The Winter Retreat in 2021 was a profound spiritual experience. You can simply read the lamentations and view the video. However, our Meeting invites you to use the materials on this webpage to create your own mini-retreat.
The path toward writing a lamentation is not a process to take lightly or to try to complete in a hurry.
The three parts of the Winter Retreat served attendees well. If you are interested in walking this path, we suggest that you allow about an hour per part, three hours total:
- An hour for the lamentation exercise.
- An hour for recovery, contemplation or worship walking to bring yourself back to the present time.
- Listen to or view Carl Magruder’s keynote presentation: On Hope.
In our experience it is advisable to balance the potency of the lamentation exercise with the equally potent keynote address about hope.
“Reflecting on the Past, Being in the Present, Finding Hope for the Future: How is the Divine at work in our lives?”
We were honored to host our special guest, Carl Magruder, a California Quaker and palliative care chaplain, who spoke about Hope and Transformation.
Carl says, “Hope can be at once a warm fuzzy blanket and a consuming fire. In difficult times, hope can be hard to find and scary to feel. As a hospice and palliative care chaplain, I have witnessed the ways that hope persists, even when what was most longed for is not to be. How do we maintain hope in a broken world, without becoming so spiritualized that our hoping becomes ephemeral? How do we understand ourselves to be in the world, but not of it in times of both despair and jubilation? How does community buoy us up, and how do we infuse it with our hope? Bring your heart and your wisdom to this journey of inquiry, the way of the open heart.“
Learn more about Carl’s Soul Ways Spiritual Accompaniment ministry on the Civic Light Projects webpage.
Updated 3/12/2021
