Restoring Sacred Conversation with Earth

The wisdom and guidance we need for this time of tragic ecological and political collapse will not be found in the dominant ways of thinking. Over fifty years ago, Thomas Berry urged us to turn and face these challenges by pointing to the root cause of the problem, “We are talking only to ourselves. We are not talking to the rivers, we are not listening to the wind and stars. We have broken the great conversation.”

This retreat is an experiential and theological immersion into the practice of wild spirituality, which at the core is concerned with restoring sacred conversation with the natural world.  Beyond stewardship and caring for creation, there lies an invitation — a call of the holy wild heard by every spiritual leader in both Testaments of our sacred stories:  a call to encounter God directly in the wilderness.  The call beckons each of us with urgency at this time. For those who already identify themselves as mystics who experience the numinous most in Nature and those who are curious about adding eco-spiritual practices to their contemplative lives.

Mornings begin with orientation to the day’s eco-centric practices and an invitation to curiosity about how your inner landscape might be allured into conversation with the acres of Genesis outer landscape.  The bulk of each day will be spent in sacred saunter, listening for the voice of the Holy through whispers of the wind, language of leaves and syntax of spiders.  At the end of each day, we will gather to deepen the sacred conversation with one another as we share our experiences.  These are practices to live into the deepest definition of the Kingdom of God, without the G: a Kin-dom of reverent, reciprocal, and loving relationships.