Common Ground – Common Good: A Retreat About Literature and Spirituality

COMMON GROUND – COMMON GOOD

A Faith and Literature Retreat led by The Rt. Rev. Dr. Henry Parsley

Lent invites us to repent – to a change of heart and action. Nowhere does this call seem more urgent today than in our relationship with the earth and its creatures. Jurgen Moltmann has called this challenge “the ecological reformation of religion.” We must recover ancient faith and wisdom which see the earth as sacred gift and our human vocation as its stewards. It is literally in discovering  common ground that we find common good.

The retreat will explore literature that focuses on creation spirituality. Works of poetry, fiction, and science will help us look at questions such as how the Spirit speaks to us in and through nature…how ancient wisdom can help us engage the environmental crisis…how celebrating and stewarding the earth bring us closer to God.

Readings will include works by Annie Dillard, Philip Newell, Wendell Berry, Mary Oliver, O.E. Wilson, and others. Pre-reading will be announced in early January. Prayer and worship in the Celtic spirit will center our retreat.

Henry Parsley received his undergraduate education in English literature at the University of the South (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, 1970), and his Master of Divinity from The General Theological Seminary (1973). He has studied at Oxford University in the areas of spirituality and soteriology, and received honorary Doctor of Divinity degrees from both the University of the South (1998) and The General Theological Seminary (1998). Parsley is the retired 10th Bishop of Alabama and is a member of the St. Mary’s Sewanee board of trustees.