Cheesemaking is the transformation of a simple, perishable, life giving product (milk) into a lasting product of continual sustenance. It also serves as a beautiful metaphor for community unity - many curds forming one.  Join Nikki in the kitchen where we will make fresh ricotta, and hand-pulled fresh mozzarella. We will finish our time together with a small cheese and wine pairing where we will connect with creation through the invitation of tasting and the stillness of savoring. 

Led by Wild Guide: Nikki Trzeciak

Step into a gentle walking meditation on the Retreat House labyrinth, where the simple act of moving slowly becomes an invitation to pay attention. In this morning experience, we’ll walk the labyrinth together at an unhurried pace, pausing at moments along the way to notice what the natural world is offering today—light and shadow, wind and birdsong, textures underfoot, seasonal colors, and the quiet details we often pass by.

This time and space is designed to support grounding, reflection, and presence. Rather than “getting somewhere,” we’ll practice noticing the journey itself—how the path curves, how our bodies respond, and what we sense internally as we listen outwardly. There will be brief guided prompts for attention and spacious silence for personal reflection.

What to expect:

- A short opening orientation and intention-setting

- A slow, mindful walk of the labyrinth with optional pauses

- Simple noticing prompts focused on nature and the senses

- A quiet closing moment to integrate what you observed

What to bring / wear:

Comfortable walking shoes and weather-appropriate clothing. You may also bring a journal if you’d like to capture reflections afterward.

All are welcome—no prior labyrinth experience needed.

Led by Wild Guide: Lil Smith

Step into a deeply restorative sound healing journey designed to calm the nervous system, release stored tension, and realign body, mind, and spirit. With over 16 years of pastoral leadership, Elise Renee Neal integrates sacred sound, intentional breath-work, and guided stillness to create a reverent and grounding healing environment. Using crystal singing bowls and resonant frequencies aligned with the body’s energy centers, this immersive session invites participants into deep relaxation and spiritual renewal.

As sound vibrations move through the body, many experience emotional release, clarity, and a profound sense of peace. This is a space where faith and frequency meet — where sound becomes prayer and restoration begins from within.

Come rest.

Come restore.

Come awaken your sacred frequency.

Led by Wild Guide: Elise Neal

Through a collection of value-inspired words, plus quotes, and thought-provoking prompts, we will explore words-that-matter to us as individuals, and draw on those words in a variety of activities.

Led by Wild Guide: Karen Hoffman

Elise Renee Neal is a seasoned spiritual leader with over 16 years of pastoral experience and a deep passion for sacred sound, vibrational healing, and embodied prayer. As the founder of Holy Vibration, she integrates Christian mysticism, chakra alignment, breath-work, and singing bowl frequencies to create transformative meditation experiences that are both grounding and spiritually expansive.

Her chakra meditations are designed to gently clear energetic blockages, restore inner harmony, and awaken your sacred frequency. Through guided visualization, intentional breath, and resonant sound, participants are invited into a space of healing, coherence, and divine connection. Elise creates environments that are safe, reverent, and empowering — where faith and frequency meet.

Come realign.

Come restore.

Come awaken.

Led by Wild Guide: Elise Neal

Wild Garden Meditation (at Retreat House)

Step outside the familiar edges of the domesticated garden and into a quieter, wilder kind of attention. In this guided, contemplative class, participants are invited to wander the grounds of Retreat House as though entering a living sanctuary—one where growth is untamed, beauty is imperfect, and every season has something to teach.

Together we’ll practice slow walking, spacious gazing, and simple sensory meditation: noticing the textures of bark and leaf, the hush between birdsong, the scent of soil, the way light moves across stone. With gentle prompts along the way, you’ll be encouraged to imagine the garden not as something to manage, but as a mirror—reflecting your own cycles of blooming, fading, resting, and renewing.

This is an invitation to release the impulse to prune and perfect. To set down what is controlled and curated. To let the wildness within you emerge—patient, honest, and alive.

Led by Wild Guide: Lil Smith

Did you know a teabag can become a fruitful art supply? The humble teabag will become a tool for creating beautiful paper and embellishments for the one-of-a-kind journal you will make. Journals will be made by repurposing, recycling and reusing shared materials. This is an invitation to give time to being artistic, because we all have a creative force that seeks expression. That sense of accomplishment and being in the creative flow that comes from making something with your own two hands is impossible to find on a store shelf.

