Sacred Ordinary Recap
I have a tattoo on the inside of my right bicep that says ‘follow your dreams’ in a banner across an old-school style looking compass. The tattoo, featuring classic shades of blue and red, framed by two yellow stars, has been on my arm for, if I remember correctly, around 17 or 18 years. This idea of ‘following your dreams’ can seem cliche and has often been viewed in a negative light in Christian circles. Framed as placing what we desire above what God’s plan, purpose, or desire for us, ‘following your dreams’ can be viewed as scandalous, immature, and downright irresponsible when ‘God’s plans for you are greater than you could ever imagine!’.
Needless to say, my lens of this phrase is different.
When I think of ‘following my dreams’, I am reminded of the act of co-creation.
I am reminded of the process of discovering who I was before the world told me who I should be– a coming back to who God made me to be.
I am reminded that our desires have roots somewhere… and that the root of desire is beauty and goodness.
I am reminded of the Spirit in me, guiding me, and as I learn to listen and trust, seeing dreams grow and shift and become bigger than I originally anticipated.
Sacred Ordinary was a ‘follow your dreams’ moment…
I remember attending a yoga festival and attending one of the Friday evening longer sessions that allowed us to dig in deeper than a 75 or 90 minute class with one of the guest teachers who came from out of town. During this workshop, where women were the focus, talking about cycles, of loving ourselves as a radical political act, as trusting our intuition, as noticing our own seasons as ones we see reflected in nature, I remember so clearly thinking, ‘This is what I want to do, but specifically for Christian women. This is so needed.’
I hadn’t even taken my first yoga teacher training yet.
Spiritual Direction wasn’t a thing I even knew about.
I had already taken my life coach training, which, looking back, I think allowed me the space to consider it would even be possible.
And yet, the desire seemed to bubble up from deep within me that this is what I want to do one day. A desire, that as I have grown over the last 7 years, it has continually been an undercurrent of everything I do, a desire that fuels every training I’ve taken, every offerings I put together.
When Kimee and I met at the beginning of March of this year, I wasn’t expecting Sacred Ordinary to be where our meeting would lead. I attended an event she hosted for Christ-centred yoga teachers in middle Tennessee and as we started to connect, we realized we had similar dreams to host retreats for women; to create intentional gatherings where they could settle into the contemplative space of not doing so they could begin learning to let themselves be loved by God, to notice the cycle of the seasons and lean into the rhythms of nature as they notice how these cycles and seasons are reflected in our own lives, and to see women feel supported and nourished by each other in a supportive and caring space.
Soon after that first meeting, we realized we had complementary strengths that could be brought together to bring you Sacred Ordinary…
Sacred Ordinary, a yoga and contemplation retreat, offered those who attended space to centre in Christ while grounding in nature. We leaned into both the church calendar and the season we find ourselves surrounded by in the natural world. In the church calendar, the end of August finds us in ‘ordinary time’; a space of time between celebrating the great mysteries of our faith like Easter and Advent where daily life and rhythms can naturally feel mundane and lack the wonder of faith that we often desire. The end of August also finds us in late summer, one of the five seasons in Chinese medicine, where we lean into care of the spleen and stomach, and intentionally connect with the Earth element.
As participants stepped out of their vehicles on Saturday morning, St.Mary’s Sewanee embraced them with rays of sunshine enveloping them, the sounds of nature singing them a song of welcome, and months of planning allowing each detail to be thought of and noticed as they found their way from parked cars to the McRae Room.
Abuzz with chatter, making coffee and tea, and snacking on freshly baked goods created just for them, we began with introductions around the room, then leaned into the intention of the day. We opened with an embodied moment of prayer to offer to God what might worry us and to imagine receiving from God what we need from the Divine to make this day what we crave, we acknowledged the complicated history of the land we found ourselves on marked by the Trail of Tears, we acknowledged the lineage of yoga, and we set our intention for the day of soul nourishment and spiritual formation.
