The life of a parish pastor is complex and demanding. The day to day requirements of this work call for the dividing of our attention between multiple, high-level commitments—worship leadership, preaching, pastoral care, leadership of the congregation—all calling for different skills and a deep investment of personal care and attentiveness. Sustaining and enhancing this kind of attention requires skills that can be learned and a clear and well grounded sense of one’s self.

This enrichment program for parish leaders is designed to provide a careful, intensive, immersion in the practices of mindful awareness that can enhance one’s personal and vocational life. This personal and vocational enrichment program is intended to foster an extended period of practicing a careful listening to our own lives.

The Mindfulness in Parish Life program is intended to do just what the title suggests: build greater resilience and creativity through the cultivation of direct moment-to-moment awareness. By learning to pay close attention to what is actually happening at any given time in our bodies, our minds and in our lives, we become more open to the possibility and promise of each moment. Through the development of mindfulness meditation practice we nourish the deep capacities for attentiveness and awareness that we all possess. Greater awareness can then lead to more options in every moment: greater creativity, less reactivity and more freedom to choose how to live in each moment. And then the possibilities for our relationships, our preaching, our listening, our leading, our compassion are endless.

This program begins with a four-day retreat. This intensive retreat will focus on an introduction to and the development of mindfulness meditation practices. These practices will be set within the context of the Church’s eucharist and the historic practice of daily prayer. The retreat will be held at the Norbertine Center for Spirituality at St. Norbert Abbey in Green Bay, WI.

The second aspect of the program is an 8 week at-home period which will include guided instruction for the further development of mindfulness practice and weekly, on-line dialogue and feedback in order to provide the kind of support necessary to any new endeavor.

The Mindfulness in Parish Life program will be held in the Spring of 2011. Specific dates will be announced in the fall of 2010.

Any Questions

The Sabbath Project
Pastor Lee Goodwin
W2234 St. Hwy. 64
Marinette, WI  54143

715-732-0962
715-938-2443
sabbath.ngls@gmail.com