Led by Wild Guide: Sandy Hammond

Join Ruth as we gather in the Kitchen to make two different kinds of bread, recognizing that just as the leaven fills and grows and changes the bread, the Holy Spirit fills our lives and we grow and change. We will enjoy our finished products.

Led by Wild Guide: Ruth Winkler

You know how to listen to your heart, but can you listen to the land? Do you know how to access the wisdom of Mother Earth? What if Mother Earth wants you to tell her story? Listening to the Earth is not mystical or abstract, it is relational. Writing kinship is practiced through intention, gratitude, and reciprocity. When we slow down long enough to notice wind, water, birdsong, shadow, and silence, we begin to sense that we are not observers of nature—we are participants in a living conversation.

In this experiential workshop, we will explore listening as both spiritual discipline andcreative practice. Through guided observation, contemplative writing prompts, and shared reflection, you will learn how to

• Cultivate deep ecological listening

• Write from a place of kinship rather than observation or separation

• Recognize the Earth as teacher, mirror, and companion

• Expand your sense of identity within the larger web of life

This workshop is not about producing perfect writing, it is about entering into relationship with the Earth. When we know how to listen, we remember we belong to the land, where we can thrive in constant communion with Mother Earth. And when we write from belonging, our words carry the weight of timeless wisdom. Bring a journal.

Led by Wild Guide: Gretchen Marten

Together we will experience two offerings from Michael Kenny:  TaKeTiNa and Health Rhythms.

TaKeTiNa is an experiential rhythm-based process for all the senses, developed in the 1970s by the Austrian musician and composer Reinhard Flatischler.

Michael Kenny is the only board certified music therapist in the US who is certified as a TaKeTiNa teacher, and the only TaKeTiNa teacher practicing between Atlanta and Santa Fe. 

As a group musical process, TaKeTiNa uses rhythm to develop human potential. It is a musical, meditative group process for people who enjoy music and want to develop personally as well as those who want to develop their awareness of rhythm. It is an effective tool in music education, and musicians and non-musicians of all levels can benefit from the process.

TaKeTiNa is a unique process of powerfully activating human and musical potential through rhythm. It is a path in which musical learning always goes hand in hand with personal development. The practice of TaKeTiNa Exercises are a powerful tool for developing left-right independence and coordination. As recent TaKeTiNa research shows, these exercises trigger an intense networking between the two brain hemispheres as well as significant activation of the vagus nerve. 

In this process, the simultaneity of stabilization and destabilization creates a field disturbance that allows participants to repeatedly fall out of, and then fall back into rhythm.  Participants are guided into the experience of rhythm archetypes, rhythmic images anchored deep in human consciousness, and the support of the group allows the individual participant to go into his or her own process, while building deep musical and personal trust.

HealthRhythms® -  is a research-based life enhancement tool that utilizes drumming to promote wellness. Michael is a certified HealthRhythms® facilitator.

HealthRhythms® Group Empowerment Drumming - is a fun, evidence-based whole person strategy which promotes socialization and ensures a healthy non-strenuous workout. On a deeper level it builds bridges while fostering nurturing, support, camaraderie, self-respect and respect for others. It is not really about drumming, but uses the drum as a tool for communication and personal expression. This system can be integrated as a therapeutic strategy in group counseling sessions, support groups, rehabilitation centers, schools, hospitals, aging facilities and more.

Led by Wild Guide: Michael Kenny

Together, we will first discuss the importance of self-care as a part of overall wellbeing; then we will work individually on some techniques and practices that are accessible within individualized work/play plans.

Led by Wild Guide: Karen Hoffman

Together we will experience two offerings from Michael Kenny:  TaKeTiNa and Health Rhythms.

TaKeTiNa is an experiential rhythm-based process for all the senses, developed in the 1970s by the Austrian musician and composer Reinhard Flatischler.

Michael Kenny is the only board certified music therapist in the US who is certified as a TaKeTiNa teacher, and the only TaKeTiNa teacher practicing between Atlanta and Santa Fe. 

