How the Light Gets In Retreat

How the Light Gets In:
Wisdom for Flourishing in Our Broken World Retreat

Thursday Jan 18, 6:30 PM through Sunday Jan 21, 3 PM (2024) (CT)
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Our lives are made for thriving, but our circumstances often work against this. To flourish calls for radical wisdom, the sort that “re-minds” us of who we are. Can you imagine how light might shine “out of the darkness?” How do we come to glimpse the inner radiance we (and others) carry in our brokenness? What might this wisdom mean for how we learn to flourish from day to day, given the anguish and suffering that define our times?

We’ll explore two medieval visionaries—Meister Eckhart and Julian of Norwich—who help us understand how the “cracks” open us to an inner radiance. And we’ll draw on a chorus of contemporary poets to elucidate that wisdom, including Rainer Maria Rilke, Rosemerry Trommer, Wendell Berry, and Julia B. Levine. We’ll also draw on the musical and visual arts to help us open ourselves to the power of that inner light which “the darkness [has] not overcome.”

There are an overnight, commuter and Zoom options.

Registrants will receive Zoom sign-in information via email
upon registration + a reminder the day before the program.

Facilitator: Mark Burrows

Mark Burrows is well-known at The Well for programs he has offered over the last decade. Teacher and scholar, poet and translator of German poetry, his work explores the field of Christian spirituality and connects the ancient wisdom of the mystics with modern life. Ordained in the United Church of Christ (USA), he taught in several divinity schools in the US and Germany before turning his focus entirely to writing and retreat leadership in 2020. Recent books include The Wandering Radiance: Selected Poems of Hilde Domin (2023), and, with Jon M. Sweeney, Meister Eckhart’s Book of Darkness and Light: Meditations on the Path of the Wayless Way (2023).