Welcome to the website for St. Clare Retreats-silent, contemplative, prayerful half-day and yearly weekend retreats.
At the St. Clare Retreat on April 3, we included a silent workshop and unique way to pray led by artist and writer Ellen Prewitt. Her recently published book, Making Crosses: A Creative Connection to God, provided text for our exercise as well as scripture related to Holy Week.
Sybil MacBeth wrote about Ellen’s book:
“Ellen Prewitt, author of Making Crosses: A Creative Connection to God, takes found and abandoned objects and turns them into crosses. In this loving, step-by-step invitation to join her, she turns her words of explanation into an experience of worship. The making of the crosses with their ‘discarded bits of brokenness’ become a physical way to offer our broken selves to the God who loves, redeems, and repairs us.”
As we struggled with sticks, glue, nails, tissue paper, fabric, twine and wire, we were reminded of our daily struggles and how, if approached prayerfully, can be worked out with God’s help.
Ellen reminded us that making a cross in this context is not an arts and crafts project; it is an occasion to pray in an unexpected way. Indeed, I was not expecting to receive such a blessing wrapping sticks together! Thank you Ellen! -Lisa McIndoo
NEXT HALF-DAY RETREATS: September 4th and October 2nd, 2009
NEXT WEEKEND RETREAT: October 23-25