As a group musical process, TaKeTiNa uses rhythm to develop human potential. It is a musical, meditative group process for people who enjoy music and want to develop personally as well as those who want to develop their awareness of rhythm. It is an effective tool in music education, and musicians and non-musicians of all levels can benefit from the process.

TaKeTiNa is a unique process of powerfully activating human and musical potential through rhythm. It is a path in which musical learning always goes hand in hand with personal development. The practice of TaKeTiNa Exercises are a powerful tool for developing left-right independence and coordination. As recent TaKeTiNa research shows, these exercises trigger an intense networking between the two brain hemispheres as well as significant activation of the vagus nerve. 

In this process, the simultaneity of stabilization and destabilization creates a field disturbance that allows participants to repeatedly fall out of, and then fall back into rhythm.  Participants are guided into the experience of rhythm archetypes, rhythmic images anchored deep in human consciousness, and the support of the group allows the individual participant to go into his or her own process, while building deep musical and personal trust.

HealthRhythms® -  is a research-based life enhancement tool that utilizes drumming to promote wellness. Michael is a certified HealthRhythms® facilitator.

HealthRhythms® Group Empowerment Drumming - is a fun, evidence-based whole person strategy which promotes socialization and ensures a healthy non-strenuous workout. On a deeper level it builds bridges while fostering nurturing, support, camaraderie, self-respect and respect for others. It is not really about drumming, but uses the drum as a tool for communication and personal expression. This system can be integrated as a therapeutic strategy in group counseling sessions, support groups, rehabilitation centers, schools, hospitals, aging facilities and more.

Led by Wild Guide: Michael Kenny

What can Mother Ocean teach us about brokenness and wholeness? How can she help us reconnect to our own strength and beauty? How can she help us reclaim our own internal rhythms? The ocean is the ancestral home of all life on Earth. She is vast, rhythmic, untamed. She holds both storm and stillness. Surface turbulence and deep calm. Erosion and renewal.

In this experiential workshop, we will connect with the ocean as teacher—exploring how her tides mirror our own cycles of grief, resilience, surrender, and return. Through guided reflection, embodied practice, storywork, and contemplative imagery, you will be invited to

• Reframe “brokenness” as part of a larger rhythm of transformation

• Remember that wholeness requires integration not perfection

• Reconnect with your inner depth and steady undercurrent

This is not a workshop about fixing what is fractured but a chance to discover the beauty in our imperfections. This is a time to stop and reclaim your own power of rhythm. This is an invitation to discover that you are never separate—for you always belong. . . . to the land and to the sea.

Come ready to listen, to breathe, and to remember the power of your own tides. Bring a journal.

Led by Wild Guide: Gretchen Marten

When you take a quick snapshot of a beautiful flower in bloom, you then can turn it into a beautiful abstract style art from with a bit of paint and a marker pen. You can combine a variety of flowers into a collage or focus on your favorites.  Come learn this simpler-than-it-looks technique using watercolors and Sharpie pens. The results are suitable for framing or keeping in your own art or nature journal. Anyone can do it. No experience needed. Supplies provided.  Limited to 10 participants.

Led by Wild Guide Karen Ebling

Offered in presentation format appropriate for participating in person or on Zoom, come listen to my stories of seeking and getting to know the local wildflowers. In the early 2000s, I set out to find, observe, research, catalog, and photograph every blooming plant species on our 160-acre piece of the Northeast Texas Blackland Prairie. Join the decade-long story of my journey, and find inspiration and energy for your own informed observations. 

Led by Wild Guide: Karen Ebling

Kirtan is a simple and joyful practice of coming together in meditative song. With gentle, repeated chants, the internal living energy that moves through nature, through one another, and through the heart. No musical experience is needed; the invitation is simply to listen, to breathe, and to join as you feel comfortable.

Through voice and shared presence, kirtan helps quiet the mind and awakens a feeling of connection - to each other and to the Divine. This is not a performance, but a shared experience. Together, we create a space of openness, where joy, reflection, and belonging can arise naturally. 

Led by Wild Guide: Lavanga Schlette

Join others as we explore the transformative possibilities of grateful living, and discover greater meaning, purpose, and joy in our lives. Grateful Gatherings will take place every month at Retreat House.

