Fall 2025 Retreat
“Looking at Mysticism” with The Rev. Matthew Wright, former Guild Cultivator
How do the mystics help us navigate the chaos of our times?
A Fall Graduate Retreat
open to Guild Graduates, Cultivators, and Friends
October 3, 4, and 5, 2025
via Zoom
REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED FOR THIS EVENT
“Looking at Mysticism” with The Rev. Matthew Wright, who is a recent Guild Presenter/Cultivator of the Mystics strand. He will explore with us how the mystics help us navigate the chaos of our times.
This retreat will be an inter-spiritual exploration of mysticism by an expert in the field. Elements of sacred community will be experienced by deep ‘Guild’ sharing and break-out rooms.
Through our community encounter, we expect participants to experience the meaning, purpose, and sense of sacred community typical of a Guild retreat. We intend to expand this exploration to examine how we are all mystics.
Our Presenter
The Rev. Matthew Wright grew up in Western North Carolina, wandering into an Episcopal Church for the first time in 2003—with no idea of where that small act would lead! He received his B.A. in Religious Studies from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and M.Div. from Virginia Theological Seminary. Matthew was ordained to the priesthood in September 2012 and has served as priest-in-charge at St. Gregory’s since October 2014.
In addition to his part-time ministry with St. Gregory’s, Matthew serves as a retreat leader and teaches for Northeast Wisdom and the Contemplative Society, non-profits dedicated to the renewal of the Christian Wisdom tradition. He is a vowed Companion in the Rivendell Community, which has a local Chapter based at St. Gregory’s. Matthew lives with his wife and two cats in Woodstock.
REGISTRATION HAS CLOSED FOR THIS EVENT
For more information please email info@spiritualguidance.org.
Spring Retreat 2024
Everyday Mysticism With Thomas Merton – A Weekend With Author Sophronia Scott
April 5 – 7 , 2024
Wisdom House Litchfield CT
A Graduate Guild semi-annual weekend retreat with our presenter Sophfronia Scott, author of the book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton (Broadleaf Books, 2021). This special event is open to the public!
A Graduate Guild semi-annual weekend retreat with our presenter Sophfronia Scott, author of the book The Seeker and the Monk: Everyday Conversations with Thomas Merton (Broadleaf Books, 2021). This special event is sponsored by the Graduate Circle of The Guild for Spiritual Guidance and is open to everyone!
Mysticism is often viewed as the privileged experience of a few chosen, holy individuals. However, the Jesuit priest and theologian Karl Rahner wrote about “everyday mysticism,” and Carmelite Sister Ruth Burrows described the mystical life simply as “God touching the depths of our being.” God is closer than we think–to all of us. But how can we become more aware of when the divine is near? We’ll explore everyday mysticism as life events filled with God’s unmistakable presence. Sharing Thomas Merton’s experiences and her own, Sophfronia will help attendees notice, identify, and appreciate mystical encounters in their everyday lives.
Date: Friday April 5, 2024 at 4:00 pm to Sunday April 7, 2024 at 1:00 pm
Location: In person at Wisdom House Retreat Center in Litchfield, Connecticut and online via Zoom
Sophfronia Scott is the founding director of the Alma College MFA in Creative Writing. She grew up in Lorain, Ohio, a hometown she shares with author Toni Morrison. Her father was a Mississippi-born steelworker who never learned how to read and her mother was a stay-at-home mom who always made sure there were books in the house. She holds a BA in English from Harvard and an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Sophfronia spent a big chunk of her career as a writer and editor for Time and People magazines where she developed the uncanny ability to create order out of chaos by whittling massive amounts of facts and ideas into a single cohesive form. Learn more about Sophronia Scott at https://sophfronia.com/
More information about Wisdom House Retreat Center can be found here.
Registration is closed.
