We all come from situations in life when we need someone to talk to. The reasons can be many. There may be questions about our work or mission, but also personal or existential issues that we need support and help to process in connection with life. Sometimes things rise up when we set time aside to be still.

Here at St Katharine’s we would like to offer you the chance to have a conversation with someone. This is not a counselling or therapeutic session but a chance to be listened to and should you like, have someone pray with you.

We are delighted to confirm our listeners for this retreat will be Mary Monfries and Chris Blakeley who are experienced Spiritual Directors and experienced retreat guides.

‘Let us go alone to a quiet place and rest for a while’ - Mark 6:31

When God invites us into an unknown place it takes courage to step away from the familiar busyness and demands of every day life. Come and join this residential retreat where we will reflect creatively on five spaces of our lives; lifestyle, soul, body, companions, voice. Step into the spaciousness and discover what the divine invitation reveals and yields for you, and us.

Grace Owen is a spiritual director, retreat leader and life writer. She offers 1-1 accompaniment to those who desire to mature in their relationship with God, while enabling the greater flourishing of people and planet through accelerating social justice impact. Grace has been developing global leaders for 25+ years including across Christian traditions. She is studying for an MA in Christian Spirituality at Sarum College, Salisbury. A British Ghanaian, living in London, Grace enjoys art, culture, heritage and music in her downtime.

This retreat is about helping you to more habitually find a place of calm within you that has you able to be less reactive and more aware of your choices in life.

Run over 2 days for small groups of up to 8 people and facilitated by 2 experienced coaches. It will give you the opportunity to find real space in your life, to reconnect to what really matters to you and equip you with simple everyday practices that help you strengthen and maintain and inner peace and stillness in the face of whatever life throws at you.

Chris has been pioneering the use of retreats and other ‘deeper learning’ practices to help people grow through transition for over 25 years. He is a qualified leadership coach, counsellor and spiritual director and also founded the Crossroads Retreats Charity and the leadership development consultancy, Waverley Learning.

Karen specialises in individual and group approaches that are designed to keep up with the complexities of the world and intensity of change experienced today, where a deeper level of awareness is needed. She is a certified integral coach and mindfulness practitioner and is also Director of Leadership Coaching & Development at Waverley Learning.

“Stand at the crossroads and look. Look for the ancient paths. Ask where the good way is and walk in it and you will find rest for your soul.”

Run over 2 days for small groups of up to 8 people and facilitated by 2 experienced coaches, this retreat provides a unique space for people at a crossroads in life to pause, step back and reflect on where they are, the questions they find themselves in, what they really want and how to take steps forward. The crossroads could be vocational, such as a career change, or relational, such as divorce or separation. It could be a significant interruption in life from a change of circumstances or health, or simply a sense of wanting something different from life.

A residential retreat following a visit to the National Gallery

For centuries, art was one of the principal ways people learnt about Christianity, Bible stories, doctrine, and the practice of prayer. Most of us now experience it in a very different setting of public museums and art galleries. Can it once again form a part of our spiritual learning and life?

This retreat will include a visit to the National Gallery to take a contemplative look at some masterpieces of Christian art and consider how looking at particular artists' visions might challenge or refresh our sense of the familiar. We'll also consider how looking at paintings might play a part in our devotional and prayer life.

Elizabeth is Head of Adult Leaning at St Paul's Cathedral, running the Cathedral's theology and spiritual formation programme. An art historian by training, she worked for many years in museums and galleries in London before joining St Paul's Cathedral.

You wake in my heart
An Advent retreat on letting go to God
with Christopher Chapman.

The season of Advent invites us to make room for God. As God awakes within, we begin to wake into the fullness of our being. In meeting our longing, we encounter the God who is always longing for us. Our emptiness becomes the place of God’s indwelling. Through the writings of the prophets, the work of poets across time and the wisdom of the spiritual guide John of the Cross we will explore this Advent awakening.

Christopher Chapman is an experienced spiritual director and retreat giver. He is an associate tutor at St. Augustine’s College of Theology and a guest director at St. Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre. His most recent book, Doorways to Hope: 40 days of spiritual wisdom, explores the landscape of hope in a challenging world.