A Deeper Life
All Saints Contemplative Conference
Friday, October 24
6:30 to 9:00 pm
Saturday, October 25
8:00 am to 3:00 pm
Cost: $50/person or $80/couple.
A deeper life with God? What is it? More importantly, how does it happen? For many of us, these questions resonate with something deep inside us. Yet there’s no standard, one-size-fits-all answer because God’s invitation to deepening intimacy is custom-made for each of us. It involves learning to identify the Voice of Love speaking uniquely to us in outer events and inner movements. Responding to God’s invitation to go deeper is often called a journey because it involves movement, change, and time. It’s an inward journey simply because it entails observation and reflection of our whole person.
Christian wisdom from the early Desert Fathers to Ignatius of Loyola commends this wondering observation of ourselves and calls it discernment. In noticing how we react, in naming the feelings that arise and the actions that result, we gain greater self-knowledge. We are invited to a growing honesty about where we find ourselves now so we can discover the connections that exist with God in our present reality rather than those we hope for in an aspired-to version of ourselves.
The degree to which we pin our hopes on living up to our ideas about ourselves is the degree to which we live at a distance from our true selves. The transformative journey leads us closer to our true self in God. That means seeing how God expresses his life in us through the things we love to do that enrich life for ourselves and others. It also means recognizing that much of what we count on to give us meaning, success, and identity will ultimately disappoint. Thomas Merton says that God must draw up our true inner self “like a jewel from the bottom of the sea, rescued from confusion, from indistinction, from... the trivial...the evanescent.”
Guest facilitator, Renee Farkas
He says that our vocation is to “work together with God in the creation of our own life, our identity... It demands close attention to reality at every moment, and great fidelity to God as He reveals Himself obscurely in the mystery of each new situation. We do not know clearly beforehand what the result of this work will be.” This means we are invited to bring openness, consent, and trust to the divine initiatives embedded in daily experience and relationships. By becoming more attuned to the Love that holds us in existence, we are more able to release attitudes and behaviors that impede the selfless donation of our lives to God and others.
All Saints’ Fall Contemplative Conference will focus on developing greater attention to this inner Voice of Love. Renee Farkas, a Nashville-based spiritual director with twenty years of experience, will again facilitate our sleep-at-home retreat through plenary sessions, individual reflection, small group conversation, and structured times of silence.