Grounding our lives in God’s Creation (LIMITED AVAILABILITY)

Photo: The ground and people at St. Columba Bay, Iona. Credit: Iona Community/A. Rajaona-Home

Grounding our lives in God and creation: The call to live into the ‘hereness’ 1st – 7th June 2024 – (FULLY BOOKED)

How do we ‘ground’ our lives in God? How do we ‘desire the change,’ as the poet Rilke called us to do, in the face of fear? How does our embrace of what is hidden encourage us to care for what we see?

In these times of personal and social stress, and in the face of accelerating ecological distress, join us to explore how we might become more faithful stewards of and with our lives.

This week of ‘grounding’ will listen to voices and embed practices that ‘re-mind’ of who we are. We will listen to poets and mystics, artists and bards, who invite us to risk living into healing—for ourselves and others; for our earth and all its creatures. We will be invited into what Rilke called the ‘heart-work’ by which we embrace what he called ‘the Open’. Come to discover what it means that we are ‘human becomings’, called by God to live with courage and resilience.

Facilitators

Grounding programme facilitators: Dr. Mark S. Burrows & Rev. Ute Molitor

Mark S. Burrows is a teacher and scholar, poet and translator of German poetry. A sought-after retreat leader, he is well known for his work on Christian spirituality and for his leadership in the convergence of theology and the arts. He taught the history of Christianity at several graduate theological schools in the United States before accepting a university professorship in Germany in 2012, where he taught until 2020. His recent books include The Chance of Home. Poems (2018) and Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light: Meditations on the Path of the Wayless Way (2023).www.msburrows.com

Ute Molitor is senior minister of First Congregational, United Church of Christ, in Camden, Maine. She has completed certification programs in spiritual guidance, pastoral care, and mindfulness meditation, and is a “sendee” of the Living School of the Center for Action and Contemplation founded by Fr. Richard Rohr. Ute’s faith is shaped by a non-dogmatic perspective; she values connecting faith with the life’s daily struggles and the rejoicing we experience individually and communally. She enjoys offering practices that help sustain us on a path of living grounded, wholesome, and committed lives as followers of Jesus’ way and integral members of creation.

Mark and Ute live in Camden, a scenic harbor-town in midcoast Maine, where they savour time outdoors with their sweet and energetic Springer Spaniel, Keileigh. They are both in the new Member programme of the Iona Community.

Costs

6 Nights: £762 per adult, £381 for reduced rated – see our programme page for more information.