Formational Healing Retreat

Whatever you’re presently facing in your life has an origin story. The spiritual formation journey has two primary forces at work: desire and resistance. There are some things that we want, and there are some things that we don't want. And these two forces are either slowly leaking out or they build up until we can't contain them anymore—and both, primarily in our emotional life, narrate a great deal of our life.

In this first session we dive into the ancient framework of what the early church fathers called "The passions" and we begin to ask God to draw some deep things up to the surface that might be impacting how we are presently navigating our life with God and our love for those around us.

“Be attentive to yourself that you may be able to distinguish was is harmful from what is healthful.” —St. Basil of Caesarea

The formational healing journey can really begin when we're able to see what it is that we're holding within our own story that might be in need of the deep healing work of God. Every one of us has places of deep wounding and harmful default settings. In this session, we begin to ask God to help us pay deeper attention to what events and stories in our lives we have yet to bring into God's healing presence.

Participants have an opportunity to reflect and pray in real time through a few prompts.

In this session, Jared tells the story of his own journey of formational healing journey (2019-2022), including a growing awareness of complex trauma that surfaced through a season of spiritual wilderness, and the presence of God through spiritual friendship in the midst of what St. John of the Cross calls a "dark night of the senses."

Local options for lunch, or bring your own

Participants are encouraged to grab a safe person and go for a walk, sit on a park bench, or find a quiet place to simply say, in the presence of another, what God might be bringing up for them.

God is loving us through the journey of our life. Sometimes that love feels tender and near, and other times it feels like we're in the middle of dying. Most of the time it's somewhere in the middle. But our story, and the story of our ongoing healing and formation, is marked by the love of God.

5:30pm, end