Programs

The Enneagram, September 12

The Enneagram is a powerful and dynamic system that gives insight into how the human personality can serve as a pathway for cooperation with grace that fulfills our God-given potential rather than limits us to self-serving or destructive patterns.

The Enneagram describes nine distinct and fundamentally different patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting. It tells what motivates us, what basic coping strategies we adopt to survive and thrive, and what causes our relationships to flourish or flounder. Each of the nine personality types also provides a specific path for personal development and enrichment, for discovering one’s own highest qualities and potentials.

Spirit in the Desert Retreat Center has established a relationship with the Arizona Enneagram Association to offer a full curriculum of Enneagram programs that include introductory classes, special workshops with renowned international teachers, and on-going work in small groups. All classes use the narrative inquiry method and a variety of exercises and practices designed to help participants develop their capacity for self-observation. This approach to understanding and exploring one’s Enneagram personality type uncovers one’s individual path of liberation from the habitual and limiting ways of the human condition, a path that leads toward personal integration, better relationships and spiritual freedom. Christians recognize and experience the following of such a path as their response to the indwelling presence of God’s grace leading them toward the freedom of redemption and the wholeness of salvation.

Our offerings begin in September 2009 with the Introduction to the Enneagram.

Introduction to the Enneagram
Carole Whittaker, PhD
Saturday, 9am-5pm
September, 2009
Tuition: $90, includes lunch, textbook and workbook materials

This foundation course and prerequisite for all of the continuing Enneagram programs provides a thorough foundation for understanding and working with the Enneagram system. It describes the nine personality types, how type is formed, the habits of emotion and thinking, and the avoidances, defense mechanisms and habits of attention that hold each type in place. Methods include teaching, exercises, and panel interviews. The Enneagram Discovery Inventory developed by Dr. David Daniels MD will be used to assist participants to identify their own Enneagram personality type.

Carole Whittaker, PhD, earned a doctorate in chemistry from UCLA and is an Enneagram Teacher in the Narrative Tradition certified through the Enneagram Professional Training Program with Helen Palmer and David Daniels. In addition to teaching the Enneagram since 1996, Carole has developed and coordinated the presentation of an extensive curriculum of Enneagram programs which help students understand and move beyond their personality type. Carole is an experienced educator currently specializing in adult spiritual formation.  Click here to register.

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DISCOVER YOUR CALL ~ DEPENDABLE STRENGTHS® in Your Congregation, January 25 - 27

Do you know folks asking the big questions—questions like “How do I know what I was created to be? Where are the places that I can make a difference in the world? Where can I experience a sense of belonging?”

“Discover Your Call” workshops use the Dependable Strengths® process to invite people to reflect on positive experiences from their lives, to tell their stories, and to discern together what God is calling them to be. Unlike most gifts-identification processes, “Discover Your Call” helps people to see how God calls them to ministry in their homes, communities, and workplaces, as well as in their congregations.

In this Train-the-Trainer course, you will learn how to lead “Discover Your Call” workshops in your own congregation. Combining brief lectures, individual exercises, and small group experiences, the course unfolds in two parts. In Part One, you will run through the workshop as a participant. Here you will learn to identify your unique pattern of dependable strengths and reflect on your own callings in daily life. In Part Two, you will learn how to plan for and teach “Discover Your Call” workshops for groups in your congregation.

Come and learn more about yourself and how to teach others to identify their core abilities, talents, and skills—their dependable strengths!

Seminar Leader: Sally Peters, Director, Center for Lifelong Learning, Luther Seminary

The class begins on the 25th at 8:00 a.m. and ends at 3:30 p.m. on the 27th.
Tuition: $250 plus lodging and meals.

We're offering a special lodging rate for this program - $50 per night per person for a solo room or $85 per night for a double occupancy room ($42.50 per person) Such a deal!!

Breakfast is $12, Lunch $14 and Dinner $16.

Registration Deadline January 9. Contact Hours: 20

(note—this is a partnership with the Center for Lifelong Learning at Luther Seminary, St. Paul, MN and Spirit in the Desert)

Click here to register for this event

Process Preaching Seminar, February 1 -3, 2010
Rev. Jerry Larson 

Process Preaching is a system for delivering sermons freely without reading a manuscript or simply speaking off the cuff. During the seminar preachers learn how to convert their written words to oral communication. This is done principally by learning a certain kind of oral rehearsal. Using this system, preachers are able to deliver their sermons freely using oral language to express the meaning and ideas of the written text.

Students are asked to bring with them a manuscript for a sermon on which they are currently working.

Jerry Larson, D.Min., Luther Seminary, was a parish pastor for 39 years. He retired in 2004 from Calvary Lutheran Church , Edina , Minn. , where he continues to serve as pastor emeritus. 

Begins at 1:30 on Monday – Concludes at 11 a.m. on Wednesday

Tuition is $195, plus lodging and meals. 

Lodging and meals: We’re offering a special lodging rate for this program - $55 per night per person for a solo room or $90 per night for a double occupancy room ($45.00 per person). Breakfast is $12, Lunch $14, Dinner $16.

This program is presented in partnership Kairos at Luther Seminary.