As I reflect on leading the first session, a flood of emotion begins to swell and my eyes well up with water as a smile spreads across my face. Sharing a ‘soul care’ yoga practice with others was a gift as we worked through a morning Liturgy of the Ordinary practice, where, by the end of our time on our mats, we not only acknowledged how we would like to arrive to our day and wrote a prayer to express that desire to God that we attached to something we already do every single day, we also held space to engage in imaginative prayer (my favourite!). We imagined going about our morning and then the world standing still as we acknowledged God with us, and took time to do our morning prayer with God, imagining how God might receive that prayer, how God might want to respond. What a beautiful practice.
Straight into silence we went, allowing participants space to engage in any practices that nourished them in silence time with God. Kimee led a time of centering praying and I led a time of praying in colour.
Silence faded away as we gathered for a delicious lunch where chatter and laughter and story sharing erupted across the tables. The conversation cards we had intentionally brought in case people needed prompting for discussion was quickly discovered to not be needed at all– what a gift to see contagious smiles and natural curiosity for their fellow retreatants blossom.
Free Time was prompted with the question, “What would feel most soul nourishing for you here and now? What would feel most authentic to you, and bring you the most joy, knowing God takes joy in seeing you joyful?” From a laughter filled round of Simon Says where a brief introduction to the power of play and thriving as defined by playing, feeling and creating led way to a circle of silly moves, rolling down hills, and freedom of expression, to a natural bridge walk where connection with each other and nature was overflowing, free time gave space for everyone to do what felt best. Each person took agency for their time, checking in with their internal yes and no to connect back to their innate, God-given wisdom and intuition.
As Kimee began the tea ceremony, it was palpable to me as an onlooker that hearts were being opened in new ways. That as the intention of sipping a tea curated for the season of Late Summer, the stomach, and the spleen, just for our retreat in mugs with meaning was being had, Spirit was moving. Tears were shed as participants shared…
I often notice the words when people say they don’t know why they are crying. In spiritual direction, we learned a phrase; ‘follow the tears’. It invites us to explore where tears are coming, to not hold them back, but to perhaps explore them as a grace of Spirit. Tears being shed piqued my own curiosity and compassion as I took in the sacred space Kimee was curating for those in attendance.
As the Yin practice continued, as the music played, as people moved from one shape to the next, the complementary nature of our offerings emerged. My morning offering, more invigorating, invited energy to begin to flow from stagnant car sitting and opened people up to what the day may hold, getting things unstuck. The Yin as an afternoon practice allowed people to sit in what had been stirring for the day, letting it rise up and be acknowledged instead of being pushed away. An intentional pairing.
Participants engaged in a Prayer of Examen, then we took time to sit in a circle and share one thing that we want to take back home from our day; it could be something surprising we experienced, something we learned, a moment with God we want to remember, anything we want to take back with us and remember. Hearing the impact of the day from each woman was a gift. Hearing how it’s the small moments that settle deep into our hearts is inspiring. As we placed one palm over our hearts, and the other on the back of the person next to us, we breathed with our community. I read poetry. We prayed. Then an unexpected time of singing spurred forward… Each element has a sound associated with it. The sound of the Earth element, the element of Late Summer, is ‘singing’. To have song so naturally come forward felt like an affirmation of our leanings for our retreat… and guides us to do the same for the next one.
This was a big event.
The first since my dad passed.
The first in our new home country.
The first where I felt the overwhelming support of my friends that made me cry ugly tears as we closed the retreat.
The first where I got home and after taking a hot shower, bawled in the bathroom thinking of how I was doing it– I was following my dreams– the very thing that I remember my dad telling me he was proud of me for doing, yet not being able to call him up and tell him about it, even if the conversation would have been as simple as ‘I hosted a retreat with a friend and people really liked it’ and his response would have been, ‘that’s good’.
But perhaps what makes this retreat itself so special is because it is where I’m seeing a snippet of that 2017 desire brought forth from seemingly nowhere truly come to life. While other, smaller events in the past have done that too, this full-day retreat seems to spark something different inside. With all that the past year has been, with all the grief and change and challenge, this retreat felt like my own sacred moment of alignment, a whisper from Spirit to my soul, that this is all working out.
While Sacred Ordinary just happened a few weeks ago, we are already preparing for an Advent Yoga and Contemplation half-day retreat. During what is often the busiest season of the year, taking a few hours to get still, remember the presence of God, and lean into the seasons of Advent and Winter are a gift we can’t wait to share with you.
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to watch our retreat recap video :)
