Bethany Spring Newsletter

Retreat Descriptions

Retreat Presenters

Retreat Brochure

Register by calling the number listed below. Or register online. When registering online, Search: Bethany, click on "go," and choose your retreat.

To schedule a private retreat or a group retreat, contact Bethany Spring.

We look forward to having you with us!

502-899-1991
800-886-7275

Currently Scheduled Retreats:

Bridges to Contemplative Living Retreats: intimate, guided retreat experiences that include no more than twelve participants who share lunches and dinners in common. Retreatants are invited to participate in the prayers of the monks at the Abbey of Gethsemani located only one mile from Bethany Spring. No prior knowledge of Merton or the Bridges series is required for participation.

The Beauty Of A Faith: Based on a decade long study of theological aesthetics and her thesis, "The Beauty of a Faith", explores with retreatants what "beauty'"means in the context of our daily lives and a faith. Interwoven throughout the retreat is a personal story of conversion through discovering God's beauty; in relationships, nature, even within suffering. St. Augustine wrote of his yearning for God's beauty, "Late have I loved you beauty so ancient and new." We will explore this essential longing of the human spirit and look at what the mystics and saints (both ancient and modern day) had to say about contemplative prayer as a revelation of God's beauty. Come and discover hope and healing in your life through God's beauty. Retreat is directed by Debra Claussen.

Blessing the Circle: Circling the Blessing - An Irish Spirit Wheel is a tool for meeting and greeting our lives through hospitality (East) ... art (South) ancestors (West) ... shadows (North) ... The Irish Spirit Wheel is a tool to mark "the journey" to the center where all shall be one in God.
Just as in all our lives, in our humanness, we weave in and out & back and forth ... Each space is holy and sacred. Each space touches our psyche. Each space draws us toward deepening the blessing until we are one in BLESSING.

Christmas at Bethany Spring: This special Christmas Retreat is a contemplative experience featuring Thomas Merton’s writing for Christmas, especially from his personal journals. Participants will enjoy the Christmas Eve and Christmas liturgies at the Abbey of Gethsemani and will decorate Bethany Spring’s Christmas tree with handmade ornaments passed down through the thirty years of Bethany Spring’s existence as a retreat center.

The Contemplative Caregiver: Participants will explore contemplative living (living in relationship with self, God, others, and nature) as they reflect on the writings of Thomas Merton. This spiritual renewal retreat is designed for hospice staff and others providing end of life care. Individual spiritual direction and time for walks in the monastery woods and prayer services at the Abbey of Gethsemani are optional opportunities. No previous awareness of Merton or contemplative prayer is required. This retreat is limited to seven persons. Retreat is directed by David Hilton.

Contemplative Living: Mysticism and Nonviolence: "I am one with all these people. . . .They are walking around shining like the sun." Using this passage and others from Thomas Merton and Dorothee Soelle discover your inner contemplative and mystic. Reflect upon the ways that you are actively engaged and contemplative as you lead of life couched in a non-violent stance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Directed Retreat: This silent retreat includes daily forty-five minute, private meetings with a spiritual director while enjoying access to the prayer services at the Abbey of Gethsemani and to Bethany Spring's library for spiritual reading. Reverend David Hilton will serve as the retreat's director. He is a United Methodist minister of wide experience, including missionary service, for over forty years. He most recently ministers as a spiritual director to those suffering grave and terminal illness. He is a husband and father. The retreat is limited to only five participants.

Grief Walking: Few of us know what grief is for, or how heartache is a skill, or what dying asks of us, or who the dying and the dead should be to us. Based on Griefwalker, the extraordinary documentary portrait of Stephen Jenkinson and his work in the death trade, this retreat is an opportunity to create a contemplative conversation about our own death and the deaths of those we’ve known. Surrounded by the impermanent, natural beauty of Bethany Spring, we will talk out loud about something that is usually denied or avoided but that can be befriended and held as a prized possession. Stephen Jenkinson says: “You begin to be your life’s true friend when you glimpse its end. There is no doubt of it, that your ability to love being alive is born in the enduring and true grief of knowing the end of your life.” Retreat presented by Rusty Moe.

Holy Week at Bethany Spring: Rest in an atmosphere of silence from Wednesday night until late morning Easter Sunday. Participants have the opporutnity to attend prayer services at the Abbey of Gethsemani and spend time in silence and solitude.

Love and Contemplative Living: This contemplative dialogue retreat will focus on themes from Merton’s book Love and Living. Discover love as an experience that may shatter our delusions and offers opportunities, at its most graced heights, for creative, generative and compassionate suffering for and with our life’s beloveds. David Hilton hosts and facilitates the retreat.

New Year’s at Bethany Spring: This retreat ushers in the New Year and celebrates with gratitude the passing of the old with group and private prayer and liturgies for the turning of the year at the Abbey of Gethsemani.

Satori: Awakening The Inner Self is based on Thomas Merton's book, The Inner Experience, the program will help lead one into a contemplative place to realize that "I and the Lord are One." The program will give each participant the experience of going past our outer structure of self to find the place where God resides within each of us. This will be achieved through Sabbath walking, listening to the heart (soul) meditations and spiritual sharing within the group based on selected materials from Thomas Merton.

Thanksgiving at Bethany Spring: Enjoy a home-cooked Thanksgiving festival dinner andattend the holiday liturgies at the Abbey of Gethsemani. A limited retreat for eight persons. Sharon Grant will facilitate this retreat.

Thomas Merton & Mary Oliver: Poets of the Sacred: Thomas Merton and Mary Oliver are unique writers who resonate when they converge on aligning their lives with Wisdom in their poetry's approach to nature and the feminine. In addition to praying with the monks of Gethsemani, this retreat will celebrate with reflections on Hagia Sophia [Holy Wisdom] as the feminine energies of God (Merton) and Wisdom as living a life of praise within Nature's embrace (Oliver). Participants will discern their need to recover the "unheard feminine voice" within themselves, whether they be man or woman (Karl Stern's The Flight from Woman). Living in consonance with Wisdom's ways is foundational to experiencing the depths of our core relationships with ourselves, our neighbors, nature and the Source of all relationships, God. Each participant will receive Mary Oliver's latest volume of poetry Thirst. Rusty Moe guides the retreat.