Introducing the "Busy Person's Retreat: Rooting in the Holy," November 2nd through 16th, 2025.

The video above just begins to tell the story of this unique retreat experience that we are offering for busy people of West Michigan this coming November. Last year our Busy Person's Retreat: "Making a Space for God in Everyday Life" introduced 32 participants to several tools of the Spiritual life, including communal meetings, innovative daily prayer practices, and experiences of one-on-one spiritual guidance with one of our 20 Spiritual Directors.

This year my retreat team and I would like to offer this retreat for 50 participants, accompanied by 25 Spiritual Directors for individual guidance. Will you help us make this retreat possible?

If you donated last year, I am grateful for your help in offering this retreat, and I ask you to consider helping again this year.

If you were a retreat participant last year, and received benefit, I encourage you to help "pay it forward" for this year's participants.

I also invite you to participate this year in this newly designed retreat, and invite a busy person you know that may benefit from this retreat.

Background Information:

The image for our reflection this year is a well-rooted tree that reaches down to the life-giving water and up to the heavens. Such a tree has the resilience to weather times of drought and sway in the winds of adversity without breaking. Just like that tree, we are most resilient and productive in life when we are rooted in the Holy presence of God and nurtured by the "ever ancient and ever new" time-tested prayer experiences of our tradition.

In November 2025 we will explore what might root you in the deep peace of God's holiness so that you can be strengthened, focused, and fruitful in your daily life.

What is entailed for participants?:

You can expect to commit to three 2-hour gatherings where we learn and practice on Sunday afternoons, two 1-hour individual sessions with a Spiritual Director at times that work with your schedule during the first two weeks of November, and between 10 minutes and half an hour each day to try some of the spiritual practices and prayer. In all spaces, we will practice reflective listening so that we can hear the whispers of God within our lives.

For those who attended in 2024, this is a new offering, so join us! Each of the Spiritual Guides is a fully Certified, Supervised and Confidential Spiritual Director, trained in the discernment practices of Ignatius of Loyola and nourished by the mendicant tradition of Saint Dominic. Participants will have 2 individual meetings, a week apart, with their Spiritual Director.

Will you help me and my hand-picked team of spiritual leaders make this second annual retreat for the people of West Michigan become a reality?

How will we put your donation to work?

The overall budget is $6,000. Most of this is for the stipends of the Spiritual Directors (who will each receive a professional fee of $200). The participants' fees will cover half of this amount.

So our fund-raising goal is $3,000. I have personally donated $500 as seed money. Now I need your help in raising the remaining $2,500. I am looking for someone to put up a matching grant of $500. Then I am inviting donations of $250, $100, and $50.

More than anything, I want YOUR participation at whatever level you can. If we raise more than $3,000 this year, the surplus will be seed money for next years Busy Person's Retreat. Thank you! Fr. Bill

Background Information for Fr. Bill Edens:

In May of 2023 I achieved certification as a Spiritual Director through the 3-year Ignatian Internship in the "Ministry of Listening" offered by Manresa Jesuit Retreat Center in Bloomfield Hills, MI (north of Detroit). I now collaborate with the Dominican Sisters of Marywood in Grand Rapids who have produced about 60 Spiritual Directors through their internship program, who are active in West Michigan.

For many people there is a hunger to spend a week or a weekend in a spiritual place to relax and refocus their lives. However, many people are too busy with making ends meet, taking care of their families, preparing for their professions, keeping life organized to get away on a retreat. Thus, the Busy Persons' Retreat.

This 2-week retreat experience will include all-group sessions on Sunday November 2nd, 9th, and 16th.

The participants (also called "Directees") are encouraged to spend 10 to 30 minutes each day in directed prayer and reading, and meet twice (once each week) with a Spiritual Director, either in person or by zoom.