Advent six-day silent retreat: 21-26 November - led by Dr Mark S. Burrows Ph.D.  Beginning Friday 21 November at 4pm, and finishing at 2pm on Wednesday 26 November. Cost TBA.

 Holy Cross Centre, 207 Serpells Road, Templestowe.

“And the song remains beautiful”: The HeartWork of Love in Turbulent Times

 This contemplative retreat, which Mark also led at Bonnevaux last year, draws on the witness of those who glimpse the “whole” in the tumble of this fragmented and broken world. We’ll explore what it means to risk living into wholeness amid the turmoil of our times. Our guides: Hildegard, Meister Eckhart, and Julian of Norwich from the Middle Ages; Rainer Maria Rilke, Hilde Domin, Rosemerry Trommer and others among the moderns.

 What joins such varied voices is their conviction that “when we awaken to the call of beauty, we become aware of new ways of being in the world,” as poet John O’Donohue once put it. Despite the turbulence in our world and the fragmentation in our lives, “the song remains. . .beautiful”, Rilke wrote. Discover what Rilke called the “heartwork” that grounds us in “the Whole”, in such unsettling times.