Contemplative Retreat for Women with Carolyn Foster

COURAGE FOR WHATEVER COMES: BALANCING RESOLVE AND RELEASE

Women’s Winter Contemplative Retreat with Carolyn Foster
JANUARY 5-8, 2012
Santa Sabina Center, San Rafael

If you realize that all things change,
There is nothing you will try to hold on to.

From Tao Te Ching, Lao Tzu, Stephen Mitchell version

What should I say about your tendency to doubt your struggle or to harmonize your inner and outer life? My wish is ever strong that you find enough patience within you and enough simplicity to have faith. May you gain more and more trust in what is challenging, and confidence in the solitude you bear. Let life happen to you. Believe me: life is in the right in any case.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Paradox surrounds us as we enter a New Year. We have hopes and intentions, and we want the courageous resolve to bring them into being. We know how much is beyond our control, and we want the courageous grace to release the outcomes, despite our investment in them. The spaciousness and silence of a contemplative retreat will allow us to enter 2012 with clear minds, rested bodies, and buoyant spirits. In addition, I am responding to dozens of requests and offering this as a 3-night retreat, Thursday late afternoon through Sunday lunch. Santa Sabina’s directors will allow me to scale back to a 2-night retreat if we do not have enough reservations by mid-November, but I am hoping that my inner urging and your requests will give us the luxury of 3 nights. Either way, our writing, discussions, and shared silence will teach us how to balance firmness and flow in the projects and surprises of the New Year.

Santa Sabina Center offers gracious hospitality, beauty, and a refuge for deep renewal. 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 pillowed in front of a warm hearth, listening to the fire crackle. The silences and conversations are as healing a diet as the good food.

To register, call my voicemail, (510) 484-3078, starting October 5, 2011. 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 this 3-night retreat is $425 for a double room, $500 for a single room. This includes lodging, program, and nine meals, from dinner Thursday 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 as we dedicate ourselves for another year’s journey!