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STEADINESS AND SILENCE: KEEPING OUR BALANCE
Women’s Fall Contemplative Retreat with Carolyn Foster
SEPTEMBER 12-14, 2008
Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael
May all I say and all I think and all I do this day
help me to be part of the healing of my world.
May that part of myself that has not yet opened to compassion
be filled with lovingkindness and acceptance.
May love dissolve my heart's armoring,
and may I understand the utter uselessness of being afraid.
I don’t know who wrote the invocation above. Someone sent it to me, and I keep it alongside my keyboard. In times when I feel out of balance, the words call me back. Our reactions to events often throw us off balance. The Sufi poet Rumi described our emotional life as being “a guest house – every morning a new arrival.” How do we find steadiness in the challenges that arrive daily? I believe that creativity, companionship, and contemplative silence are a healing triad that can restore us to equanimity. The twice-yearly retreats I’ve been offering since 1996 at Santa Sabina Center have become a reliable source of strength and rebalancing for women wanting more joy and less stress. We write, reflect, alternate conversation and silence, and come home to our truest selves.
Santa Sabina Center offers retreatants gracious hospitality, beauty, and a refuge for contemplation and renewal. Whether you want to be cozy inside or seek sun or shade outside, the house, courtyard, and gardens offer dozens of places for letting go into serenity. Scheduled program times alternate with free time for hiking, napping, playing in the art center, reading, or just watching the trees and the sky. The silences and conversations are as healing a diet as the good food.
Register by calling my voicemail, (510) 484-3078 on or after Monday, June 23. You may reserve for yourself and a friend with one call or have a friend call for you if you’ll be out of town. Last resort: email me at cjf@creativechoices.net or fax me at (510) 769-8084. Sometimes people assume calling late won’t work, but whenever you get this or get around to deciding, call anyway. The cost of the retreat is $290 for a double room, $325 for a single room. This includes lodging, program, and six meals, from dinner Friday night through lunch Sunday.
Come and rediscover the center that holds steady!
To receive email or regular mail notification of details of this retreat and how to register, go to the contact page and call or email Carolyn with your request.
