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MAKING ROOM FOR OURSELVES:
Women’s Fall Contemplative Retreat with Carolyn Foster
SEPTEMBER 9-11, 2011
Santa Sabina Center,
what a change
from the cramped room at the center
where I began, where I crouched
and was safe, but could hardly
breathe!From Mary Oliver’s “The House”
So often we feel for others and lose ourselves, or cut others off to preserve ourselves…. But compassion is a deeper thing that waits beyond the tension of choosing sides.Mark Nepo, The Book of Awakening
What allows you to feel spacious? For me, a recent 17-day pilgrimage showed me how hemmed in I had been by pressures and expectations, many self-generated. Called Portals of the Sacred, the pilgrimage did indeed offer the blessedness of reflective time and opened the doors of my perception, to use William Blake’s phrase. Of course it has been challenging to be as kind, clear, and at ease back home, so this theme surfaced as a way to honor both my experience and recent requests from retreatants for more on forgiveness, compassion, and self-care. In the quiet company of women, we will cross the threshold into the fall season and know greater freedom and lightness of being.
Santa Sabina Center offers gracious hospitality, beauty, and a refuge for deep renewal. Whether you want to cocoon inside or walk the autumn trails, the house, courtyard, and gardens offer multiple places to settle into serenity. Program times alternate with free time for hiking, napping, playing in the art center, reading, or lying on the grass listening to the fountain. The silences and conversations are as healing a diet as the good food.
To register, call my voicemail, (510) 484-3078, on or after Tuesday, July 5. 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. 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 $300 for a double room, $345 for a single room. This includes lodging, program, and six meals, from dinner Friday night through lunch Sunday. I am also now able to offer 12 units of CEUs to MFTs and LCSWs, for an additional charge of $35; let me know if you want this option.
Please join us to create new openings to spaciousness and peace of mind!
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.