FALL GRADUATE CIRCLE RETREAT 2023
EVOLUTIONARY RITUALS FOR OUR SPIRITUAL EMERGENCE
Living in the midst of this time of mass planetary change, a new sacred story from Science invites us to live out of and in cooperation with the still unfolding story of inter-dependent wholeness. Evolutionary Rituals are novel vessels of this new story and its potential to aid our emergence, both as individuals, and as a species living, as Thomas Berry wrote, in mutuality with Earth. For the retreat weekend, Carol Kilby designed a program to support the continuing journey of the Graduate Circle program. Drawing on her upcoming new book offering more than 30 Evolutionary Daily Practices, Special Occasion Ceremonies, and Rites of Passage, Carol will companion us through an exploration of how Evolutionary Spirituality reinvents relevant personal and cultural rituals for this time of peril and promise, mass and rapid change.
Presenter bio: Carol Kilby – Ritualist, writer, speaker, teacher, storyteller, initiator, and evolutionary elder, Kilby loves big picture ideas and little moments of awe. Being human, she believes, is all about evolving and emerging, imagining and co-creating.
September 22, 2023 at 4:00 pm to September 23, 2023 at 7:00 pm EST- Online
Registration is closed.
ll Graduate Guild Retreat, September 23-25, 2022
″The Art of Seeing” at Wisdom House in Litchfield, CT
“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with ‘new eyes.’ ”
-Marcel Proust
Imagine a world where you could see with “new eyes.” The Art of Seeing with Carmen Lund is an art-making class with a spiritual objective. In this approach you are led to take a fresh look at familiar things. Using a process of discovery and paying attention is a game changer. Nothing will ever appear the same as before. Nothing will be mundane.
The natural will become miraculous and the everyday will be unique.You will develop a fresh sense of awe, wonder and gratitude for the natural world and God’s movement in the everyday..
“Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.” Pablo Picasso.
Over the weekend, you will be led in a series of exercises to express, elaborate and manifest everyday mundane reality and transform it into something special.
Carmen Lund is a graduate with the Guild for Spiritual Guidance (AP XX) and a visual artist whose paintings have been exhibited and collected in the US, Asia, South America and Europe. She also teaches painting and is a transformational life coach. The common thread in each of the areas is her creative approach to problem-solving both on and off the canvas.
RECONNECTING TO THE SPIRIT THROUGH THE SENSES
Presented by Leslie Valentine
Our senses are the first gifts from our creator; endowments with endless opportunities to connect, reconnect and be at one with our source. But how often do we ignore them, take them for granted and fail to see their pathways to inner wisdom and connectivity? Join us this weekend to reestablish and rekindle our sense pathways and our relationships with our spirit and each other!
Open to all Guild Graduates
April 22-24, 2022
Wisdom House, Litchfield, CT
Gather at 3:30 on Friday April 22 and leave at 1:00 on Sunday EST
Cost:
The registration page will charge you a $100 deposit. The balance of your ticket will be due at the time of the event. For questions, please contact Sue Robinson: graduate.guild@gmail.com
$350 Full Weekend [Private Room & meals] A
$300 Full Weekend [Shared Room & meals] B
$250 Partial Weekend [One Night Shared Room & meals] C
$225.00 Commuter D
About the Presenter
Leslie Valentine is a graduate with the Guild for Spiritual Guidance (AP XX), where she concentrated her second year practicum in small group ministry. An Education for Ministry (EfM) graduate, she has been a certified mentor for over ten years and is currently mentoring a 36-week seminar group in Huntington, New York. In the Episcopal Church, she is a lay Eucharist minister and has served on Cursillo teams. Leslie is also a classical singer, performing frequently in the tri-state area, and an avid traveler, having visited all seven continents!
Fall 2021
Presented by Dr. Fanny Brewster
Our American collective now finds itself more frequently peering with conscious awareness into the shadow of American racial relations and racism than ever before in history. The Civil War brought us into the shadowed constellation of our American racial complex. We are more than one hundred years beyond that moment of anguish and liberation for our country. Yet, the psychological woundedness of raciality continues today. Our 21st century journey necessitates making transparent the suffering of the African Holocaust, while shining a light of consciousness onto the darkness of what we have been unable or unwilling to see through the centuries. Now, we will join together in community to share moments of recollection of the suffering of our racialized American psyche, while creating a vision for how we might begin to heal.
