Birthday Celebration
We're looking forward to gathering around the table for a light lunch, sharing some birthday cake, celebrating our founder, Lil Smith, and giving thanks for the community that has grown around Retreat House over these past nine years.
Election Day Contemplation
Election Day can hold a lot.
Hope and uncertainty. Conviction and concern. A sense of possibility. Weariness from months of noise and conversation. Whatever we carry into the day, it can be easy to find ourselves caught in the constant movement of news, predictions, opinions, and waiting.
On Election Day, Retreat House will be open from 9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m. as a place to step away from the noise for a while and simply be present.
Supervision Retreat
Rooted & Resourced is a spacious day of supervision, reflection, and collegial connection for spiritual directors and others whose work involves listening deeply and accompanying others.
November Book Circle (On Zoom)
This November, the Retreat House Book Circle will gather around Writing Wild for a morning of thoughtful conversation, reflection, and connection. Our conversation will be led by author, publisher, and compassionate listener Gretchen Martens, offering us the unique opportunity to explore the book alongside its author.
Come having read the book and ready to bring whatever caught your attention—the passages that stayed with you, questions that emerged, places of resonance or resistance, and connections to your own experience.
Henri Nouwen Retreat
Inspired by Henri Nouwen's The Way of the Heart, we'll spend the morning exploring the practices of solitude, silence, and prayer through reflection, Centering Prayer, journaling, personal retreat time, and conversation.
Enneagram Workshop
Through teaching, conversation, guided reflection, and inquiry practice, we'll consider what our patterns have helped us build, what we may be ready to loosen our grip on, and how life's "falling" moments can become openings toward deeper wisdom and freedom.
New Year’s Special Vedic Fire Ceremony
Across spiritual traditions, fire has long been a symbol of transformation, purification, offering, and renewal.
Join Lavanga Schlette for an experience of the Vedic fire ceremony, an ancient practice rooted in the spiritual traditions of India. Traditionally offered in relationship with significant rhythms and transitions—from sunrise and sunset to lunar cycles and other celestial events—the ceremony creates an intentional space for prayer, reflection, gratitude, and peaceful change.
At the center of the practice is the kunda, a square vessel oriented toward the four directions. As the fire burns, offerings of grains, ghee, herbs, and seeds are placed into the flame while traditional mantras are repeated.
Together, we'll gather around the fire and experience this sacred practice as an invitation to release what we are ready to let go of, offer our intentions, and make room for peace, joy, and what may be emerging.
Whether the Vedic tradition is familiar to you or completely new, you are welcome to come with curiosity and experience a spiritual practice that has been shared across generations.
Vedic Fire Ceremony
Across spiritual traditions, fire has long been a symbol of transformation, purification, offering, and renewal.
Join Lavanga Schlette for an experience of the Vedic fire ceremony, an ancient practice rooted in the spiritual traditions of India. Traditionally offered in relationship with significant rhythms and transitions—from sunrise and sunset to lunar cycles and other celestial events—the ceremony creates an intentional space for prayer, reflection, gratitude, and peaceful change.
At the center of the practice is the kunda, a square vessel oriented toward the four directions. As the fire burns, offerings of grains, ghee, herbs, and seeds are placed into the flame while traditional mantras are repeated.
Together, we'll gather around the fire and experience this sacred practice as an invitation to release what we are ready to let go of, offer our intentions, and make room for peace, joy, and what may be emerging.
Whether the Vedic tradition is familiar to you or completely new, you are welcome to come with curiosity and experience a spiritual practice that has been shared across generations.
Emerge: A Group For Spiritual Directors
Whether you're newly trained, just beginning your practice, recently relocated to North Texas, or simply looking for a community of fellow practitioners, you're warmly invited to join us for the first EMERGE gathering.
October Book Circle
Join us for our October Retreat House Book Circle as we explore The Nature Fix together and consider our own relationships with nature. What restores us? Where do we experience connection and belonging? And how might intentionally spending time in the natural world become part of tending our inner lives?
Wild Spirituality Zoom Writing Session
This gathering is an invitation to slow down, listen, and explore what might emerge at the intersection of Earth, spirit, story, and self. Through gentle prompts and spacious writing time, we'll follow our curiosity and see where the wild invitation leads.
Arts & The Brain
Inspired by the bestselling book Your Brain on Art and other readings, this four-session series invites us to become curious about the relationship between art, the brain, and the inner life. Together, we'll explore emerging research around creativity, movement, symmetry, nature, awe, and wonder—and consider how these experiences can influence attention, memory, resilience, relationships, community, and our overall sense of well-being.
