What might the natural world teach us about waiting, darkness, and the quiet beginnings of something new?
As we move through the Advent season, our December Book Circle will gather around All Creation Waits: The Advent Mystery of New Beginnings by Gayle Boss, a beautiful collection of reflections that invites us to encounter the wisdom of the natural world during the darkest season of the year.
Through the lives of 25 northern hemisphere animals, Boss explores the remarkable ways creatures prepare for and endure the winter months. From honeybees and porcupines to painted turtles, each story reveals something about the rhythms of rest, adaptation, patience, and renewal woven into creation.
Accompanied by original woodcut illustrations, these poetic reflections invite us to reconsider our own relationship with darkness and waiting. Rather than something to escape or overcome, perhaps the darker seasons of life can also become places where something new is quietly taking shape.
What might we learn from a world that knows how to wait?
Join us for a thoughtful conversation about the book and the invitations it offers for our own lives. Together, we'll explore the connections between nature, Advent, contemplation, and the mystery of new beginnings.
Please come having read the book and ready to participate in the conversation. Our Book Circle is less about analyzing a text or arriving at the right interpretation and more about allowing a book to open meaningful conversation about our lives and the world we share.
Grab a cup of coffee, find a comfortable place, and join us on Zoom from wherever you are.
About the Retreat House Book Circle
Throughout the year, our Book Circle gathers around writers and ideas that invite curiosity, reflection, and deeper engagement with the inner life and the world we share.
Recent selections have included works by Mary Oliver; J. Philip Newell's The Great Search; Robin Wall Kimmerer's The Serviceberry; Sharon Blackie's If Women Rose Rooted; Ilia Delio's Not Yet God; Zoë Schlanger's The Light Eaters; and Writing Wild.
Looking ahead to 2027, we'll continue exploring the intersections of spirituality, nature, creativity, and the human experience through books including The Spell of the Sensuous, Women Who Run with the Wolves, Finding the Mother Tree, and more.
Whether you've joined us for many of these conversations or this will be your first, you are welcome. Our Book Circle is a place to bring your curiosity, listen to different perspectives, and discover what becomes possible when we read and reflect together.
Please read the Retreat House Circle Guidelines before attending: CLICK HERE TO READ