About the Course
This Lenten Retreat will focus on the gospel text of John 11, in which Jesus’ friend Lazarus dies, is buried, but then raised to life again. We will reflect on the text together and let the themes touch on our own experiences: What feels entombed or closed off in each of us? Where and how might Jesus be calling us to “come out”? What stones need to be rolled away? Through scripture, a short meditative presentation, time to sit quietly with the questions that address our own lives, some prayerful participant interaction, and a simple ritual that will embody the “unbinding” Jesus invites, we will journey together through the story of Lent to Easter. This story of movement from death to new life is God’s perennial gift and calling. Join us for a few hours and renew your spirit.
As this retreat will include personal sharing from participants, access to the recording will only be sent to those who are able to participate in the retreat at the time it is offered.
Photo credit: Photo by Richard Gabriel Moritz on Unsplash
Your Instructor
Faith Nostbakken, PhD, DMin
Faith has been a spiritual director for over two decades and is part of the leadership team for the “Becoming Presence” faith formation and spiritual direction program through the Providence Renewal Centre (PRC, Edmonton, AB). She also co-leads the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises and offers other retreats and workshops through PRC and in other venues. Faith is an ordained deacon in the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Canada (ELCIC), playing a role in various ecumenical endeavours locally, provincially, and nationally. The author of books on Shakespeare with a PhD in English Literature and a love of writing poetry, she currently teaches creative writing at King’s University and courses on writing, rhetoric, and literature at Newman Theological College (Edmonton). She has an MTS (Newman Theological College) and a DMin (Lutheran Theological Seminary, Saskatoon). Living most of her adult life with chronic illness—its own “school of learning”—she has deep empathy for the challenges others face and a deep passion for attending to the meaning that can emerge around or through those challenges.
You can learn more about Faith at https://faithnostbakken.ca/