Open to all Guild Graduates
September 17-19, 2021, via Zoom
The retreat will begin at 4:00 p.m. EST on Friday, September 17, and run until Sunday, September 19 at noon EST.
Cost: $100
About the Presenter
Fanny Brewster, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst and professor at Pacifica Graduate Institute. She is the author of three books: The Racial Complex: Jungian Perspectives on Culture and Race; African Americans and Jungian Psychology: Leaving the Shadows; and Archetypal Grief: Slavery’s Legacy of Intergenerational Child Loss.
Spring 2021
The Radical Path of the Sacred Feminine
Presented by Bernice Marie-Daly
The Radical Path of the Sacred Feminine an emerging story of the evolution of consciousness manifested through and within the archetype of the Sacred Feminine. She has been with us from the beginning as a primordial image of Sacred Presence expressed through myriad cultures throughout the ages; we can imagine Her emergence today as “Mother Earth,” boldly challenging our way of life in the face of an existential threat to our very existence. Sourced though meditation, deep listening, personal experiences and dream imagery; awakened to the realities of unrelenting social upheaval and global devastation, we gather to envision “Mother Earth” guiding us toward a humanity capable of an evolved Love transforming us into “the new human” of the Ecozoic Age.
Open to all Guild Graduates
April 23-25, 2021 via Zoom
The retreat will begin at 4:00 EST on Friday, April 23, and run until Sunday, April 25 at noon EST.
Cost $100
Registration closes April 21, 2021
*Artwork by Becky Nielsen, XIX
About the Presenter
Bernice Marie-Daly, AP III, has facilitated numerous retreats, workshops, and programs on spirituality and the Divine Feminine. Most especially during this critical time of spiritual crises, her intention is to facilitate processes that open our hearts and minds to the ways the Sacred Feminine is transforming and guiding our passage into the Ecozoic Era.
Bernice lives in Connecticut, enjoys swimming, mahjongg, and leisurely walks by LI Sound. She has four grandchildren, two in Hawaii and two in Vermont.
Fall 2020
The Secret at The Heart of The World: Teilhard de Chardin on the Evolution of Love
A Guild Graduate Retreat with Louis Savary via Zoom
Join us for the Guild’s fall Graduate retreat this September with Louis Savary. He will take us on a journey that will help us to better understand Teilhard’s life and to clearly see and understand some of his most complex ideas and discoveries. We will begin by learning about what propelled Teilhard to go off on a search to find “the secret at the heart of reality” and what he found as a result. We will also learn about the laws of evolution that Teilhard formulated, such as Union Differentiates, and how we can use these laws to take evolution to a higher level of consciousness. In addition, we will find out how Teilhard’s ideas about what it meant to be a human being differed from the thinking of Aristotle and Descartes and why.
We look forward to seeing each of you in the Guild family this fall on Zoom! Whether you are a novice or an expert on the study of Teilhard, you are sure to gain deeper insight and appreciation for his transformative work.
Cost
$100 for both days
Registration
Opens August 1, 2020
Contact
Sue Robinson, Graduate Retreat Coordinator with any questions:
Join us for the Guild’s fall Graduate retreat this September with Louis Savary. He will take us on a journey that will help us to better understand Teilhard’s life and to clearly see and understand some of his most complex ideas and discoveries. We will begin by learning about what propelled Teilhard to go off on a search to find “the secret at the heart of reality” and what he found as a result. We will also learn about the laws of evolution that Teilhard formulated, such as Union Differentiates, and how we can use these laws to take evolution to a higher level of consciousness. In addition, we will find out how Teilhard’s ideas about what it meant to be a human being differed from the thinking of Aristotle and Descartes and why.
We look forward to seeing each of you in the Guild family this fall on Zoom! Whether you are a novice or an expert on the study of Teilhard, you are sure to gain deeper insight and appreciation for his transformative work.
About The Presenter
Louis M. Savary, received a degree in spiritual theology from Catholic University of America. He has lectured, led workshops, taught classes and written books about Teilhard’s spirituality. His goal has been making Teilhard’s ideas practical and useful, especially for those who find his ideas difficult to understand and apply in their own lives.