been formed by a world away from God. Now it must be transformed.”
“Spiritual formation (fostering our spiritual lives) prepares us for a life in which we move away from our fears, compulsions, resentments, and sorrows, to serve with joy and courage in the world.” ~Henri Nouwen
There are many ways we can nurture our spiritual life with intention. The Contemplative Living Retreats (CLR) are one approach to finding soul rest. We note two important points here. First, the CLR is a communal journey, not a solo trek. Over the course of this formative period in your life, you’ll travel with a cohort.
The cohort will be instrumental in the change you experience, which is only natural. After all, we’re not islands; our lives are entangled for better or worse — in this case, better. In short, we provide you with an important band of sisters and brothers.
Second, although the quarterly retreats are valuable, they’re not the epicenter of this formative experience. They launch you into a practice that gets deepened in the interval between the retreats. The guided retreats provide a framework for conceptually and experientially understanding exactly what you’re getting into for the upcoming months and why it’s so important for your spiritual formation.
Each retreat experience values slow work over fast work. Our daily lives a very full and driven. We prefer to be drawn rather than driven. We place greater weight on desire than duty, knowing it carries us farther. Working alongside others as co-learners is more helpful than working with them as consultants. We’re convinced that reflection, self-awareness, and discernment are more needed than ever. We were made to be together and do life together.
Contemplative Living Retreats
This past weekend, a new CLR cohort started in Rapid City, SD. CLR consists of four 1-day retreats over a 12-month period. One retreat per quarter. Each retreat creates a balanced rhythm of communal time followed by silent reflection. Repeat.
Retreat 1-Soul Rest.
We began our retreats by examining desire. What does it look like to get in touch with our deepest desires? Making headway on this front requires first recognizing the crazy pace at which we live and the damage it has done to our souls.
In this module, we make a case for retreats and lay a foundation for their importance, for pulling back regularly to rest and reflect. We also explain what we mean by spiritual formation and how retreats aid in the work of formation.
Each retreat highlights a spiritual discipline to practice in our lives. The spiritual practice draws us close to God, ourselves, and others. The practice of retreat 1 is Sabbath.
Click this link for more information and details about how to get registered. If you’d like to watch a video describing CLR, click here