LUTHERHOSTEL 2010

March 7 - 12, 14 - 19

How Do You Spell Life?  … Abundant, Authentic, Eternal

Our discussion and reflections about community will be strongly influenced by the Gospel of John.  John has been called the gospel in which a child can wade and an elephant can swim. First time readers and life time scholars find Life in these waters. Here all manner of people--women and men, Jews, Samaritans, Romans and Greeks, the outsider, the insider, the dense, the dying, and the daring--are welcomed into a community of servant-friends whose home is in the heart of the Word made flesh. This community of the Beloved welcomes us to a vision of Life--authentic, abundant, and eternal--lived here and now for the sake of the world God so loves. 

Come to Spirit in the Desert and celebrate community.  In addition to the invigorating discussions with Susan, Mary Preus and Tom Witt will again share their musical gifts with us.

As always, there will be plenty of time for rest, play, excursions, museums, soaking in the hot tub, laughing and opportunities for conversation … in other words, building community.

Susan Briehl, a Lutheran pastor since 1981, has served as Director of Holden Village, a Lutheran center for renewal in the North Cascade Mountains of Washington State, campus pastor at Pacific Lutheran University, and pastor of Our Saviour's Lutheran in Bellingham, WA. Currently, she is a member of the Indiana-Kentucky Synod (ELCA), called to her work with the Valparaiso Project on the Education and Formation of People of Faith. She serves as the Distinguished Professor of the Art of Ministry at Wartburg Seminary, Dubuque, Iowa, where she teaches when they need her.

Susan's work includes a devotional book for families with children, Come Lord Jesus: Devotions for the Home (Augsburg Fortress, 1996), two chapters co-authored with her daughters in Way to Live: Christian Practices for Teens (Upper Room, 2002), and, with Marty Haugen, Turn My Heart: A Sacred Journey from Brokenness to Healing (GIA, 2003), a resource for those who are suffering. On Our Way: Christian Practices for Your Whole Life, a book for young adults will be published in January 2010 and a bible study of the Lent and Easter texts from the Fourth Gospel, That You May Have Life: Encountering Jesus in the Gospel of John  (GIA)

Her hymn texts include: "Holy God," "Bread of Life from Heaven," “By Your Hand”, "The Blameless Lamb" and “Once we Sang and Danced.” Susan and Marty Haugen have written Santo: A Bilingual Communion Rite (GIA 2002) and Unfailing Light: An Evening Setting for Holy Communion (GIA, 2004).

Mary Preus is a singer, song leader and choir director, currently directing music at Our Saviour’s Lutheran Church in Minneapolis. She presents and leads workshops on enlivening Christian worship, focusing on the role of the song leader. Mary is a co-founder of the group Bread for the Journey. She is the worship coordinator for the ecumenical Community of St. Martin, in Minneapolis, MN.

Tom Witt has been keyboardist, worship leader and song leader for a wide variety of Lutheran and ecumenical church events. He has expertise in worship planning and leads workshops on music, liturgy and contemporary society. Tom serves as a worship and music consultant for the ELCA's Division for Global Mission. He is a co-founder and currently serves as staff for Bread for the Journey, a musical and worship-leading ensemble. He has released a recording of his own instrumental improvisations on hymns in the Lutheran Book of Worship, entitled Dusting Off the Green Book.

Both Mary and Tom are part of a team of teachers, along with Marty Haugen, Susan Briehl and Dan Erlander, called Living Liturgy (www.livingliturgy.com), offering workshops on music and worship in the church. Their recordings with Bread for the Journey can be found at the website: www.bfjmusic.com.

The fee for Lutherhostel, which begins with dinner on Sunday evening and ends after lunch on Friday, is $600 per person and includes room (5 nights, double occupancy), all meals, all events and all field trip expenses. Space is limited so early registration is recommended. $350 Commuter Rate includes most meals.

Registration Deadline - February 25
$200 registration required


RETREAT TO THE DESERT . . 
. . . Whenever your need it most.
 

Come away to Spirit in the Desert for a one day or overnight individual retreat. You may come with your own prayer material and/or request spiritual direction.

The center's facilities are available to you:
• Swimming pool/spa
• labyrinth 
• chapel
• outdoor settings

Choose a date and time that works for you and check with us about availability. Have a couple of options in mind when you call or write in the event the center is full. 

Private Retreats
A private retreat gives you time away form the hustle and bustle of everyday life, time solitude, renewal and reflection. Bring your own material for reading, reflecting, or journaling. 

Directed Retreats

A directed retreat includes spiritual direction in your schedule, with a skilled director trained in assisting people in paying attention to the presence of God in their lives. 

One week’s notice is required to process requests for spiritual direction and overnight. 

If you have ideas for programs, please email or call Paul at the Center.

 

FEES & REGISTRATION: Registration is required for all Spirit in the Desert Programs. Full payment of program fees (& housing if appropriate), except for Lutherhostel are due at the time of registration. Our secure web credit card payment procedure is a handy way to pay your fee. You can also call us to make a credit card payment or you can send in a check. Registration is completed when payment is received.

CANCELLATIONS:
A full refund will be granted if Spirit in the Desert is notified of a cancellation in writing (email, fax or postal mail) at least 4 weeks prior to the event. If the cancellation is received less than 4 weeks prior to the event, 25% of the registration will be refunded or credited to a future event.

info@spiritinthedesert.org * 480.488.5218 * 480.488.5426 (fax)
P.O. Box 3254     7415 E. Elbow Bend     Carefree, AZ 85377