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A good therapist or minister of friend knows that the best thing to do when a friend is in trouble is to listen.  Just to be there.  Not to say anything, but to be present, with understanding and love.  What if this is true of God, too?  What if the silence of God–this sense we have that God isn’t answering our prayers–is really the silence of God’s listening to us with love?  In this retreat, with various listening exercises and reflections on the theme of listening in the scriptures, Anderson encourages retreatants to enter more deeply into silence, and so to hear the still small voice that is always calling us home.

It’s often assumed that Christianity and nature are somehow opposed–that God can only be found in a Church.  But in fact scripture is full of references to nature as a revelation of the Spirit and to wilderness as the place of encounter with God, and in this retreat, using selected passages from both the Old and New Testament, as well as journal prompts and small group retreat, Anderson helps the people who come to the retreat to make contact with what is splendid and wild, in them and all around them–with Christ, who is Nature, who is all that is beautiful and good.

We are all too much in our heads, especially those of who have gone to college.  Science is what is valued, and analysis, and doubt.  But there’s value, too, in what we feel and intuit, in what we can’t put into words, in what we don’t control and can’t control, and in this retreat, using scripture and poetry and journal prompts, Anderson helps retreatants discover the mystery that’s really inside of them.

With business and distraction constantly surround us, it can be a struggle to recognize, understand and hold onto fleeting moments of joy. Using the ancient prayer tradition of the Ignatian examen of conscience, I present how we can reflect on our own experiences. The examen can serve as a simple but powerful way to remember & practice moments of light, of struggle, of joy.