Retreats 2024
Befriending Brokenness
St. Scholastica Monastery, Duluth, MN
Friday, March 1, 2024 - 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. - Saturday, March 2, 2024 - 8:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m.
We are a wounded people living in a wounded world. These past few years have both revealed and increased the amount of heartbreak we carry. While we may hope that our spiritual lives will help us to overcome our pain, our Gospel stories remind us that the way to healing is through the pain. Our God is inviting us to acknowledge our heartbreak, our woundedness, and our paralysis – to offer thee all our broken parts.
During this Lenten retreat, our facilitator Diane Millis will introduce us to practices for befriending the tender, painful places that arise in our bodies, our hearts, and our wounded world. Through prayer, reflection, writing, and sacred conversation in small groups, we will collectively hold space for our heartbreak.
To learn more and register visit: https://retreatduluth.org/befriending-brokenness
Looking, Listening and Lingering with God: An Invitation to Prayer
Our Lady of Lourdes Community, Minneapolis, MN
Saturday, March 16, 2024, 8:30-12:00
In a world filled with screens, how do we maintain a focus on the presence of God?
In a world filled with sounds of the rings and pings of our devices, how do we attune our ears to the still, small voice of the Divine?
In a world that values speed and productivity, how do we learn to linger with the Spirit in our midst?
This retreat is designed for all of us who yearn to enter more deeply into prayer and to live more prayerfully.
Our retreat facilitator, Dr. Diane Millis, will introduce us to prayer practices that help us to quiet our eyes and focus our attention on the sacred, turn down the volume and listen with the ear of our heart, and slow down so that we may walk at the pace of God’s guidance.
To learn more and register, contact Ben Caduff at: ben@ourladyoflourdesmn.com
Unbroken: A Retreat for Caregivers of Veterans
Prescott, Arizona
Friday May 3, 4:30 p.m. – Sunday May 5, 12:00 p.m.
Both our veterans and we who care for them are trying to make sense of what we thought our lives were going to be and what they currently are.
There are things our veterans can’t remember, and there are things they’ll never forget. There are things we as caregivers must remember, and so much we don’t want to forget.
This two-day retreat is a time for rest, renewal, and reclamation. It is designed for caregivers who need time away to listen to their lives and the stories they are telling about them.
Our retreat facilitator Diane Millis emphasizes in her book Re-Creating a Life: “It’s not what we’ve experienced that defines us, but the stories we tell about our experiences.”
Although the plans for our lives may have been broken, together we will explore all that remains unbroken and unfinished in our stories.
For more information, contact Sharon Grassi at s.grassi@co-opsurvival.com
Holding Space for Healing and Renewal
Franciscan Spirituality Center, LaCrosse, WI
Friday, August 23, 6:30-8:30 p.m. – Saturday, August 24, 9:00-4:00
Where is God at work in our wounded hearts and our wounded world? This is the question we will pose and ponder during our retreat gathering.
Our facilitator, Diane Millis, will guide our quest through an immersion into three specific gospel stories. We will begin by meeting Blind Bart in our quest to see, then turn to the paralytic man carried by his four companions in our quest to heal, and conclude by walking alongside Jesus and his friends on the Road to Emmaus in our quest for renewal.
Through time in contemplative silence and contemplative conversation, we will listen for the deeper revelation awaiting us.
To register, visit: FSCenter@fspa.org
What participants say about Diane’s retreat offerings . . .
Honored to be a part of this unfolding and sacred mystery of our time together. There is nothing more profound than recognizing the pain and the love that is shared in the heart of our humanity.
Surprised by God, life, and pain, it is not either/or, it is both/and, and the sacred Mystery holds us in all of that.
Leaving lighter, more sense of awareness of my body, carrying joy with a new depth, through the process of befriending brokenness and knowing the belovedness is fully there.
I am amazed that God brought me to here at just the right time with at the right people. I am leaving very encouraged.
I am leaving with gratitude and joy, I want to take better care of myself and quit running from feelings. I want to befriend me.
Amazed at the power of the horizontal—the sense of being together is so powerful.
Grateful that the whole process has helped make connections with the horizontal, and the vertical, upward and downward, increased my commitment to mend and sit with broken relationships, with myself. I am grateful for being seen, heard, and encouraged to keep on.
Being heard changes the world, and this has been affirmed this weekend.
I see how I tell myself a story about a story, a beautiful challenge. I dig ruts in my brain. I am stepping back and asking: how would I look at this differently?
Paying attention to the story I am telling myself--what is my deeper belief and need?
Grateful, fuller person. This retreat offered me a road map to keep on the path.
Inspired by wisdom and caring words, it has been a true gift.
