Dear Friend,
We are looking forward to our next retreat, July 10-12 on The Art and Practice of Spiritual Discernment. An increasing capacity to discern and do the will of God is one of the tangible outcomes of our spiritual transformation as Paul notes in Romans 12:2. It is exciting to have arrived at the point in our Transforming Community experience where we are ready to explore this together.
Reflecting on the Last Quarter
As this quarter draws to a close and the final week is a holiday, please remember to carve out time to prepare for our time together. You are invited to reflect on the questions found in your During the Quarter document (click here) and prepare your 2–3-page paper related to the themes from the last retreat. This written reflection will form the basis of your sharing with community members over dinner. There is also a copy of the questions in your retreat folder.
Even if you are not handing in a paper for the certificate program, we would encourage you to write down a few of your reflections as a way of pulling your thoughts together in preparation for sharing with community members over dinner.
Small Groups
Your conversations on Sunday night at dinner will be significant
before we head into the content of the discernment retreat. It will be very helpful to process the past retreat so everyone in your group has some idea of what you have identified as your Enneagram number or at least the darker patterns God has been revealing to you. As I shared in our last retreat, the transformational journey is different for each Enneagram number and having this information about each other will help us be more effective spiritual companions. I will say more about this when we come together on the first night.
Spiritual Guidance heading into this retreat
Since the theme for this retreat is The Art and Practice of Spiritual Discernment, I encourage you to come with a real decision or question for discernment—large or small—that you're willing to work with while on retreat. This will ensure you actually begin practicing the principles of discernment rather than merely engaging the material in a theoretical fashion. Some of you are facing significant issues that require more than human wisdom; they require the wisdom of God that is given as pure gift. It takes courage to bring a significant question or decision into a discernment process, but I pray you will consider doing so.
Grace and peace,
