You may be wondering, "What can I expect at a self-guided retreat?"
These are quickly becoming one of our favorite ways to offer prompts and reflections! These retreats provide a flexible window of time for you to engage in contemplative practices that align with your schedule, availability, and budget. With an intentionally affordable cost, you’ll receive thoughtfully crafted materials that you can take with you and continue to use in your daily life. Our goal is to make meaningful opportunities for connecting with God accessible to everyone.
At The Retreat House, we have designed stations set up throughout our space, inviting you to engage with your life and your relationship with God in holistic ways. We believe that our senses, emotions, stories, creativity, the Scriptures, time in nature, and much more are powerful avenues of connection—both with ourselves and with God.
Our self-guided retreats are infused with rich content, intentional care, and warm hospitality. We want you to experience, in a deeply personal way, that you are loved, seen, and cared for.
The stations hold opportunities for depth of experience while also being flexible. You are able to choose how much time to spend with each prompt, lingering at the ones that stir your soul and moving on when ready. You get the chance to experiment with practices that may be new to you, things like visio divina, somatic awareness, journaling, art, and more.
Almost like a buffet of ways to be contemplative—an invitation to discover what speaks to you most naturally. You can see how these experiences can enrich your journey of faith and self-awareness at your own pace and in your own way.
There is no teaching, meal, or fellowship, an introvert's dream. While you are here, a member of The Retreat House leadership team will be on-site to listen, answer questions, and offer support when needed. We want this type of retreat to give you freedom to let the Spirit guide you, inviting you to attend to whatever has been bubbling under the surface of your life but maybe has not had a chance to be fully felt.
Each time we offer a self-guided format they are focused around a theme with stations and prompts that invite you into a journey of reflection and connection. Last spring, we offered Stations of the Cross in this format, guiding participants through Jesus’ journey to the cross. We are excited to offer this again on April 18th this year.
Our most recent retreat, The Wintering Retreat, explored the season of winter in both its literal and metaphorical forms. For many, winter brings feelings of sadness, emptiness, or stagnation. We also experience “wintering” seasons in our lives—times when nothing seems to be blooming and everything feels dormant. This retreat provided a space to sit with the invitations of sorrow, stuckness, and letting go, while also exploring new perspectives and avenues for creativity.
One of our recent participants shared how powerful her experience was during the self-guided retreat. She found the flexible pace to be ideal, saying,
“There was a structure and something to do in the silence—like a starting place to focus your attention and give direction.”
We were moved by how meaningful these stations were in helping participants connect with God and themselves. That’s why we’re excited to offer them again on Wednesday, February 26th, from 9:30 AM to 2:30 PM.
Since the retreat is self-paced, the time needed will vary, but we recommend setting aside at least an hour and a half to journey through all the stations. Afterward, you are welcome to find a cozy spot at The Retreat House for further reflection or quiet space with the Lord.
Click here to sign up. Or feel free to email allison@bfrlocal.com with any questions.