…PCSF offers multiple opportunities for you to deepen your practice and find spiritual community.
Taster Days
Taster Days provide an opportunity to engage contemplative experiences with one or more leaders in a relatively brief amount of time. Recently, our Taster Days have been scheduled on Saturday mornings, two or three times a year. These events include the essence and method of a practice, experiencing the practice in silence, and then an opportunity to share.
Quiet Days & Retreats
In recent years, PCSF has offered 5-hour quiet days (short retreats) on Zoom (including a break for lunch) for Advent (December) and Lent (in the spring), as well as our long-running Buddhist-Christian retreat in person (early summer). Quiet days and retreats incorporate lots of time for silence and reflection, body prayer and movement, the arts, and sharing in community.
Contemplative Practice Groups
PCSF leads or sponsors regular contemplative practice groups to deepen your practice of contemplative prayer or meditation and to build contemplative community. Currently, PCSF offers two different practice groups.
Spiritual Direction
Here’s a definition we like from Spiritual Directors International (SDI), written by SDI member Marian Cowan:
“Spiritual direction is a time-honored term for a conversation, ordinarily between two persons, in which one person consults another, more spiritually experienced person about the ways in which God [or however one names the Divine, Holy or Universal] may be touching her or his life, directly or indirectly. In our postmodern age, many people dislike the term ‘spiritual direction’ because it sounds like one person giving directions, or orders, to another. They prefer ‘spiritual companionship,’ ‘tending the holy,’ or some other nomenclature. What we call it doesn’t make any real difference. The reality remains conversations about life in the light of faith… Although spiritual direction has had a burst of new life, it is really quite ancient. Across both the Hebrew and the Christian Scriptures, we find people seeking spiritual counsel. The Queen of Sheba sought out the wisdom of Solomon. Jesus gave us examples in his conversations with Nicodemus, with the woman at the well, in the ongoing formation of Peter and the other disciples. In the early church, people flocked to hermits in the desert for spiritual counsel. Across the centuries we find striking examples in some Irish monks, in some German Benedictine nuns, in Charles de Foucault, Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, Francis de Sales, and others. Today, spiritual directors come from many traditions … [including Judaism, Sufism, Buddhism and other faiths].“
PCSF offers opportunities to explore spiritual direction with individuals with whom you might resonate.