CHICAGO
August 28-30, 2023
Rhythms of Rest: Trading in our exhaustion and disillusionment for a vision and set of practices for sustainable rhythms of work and rest. Perfect for preparing for the fall ministry season.
LOCATION: BELLARMINE JESUIT RETREAT HOUSE GUIDES: RUTH HALEY BARTON, FR MICHAEL SPAROUGH, Drew jackson, AARON NIEQUIST
Retreat Schedule
MONDAY
1:00pm Registration 2:00pm Gathering & Invitation 5:00pm Dinner Together 6:00pm Invitation into Sabbath 8:00pm Contemplative Compline
TUESDAY
9:00am Sabbath as Rest & Release 12:30pm Lunch/Solitude 1:00pm Prayer Team in Refectory (Optional until 3pm) 4:00pm Eucharist Service 5:00pm Dinner Together 6:00pm Sabbath as Resistance 7:00pm Sabbath as Delight
WEDNESDAY
9:00am Practical Tools 12:00pm Prayer and Sending
Gathering & Invitation / Personal Retreat / Tangible Next Steps
On Monday we will arrive from all over the country and begin a shared journey. We’ll meet each other, worship together, orient ourselves to the retreat, and begin to exhale and slow down. Ruth Haley Barton will offer a significant teaching on Sabbath: Rhythms of Work and Rest. We’ll end with Night Prayer and the opportunity for a great night of sleep.
Tuesday morning, Fr Michael Sparough, SJ, will lead a 3 hour, guided personal retreat. Through spiritual practices, simple liturgies, and embodied prayer, we will be led into holy space in which God can do what only God can do. This will propel us into an afternoon of solitude on the Bellarmine Retreat House grounds, and then back together for an ecumenical, practice-based Eucharist service. And then after dinner, we will dive into the practice of delight and celebration. (Much more to share about this!)
Finally, Wednesday morning will focus on heading back into our actual home communities. How can we translate the practices and rhythms of the retreat into our real lives and churches? What are tools and resources that can support this good work? How can we become menders of the church cracked open? We’ll end the whole retreat with a time of prayer and sending.
Or said more simply: the three movements of the retreat are (1) Opening to the rhythms of Grace, (2) Swimming deep in the rhythms of Grace, and (3) Learning tools to invite others into the rhythms of Grace.
Bellarmine Jesuit Retreat House
Retreat Guides
“Your desire for more of God than you have right now, your longing for love, your need for deeper levels of spiritual transformation than you have experienced so far is the truest thing about you. You might think that your woundedness or your sinfulness is the truest thing about you or that your giftedness or your personality type or your job title or your identity as husband or wife, mother or father, somehow defines you. But in reality, it is your desire for God and your capacity to reach for more of God than you have right now that is the deepest essence of who you are. ”