An Advent retreat for your soul

Advent can sometimes be swallowed up in the Christmas season with all its sparkle; but pausing for those weeks in the darkness of the “before” can be essential to our own souls’ process. It is a season that holds space for the questions, the deep desires, the doubts, the pain of the dark places—refusing to pretend, at least for this season, that those aren’t there, stirring in our depths. Advent is the womb that holds “the hopes and fears of all the years” as we await the birth of the light (Jesus, too, spent that first Advent in dark waters!).

Together let’s attend to the dark waters—of mystery, of our depths, of what is being formed in us and in the world—this Advent season.

This year’s Advent is the shortest possible length: three weeks long, beginning December 3rd and ending on Christmas Eve, so we will take the week before to begin to explore and wonder and prepare together as well. We will have four meetings together on zoom, where we will lean into these themes through a spiritual practice like Lectio Divina or Ignatian imaginative prayer. The days and weeks in between, you will be first preparing, and then drawing from your own little Advent “well” with daily prompts relating to the longings that are coming up for you in this season.  

You will receive invitations into creative exploration of your own experience of the dark waters of Advent all throughout the weeks, and—as a bonus—a mini-workshop on creating your own “Book of Hours.”

  • Weekly group meetings exploring the themes of Advent and our longings (on Zoom)—a small community to journey with in these dark and beautiful days and nights

  • Creative prompts as a way of leaning in daily to this short, dark, holy season

  • Advent reflections and meditations, both spiritual and creative, all throughout the four weeks

  • Bonus gift: Found Poetry Book of Hours mini-workshop (to be engaged this season, or whenever you’d like!)

We will paint and poem and pray and play (yes, even in the darkness—perhaps even with the darkness!) all throughout these four weeks together, and we’d love to have you join us. Cost is $129, and you can find it here.