Journaling: The Sanctuary of the Heart
With Cheryl Johnson and Tim Oberholzer
July 15 - 19, 2024
What is sacred space? How do you enter it? What are you being invited into? How will you greet the Divine shining through this transparent world?
The Center for Benedictine Life at the Monastery of St. Gertrude welcomes the monastery of your heart. Here, the quest within and the world without join hands. Prompts of the Spirit and their counterparts in key moments, find a voice in the sanctuary of your journal, the sanctuary of the heart. Journaling, Joan Chittister says, is an “x-ray of your soul.” It gets beneath our facades to the bone, blood, tissue, and the spiritual depths they house. Journals are intimate explorings of the pain and beauty hidden in our exterior and interior landscapes.
We will support your journaling these sacred landscapes with thoughtful prompts in morning sessions. Your afternoons are free and spacious. In the evenings we’ll gather to share what we have welcomed into our journal sanctuaries.
Leaders
Now that I’m retired from teaching, when someone asks, what do you do? I answer, Write, as a spiritual practice. The reaction is usually, Oh, you’re a writer then. Yes and no. I don’t write for tenure now, or my name in lights. I contemplate world and word, waiting for a spark to light and invite the experience of awakening. For me, writing seeks to engage a deeper current in life, not just the horizontal hubbub, but a vertical exchange that informs it even when the ember seems buried deep in ashes. I seek to honor the mystery of Creation,…
Learn more about Cheryl Johnson
Tim Oberholzer is Executive Director of the Center for Benedictine Life. In addition to managing the operations of the CBL, Tim facilitates in-person retreats and on-line programs. Tim also accompanies others as a spiritual director. Tim spent five and a half years as a Trappist monk at New Melleray Abbey in Peosta, Iowa. Deep prayer and reflection led him to leave the community prior to making solemn profession. He moved to Idaho to be closer to his parents, discovering the Monastery of St. Gertrude through a job posting for the innkeeper position at the Inn at St. Gertrude. Tim earned…
Learn more about Tim Oberholzer