The Call of the Wilderness

Come the week after Easter to kneel, to walk and to pray the countryside of Big Bend National Park in southwest Texas. Place your feet solidly and firmly upon God’s wild earth. Take pause. Let the solitude and silence of the wilderness call you forward into the community of the resurrection as we begin the great fifty days of Easter.

This experience of rest and renewal begins Monday, April 9, 2012, at 4:00 p.m. and continues through Thursday, April 12, 2012, at noon. You will spend mornings in the wild of God’s good earth, enjoying hiking and high adventure along the Rio Grande canyons, including kayaking and rafting along the Rio Grande River.

Late each afternoon we will gather before dinner to relate wilderness discoveries with resurrection. Leading our discovery will be Belden Lane, author of The Solace of Fierce Landscapes. Lane writes, “There is an unaccountable solace that fierce landscapes offer to the soul. They heal, as well as mirror, the brokenness we find within.” Lane will help us explore how the wilderness can release us from the demands of the endlessly anxious ego, teach us to ignore the inessential in our own lives, and enable us to transcend the “false self ” that is ever-obsessed with managing impressions.

On Wednesday evening, participants will have the opportunity to attend an outdoor concert with Darrel Adams and Robert Post.

$125 program fee (covers program expenses and two box lunches; hotel accommodations, excursions, and other meals are on your own)

Historic Gage Hotel in Marathon, Texas, www.gagehotel.com

Book your hotel reservations directly with the Gage hotel. See attached sheet for additional hotel information.
 

Download the retreat brochure or contact Steve Graham, the Fellowship’s director of the Initiative for Ministerial Excellence, at (770) 220-1675 or sgraham@thefellowship.info, or Bo Prosser, the Fellowship’s coordinator of Congregational Formation, at (770) 220-1631 or bprosser@thefellowship.info.