An Immersion in Spiritual Practices
for Encountering God through the Natural World
for Encountering God through the Natural World
September 14-16, 2018
Wesley Forest UM Camp and Retreat Center, Weikert, PA
Leader: Rev. Beth Jones
Pastor and Certified Nature and Forest Therapy Guide
Register Today: www.susumcamps.org
Cost including retreat program, meals, and lodging - $110.00
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| Rev. Beth Jones - retreat leader |
Christianity has deep scriptural traditions and spiritual practices rooted in the Creator being revealed and speaking through creation, which finds resonance in other faith traditions too.
Come explore and experience pathways of discipleship in the beauty of nature. Build friendships and connect with others who have a heart for God and love for the natural world. Give yourself, or a friend, the gift of a pause from the rigors and routines of life for renewal and restoration of your soul.
You will be invited to experience the outdoors through various guided activities, interspersed with scripture, conversation, and times of silence. There will be plenty of time to relax on your own to read, walk, chat with others around the campfire, or just take a nap!
In nature as in our own lives, we go through seasons that bring forth important dimensions of wholeness of living. There are times to release, to receive, to renew, and to respond creatively. Come explore these rhythms of the spiritual life.
May these voices of faith encourage you to take part in this special opportunity. See you there!
Voices from Christian Tradition
Some people, in order to discover God, read books. But there is a great book: the very appearance of created things. Look above you! Look below you! Read it. God, whom you want to discover, never wrote that book with ink.
Instead He set before your eyes the things that He had made. Can you ask for a louder voice than that? — St. Augustine (354-430AD)
Christ wears “two shoes” in the world: Scripture and nature. Both are necessary to understand the Lord, and at no stage can creation be seen as a separation of things from God. — John Scottus Eriugena (810-877AD)
If I spend enough time with the tiniest creature—even a caterpillar—I would never have to prepare a sermon. So full of God is every creature.” — Meister Eckhart (1260-1327AD)
God writes the Gospel, not in the Bible alone, but also on trees, and in the flowers and clouds and stars. — Martin Luther (1483-1546AD)
If we learn to love the earth, we will find labyrinths, gardens, fountains and precious jewels! A whole new world will open itself to us. We will discover what it means to be truly alive. — St. Teresa of Avila (1515-1582AD)
But the great lesson which our blessed Lord inculcates here, and which he illustrates by this example, is, that God is in all things, and that we are to see the Creator in the glass of every creature; that we should use and look upon nothing as separate from God… but, with a true magnificence of thought, survey heaven and earth, and all that is therein, as contained by God in the hollow of his hand, who by his intimate presence holds them all in being, who pervades and actuates the whole created frame, and is, in a true sense, the soul of universe. — John Wesley Sermon 23: Upon Our Lord’s Sermon on the Mount (1703-1791)
Voices from Scripture
In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth…God saw everything that he had made, and indeed, it was very good. — Genesis 1:1, 31
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it… And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a parent’s only son, full of grace and truth. — John1:1-5, 14
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. Ever since the creation of the world his eternal power and divine nature, invisible though they are, have been understood and seen through the things he has made. — Romans 1:19-20
The heavens are telling the glory of God; and the firmament proclaims his handiwork. Day to day pours forth speech, and night to night declares knowledge. — Psalm 19:1-2
God gave Solomon very great wisdom, discernment, and breadth of understanding as vast as the sand on the seashore… his fame spread throughout all the surrounding nations. He composed three thousand proverbs, and his songs numbered a thousand and five. He would speak of trees, from the cedar that is in the Lebanon to the hyssop that grows in the wall; he would speak of animals, and birds, and reptiles, and fish. People came from all the nations to hear the wisdom of Solomon; they came from all the kings of the earth who had heard of his wisdom. —1 Kings 4:29-34
