Hybrid: Cinema Divina Overnight - Slowing Down

With M Freeman In-person and via Zoom

Scheduled gatherings:
Saturday May 4 | 3:00-4:15pm | Opening Gathering, Intros & Guided Meditation
Saturday May 4 | 6:00-7:30pm | Cinema Divina Contemplative Screening
Sunday May 5 | 10:00-11:15am | Closing Insights, Wishes & Intentions

Surviving pandemic isolation unleashed a whole lot of traveling for many of us. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg in terms of how social and outward-oriented life has turned. Meanwhile, I wonder how many are noticing what I’m noticing: A longing to turn more attention inward, to nurturing the interior life. I’m beginning again with slowing down, stillness, listening, silence, and savoring home and neighborhood—ways of nurturing a kind of contemplative spaciousness.  I invite you to slow down and engage hearts and minds in an embodied mystical realm through this Cinema Divina Overnight program, centered around a contemplative screening ritual on Saturday evening with a new Cinema Divina film made for this occasion through contemplative practice. Throughout the screening process, I will guide participants into reverent silences, writing, reflections, and deeper listening to the boundless wisdom that connects us all.

Two additional communal gatherings (Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning) will bookend our overnight, gentle times set aside for group sharing, connecting, and cherishing collectively the transporting benefit of communal contemplative practice.  In between gathering times, whether at home or the spirituality center, participants are invited to do as they choose while listening with the ear of their heart (as St. Benedict urges) for what the Sufi poet and mystic, Rumi, would call, ‘guides and messages from beyond’. -by M Freeman

All are welcome, seasoned contemplatives as well as beginners.