August Guided Silent Retreat

Poetry as a Spiritual Practice

Saturday, August 2 | 9:00am – 2:00pm | The Anchor House | $35

Poetry can be a spiritual practice or discipline to enrich our faith journeys. In our time together, we will engage poetry as a spiritual practice in several different ways.

• First, we will practice a form of lectio divina using poetry, where we will listen to poems with our hearts, hold a brief period of silence to listen for God, and then share from our hearts what we heard in the silence.
• Next, we will practice a form of lectio visio, using various artworks as inspiration for creating poetry.
• We will try our hands at writing a “blackout” poem using scripture as our reference.
• We will close the program with a group exercise, using word mapping based on a Bible verse to create a collective poem.

No prior poetry experience is needed to enjoy this program.

The Center welcomes Mark Jodon to lead this retreat. Mark Jodon, a member of The Center for Christian Spirituality, is a published poet and the author of two full-length collections of poetry: Day of the Speckled Trout (Transcendent Zero Press) and Miles of Silence (Kelsay Books). Mark leads a monthly poetry workshop, Poetry @ The Center, which meets at the Anchor House on the third Tuesday of each month from 6:30-8:00 PM.

Please bring a pen and paper/writing journal with you to the retreat.

The cost of the retreat is $35 and includes the price of lunch. We don’t want anyone to miss out because of pricing. Contact Haley for information on scholarships at hbrown@chapelwood.org.