Wild Spirituality Zoom Writing Session
This gathering is an invitation to slow down, listen, and explore what might emerge at the intersection of Earth, spirit, story, and self. Through gentle prompts and spacious writing time, we'll follow our curiosity and see where the wild invitation leads.
PEC DFW Gathering
Post-Evangelical Collective DFW Gathering
Retreat House is pleased to host the Dallas–Fort Worth gathering of the Post-Evangelical Collective (PEC), a growing network that exists to connect, cultivate, and resource post-evangelical churches, leaders, and communities.
Rooted in the way of Jesus and committed to full inclusion, holistic justice, deep spiritual formation, and a gracious posture toward others, the Post-Evangelical Collective creates spaces for honest conversation, meaningful relationships, and faithful imagination.
This biannual regional gathering brings together pastors, ministry leaders, and practitioners from across North Texas for an evening of shared learning, reflection, and community.
The evening will feature artist, author, and speaker Scott Erickson (@scottthepainter), who will offer a presentation titled "A Hospitality to Paradox: Remembering Why We Have Said Yes to This Calling." Through story, art, and reflection, Scott will explore the tensions and invitations of ministry in today's world.
PEC Executive Director Keri Ladouceur will also guide participants in an embodied spiritual practice and share the ongoing vision and work of the Post-Evangelical Collective.
The gathering begins with a catered dinner, followed by contemplative practice, Scott's presentation, conversation, and time around the table together.
Whether you're a longtime member of the PEC community or exploring these conversations for the first time, you're invited to join us for an evening of connection, encouragement, and thoughtful engagement.
Event Schedule
5:00 p.m. — Catered Dinner
Embodied Spiritual Practice with Keri Ladouceur
Featured Presentation by Scott Erickson
Conversation & Q&A
Table Discussions
Retreat House is honored to partner with organizations that cultivate thoughtful leadership, spiritual formation, and meaningful community. We look forward to welcoming the Post-Evangelical Collective to our home.
The Sacred Feminine 4-week Small Group
Many people today sense that the world is asking something different of us. Beyond achievement, certainty, and constant striving, there is a growing longing for a way of living that is more grounded, connected, compassionate, and life-giving.
Mary Oliver Reflection Gathering
Join us for an online gathering as we reflect on the life and work of one of America's most beloved poets. Whether you've admired Mary Oliver's writing for years or are just beginning to discover her voice, this conversation offers an opportunity to slow down, share what resonates, and explore how her words continue to speak into our lives today.
Autumn Writing Retreat
Autumn invites us to slow down, let go, and listen for what is quietly taking root beneath the surface. Join us for a contemplative writing retreat as we welcome the changing season through reflection, journaling, and shared conversation. Together, we'll explore the invitations of this threshold with curiosity, creativity, and openness.
Sound Bath & Art Experience
Led by artist and Visual Energy Curator Krista Miller, this gentle evening is designed for anyone longing to reconnect with themselves, the sacred, and the rhythms of the natural world. No artistic experience is necessary - only a willingness to be present and curious. Together we'll explore how creativity can become a spiritual practice, helping us mark transitions with intention and openness.
A Threshold Retreat
Join Karen Hoffman and Sherry Ward for a contemplative day of reflection as we gather at this seasonal threshold. Together, we'll explore what we are being invited to release, what we are carrying into the months ahead, and how the rhythms of the natural world can guide our own inner lives.
North Texas Giving Day
Again and again, our community partners, spiritual directors, and facilitators tell us how meaningful Retreat House has become in their lives. They also share a common hope: that we might create more room for people to gather, learn, create, and grow together.
Family Forte
More information about Family Forte can be found here. Facilitated by Shazia Anwar and Lil Smith.
Writer's Gathering online
Have you considered sharing your writing more widely? This fall you have a special opportunity to submit your poetry, prose or any style of writing for our upcoming book entitled, House of Creativity. For more information, contact Gretchen.
Finding the Divine in Nature: Contemplative Prayer in Celtic Tradition
Were you with us during Wild Week, when we explored Finding the Divine in Nature? Do you feel moved by the power of nature and the writings of people like Ray Simpson and John O’Donohue? Are you curious about contemplative prayer and Celtic traditions?
Please join Sharon Hudak, spiritual director, for contemplative prayer in the tradition of Celtic spirituality, drawing on the writings of Ray Simpson, John O’Donahue, and others on the second Wednesdays of every month at 11:45 in St. John’s room, starting June 10.
Please reserve your space and stay for our Souper Lunch afterward.
