An Apprenticeship with Sorrow: A Weekend Retreat

Cultivating the skills of grief work is critical in these days of wild uncertainty and rampant loss. While the pandemic has quickened our awareness of the fragile threads that hold a culture together, it is only one of the pending threats that we must come to face. Social issues such as systemic racism and economic disparity, global concerns around climate catastrophe, all weigh on us, requiring a strong and urgent response. We need to fortify our inner and outer resources to not only weather the storms but be tempered by them as well. We do this work not solely for our own healing, but also to make us capable of responding to the critical needs of our times.

This weekend gathering will explore the elements each of us require to take up an Apprenticeship with Sorrow. It is through a prolonged intimacy with grief that we are ripened as human beings. Our work is to understand grief not only as an emotion, but also as a core faculty of being human, a profound capacity to metabolize sorrow into something nutrient-dense for the community. This apprenticeship is, at heart, about the crafting of elders capable of meeting the pain and suffering of the world with a dignified and robust bearing.

Grief and loss will be our constant companions. Staying open to these fierce guests enables us to also remain connected to joy and vitality. So much depends on these next decades and the upcoming generations. So much hinges on a heart enamored with the world. As Wendell Berry says, “It all turns on affection”.

Utilizing the potent tools of writing practice, small group work, meditation, and ritual, we will build a community of concerned hearts and coax our stories of loss and suffering into the visible world. Topics include: the ideology of individualism leading to feelings of separation and emptiness; the six elements in our apprenticeship with sorrow, how trauma and soul loss can be held; the Long Dark that invites our capacity for imagination and repair; and the role of love and power in ripening our intimacy with the living world.