ENTERING ADVENT: patience, impatience, and the present - a remote retreat

Here we are

Advent, the beginning of the Christian year and the season leading up to Christmas, is full of paradoxes. It is a gentle season of waiting, but a season of prophetic warnings and invitations. It looks toward new beginnings and also toward the end of time. It is, as I have often said and as I preached on the first Sunday of Advent, both a time to enter God's patience and a time to enter God's impatience. To put it more casually, it can really mess with our sense of time.

Yet here we are, at the start of the season, with all this --and preparations for celebration of the birth of Jesus-- swirling around us and inside us, and in the readings appointed for the season, for those who use a lectionary.

Perhaps the most important thing we can do as we step into Advent --or as we wonder whether and how to enter the season-- is to make space, and time, to do so mindfully. To live Advent with care, in the present.

(c) Jane Redmont 2016

The retreat

Our "Entering Advent" retreat is a two-hour experience on Zoom, with time and space for quiet, music, gazing at visual art, and personal reflection and prayer.

It can serve as an oasis in this already busy holiday season of the secular world, or as a beginning of your extended Advent practice with some resources, guideposts, and practices - or both.

I am offering the retreat twice (with a third time possible upon request) to accommodate your varied schedules and time zones.

Wednesday evening, November 30, 2022 at 7:00 pm Eastern Time (4:00 pm Pacific Time)

        If there are sufficient requests, Wednesday evening, November         30 at 9:30 pm Eastern (6:30 Pacific) for you night owls of the East             Coast, early evening for you folks of the Western time zones.

Thursday morning, December 1, 2022 at 10:30 am Eastern Time (7:30 am Pacific for you early birds out there).

The retreat lasts for two hours.

At the end of the retreat, I'll also send you off with a few suggestions of Advent practices, which I'll have on a page that I can e-mail you as well as show on Zoom at the end of our time together.

Registration

The regular fee for the retreat is $30. If you can't afford this, a lower rate is available. If you are seriously broke, write me to request a freebie. If your resources are more abundant, a benefactor rate is available too.

Registration and payment are here:

Entering Advent 2022 - pick one rate

Regular rate $30.00 USD Benefactor rate $60.00 USD Hardship rate $15.00 USD

Make sure you pick a time!

Wednesday 7 pm Wednesday 9:30 pm Thursday 10:30 am

 

Zoom and your favorite device

Our retreat will be in real time, on Zoom, so you'll need a computer or tablet.

The larger the screen, the better: while you can use Zoom on your smartphone, technically speaking, I don't recommend it because you won't see the images (both other participants' faces and the visual art I will share) as well as you would on a larger screen, and also because your fellow participants run the risk of seeing your face bounce around if your phone is unstable, which can be a distraction on a retreat meant to offer some slowness and stability.

I'll send out a Zoom link and instructions once you have registered. If you haven't used Zoom before, I'll be glad to help you ahead of time.

A Zoom retreat really can happen! I've led many such retreats in a variety of formats.

Questions? Concerns?

Please feel welcome to e-mail me here.

Note:

Because I am going on an extended family visit during the winter holidays, there will be no long blog-based Advent retreat this year. 

I am, however, already planning a long retreat for Lent, "Re-membering Our Lives." Publicity and registration for Lenten retreat offerings will be available by the end of January.

Carina Nebula via James Webb Telescope / NASA