For more information about the monthly Grateful Gatherings click the link below.

https://www.retreathousecommunity.org/upcoming-events/gratefulness-gatherings-2

Led by Wild Guide: Richard Mickelson

A Wild Wander is a time of silence in a "wild" space focusing our attention on what we notice: see, hear, feel, experience. We will wander the nature preserve, find our own space for individual meditation and reflection then gather as a group to share our experiences. What are you sensing of the sacred in nature?

Led by Wild Guides: Clay Brantley & Regina Hunt

Join Tammy as she guides in an Eco-Spiritual Direction Circle for Spiritual Directors, Compassionate Listeners, and helping Professionals. Bring a favorite nature poem or writing. We will share questions and ideas about incorporating nature in our practice and self care.

Led by Wild Guide: Tammy Minuti

What does it mean to be an interdependent part of “all of creation? ”How does this relationship nurture belonging and Self-love? What shifts when love extends beyond humanity to the whole living world? To love all of creation is not sentimentality, it is a lived awareness. It is a sacred responsibility. The invitation is to remember that we are not separate from soil, water, wind, or wildness. The Earth lives in our bones as we live in hers.

In this writing workshop, we will explore love as an ecological and spiritual practice.Through guided writing, contemplative exercises, and conversation, you will be invited to

• Deepen your sense of belonging within the web of life

• Explore the connection between self-compassion and ecological care

• Reimagine love as reciprocity rather than possession

• Write from a place of reverence, gratitude, and interdependence

This workshop is not about producing perfect writing. It is about practicing attention as a form of devotion. When we write love for all of creation, we begin to live it. And in living it, we discover that the Earth’s flourishing and our own are inseparable.

Bring a journal.

Led by Wild Guide: Gretchen Martens

Karen Hoffman leads us in a two-hour workshop that will include several facets of Morning Altars, with a focus on using the gifts of nature when navigating a journey of grief and loss of any kind. Morning Altars is a seven-step creative expression that combines Creativity-Nature-Ritual in meaningful learning and beauty-making.

Led by Wild Guide: Karen Hoffman

Join Autumn and Tammy for a serene and enriching Tea Meditation Circle, a unique experience.
serene: calm, peaceful, and untroubled; tranquil
enriching:improve or enhance the quality or value of
 Experience the spiritual essence of tea in communinty.

Led by Wild Guides: M. Autumn Collins and Tammy Minuti

“I see Prophet Abraham's journey as one of the wildest forms of spirituality. His vision was far reaching, his travel far and wide . His wish for his progeny was to be in the service of God and fellow humans.” -Shazia Anwar

Led by Wild Guide: Shazia Anwar

Did you know a teabag can become a fruitful art supply? The humble teabag will become a tool for creating beautiful paper and embellishments for the one-of-a-kind journal you will make. Journals will be made by repurposing, recycling and reusing shared materials. This is an invitation to give time to being artistic, because we all have a creative force that seeks expression. That sense of accomplishment and being in the creative flow that comes from making something with your own two hands is impossible to find on a store shelf.

Led by Wild Guide: Sandy Hammond

Vedic Fire Ceremony (Agnihotra)

The Agnihotra is a sacred fire ceremony that invites us into a deeper relationship with the living world around us. With a meditative mind and an open heart, we chant sacred syllables and offer simple gifts from nature—grains, ghee, and wood—into the flame, honoring the seen and unseen forces that sustain life. Through this shared act, we practice gratitude, humility, and reverence for the mystery that moves through all things.

Fire has long been understood as a bridge between worlds—a way of releasing what we carry and returning it to its source. As the offerings are made, a space is created  there is space for reflection, prayer, and gentle presence. Nothing is required but openness and curiosity.

This ceremony takes place during an annual harmonious moment in the natural cycle, when the Sun in Aries and Moon in Taurus are at the points in the sky when they are the most powerful.  Also symbolizing the Divine Masculine (Sun) and Divine Feminine (Moon) this day is potent for setting intentions, reconnecting with inner clarity, letting go of obstacles, and to remember our place within the greater wholeness of creation.

Led by Wild Guide: Lavanga Schlette

Choose your own adventure is a time for discovery and reflection. There will be prompts that you may choose to adventure with, exploring your connection with nature.
Led by Wild Guide Gavin Cogburn