PUBLIC TALK
Friday, May 26, 2023 at 7:00 pm PT Spirituality and Community in a Time of Loss
St. Andrew's United Church, 1044 St. George's Ave North Vancouver
Admission by donation
Douglas Christie will examine the place of darkness in our lives and ask what it can mean for us to enter and inhabit this vast space of unknowing and discover there not simply bewilderment but something Thomas Merton called "the hidden ground of love"
ONE-DAY RETREAT
Saturday, May 27, 2023 from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm PT The Desert Within
St. Andrew's United Church, 1044 St. George's Ave North Vancouver
Facilitated by Douglas Christie
Cost:$60
To register: contact Susan Cowan by email or call 604-988-8835
What does it mean to enter the desert? To seek "the desert within”, that vast open space the Christian mystics experienced at the very ground of the soul where the human person encounters the divine? This retreat will draw upon the image of the desert (long important to both Jewish and Christian religious identities and central to the Christian mystical tradition) to consider what it might mean for us to incorporate silence, stillness, and solitude into our own spiritual practices. And to ask how such practices can help us recover a sense of hope and meaning in a world that too often feels devoid of both.
Douglas E. Christie, Ph.D., is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles. A long-time Merton scholar, Doug's most recent book, The Insurmountable Darkness of Love: Mysticism, Loss and the Common Life (Oxford) was published in 2022. Doug is founding editor of the journal Spiritus.