Sign up to be the first to hear about future offerings or request a retreat for your community.
Upcoming Events
Register FOR STORYTELLING PARTY
This All Saints Day, a feast day within Ordinary Time, you are invited to a storytelling party where we will hear tales of people who have gone before us, impacting us in quiet and hidden ways. Participants are invited to offer a story of someone not famous or public, known only to you, who has made a mark in your life. We’ll gather at 7pm for a time of refreshments and mingling, and we’ll start our story sharing @7:20pm.
Who will tell stories? Anyone is welcome to sign up to share a story.
Do I have to tell a story to attend? Not at all. A story needs people to listen. Listeners are welcome to come and celebrate the stories offered.
Will everyone who signs up share their story? We will share as many stories as we have time for, but may not be able to offer everyone a slot. The first five people to sign up are guaranteed a slot.* We will draw names at random from everyone else who signs up.
How do I prepare? We will follow up with anyone who signs up to offer a story with storytelling tips & guidelines.
Light refreshments and drinks provided.
Co-sponsored by Tangible, The Church of the Advent, and Coracle. Ticket proceeds will be shared among the organizations.
What is a Storytelling Party?
Ever heard of the Moth? This mother of modern storytelling gatherings brings humans together to do what we’ve always done: share stories of who we are in community. Our party invites us to share stories of finding what matters most in our ordinary lives. We’ll have short open-mic slots for hopeful story-tellers to offer a snippet of their life. Unlike the Moth, no requirement to have stories memorized and any genre or format is welcome–this is a low stakes affair. You don’t have to attend a workshop or tell a story to come, but the more skin you have in the game, the more you’ll get out of it.
Who Should Attend?
Anyone who wants to practice paying attention to goodness in the ordinary, and sharing what they find. You don’t have to “be a writer” or even “creative,” just a human who wants to practice noticing and sharing. Workshops and party are family friendly events.
What is Ordinary Time?
Ordinary time in the Christian calendar is a time of steady growth, of allowing the ordinary routines of our life to shape the kind of person we are becoming. If you’ve never celebrated it, you’re not alone—it’s not a well-known season. But it’s the one we live most of our lives in, stretching on average half the year, from the North American late spring until Advent begins in late fall.
I think Ordinary Time holds vast unexplored riches. We don’t have to go anywhere or be anyone else, have or do anything special. We just have to open our eyes to pay attention to the things that matter most already waiting for us in our own ordinary lives.
To celebrate Ordinary Time this year, I am hosting a series of experiential storytelling workshops aimed at helping us pay attention, and when we find it, share. We will engage in ordinary activity from different spheres of life, reflect together on what we notice and where we see glimmers of the things that matter most hidden away in these ordinary acts. Then we’ll practice writing about what we notice and take time to share our reflections. These four workshops will run monthly from June to September, two virtual and three in person (one is a hybrid).
And then, the workshops will culminate in a party! In October, as Ordinary Time begins to wind down, we’ll gather to celebrate, to share aloud—in any genre or format—and bare witness to small stories of how we find what matters most in the ordinary of our own lives.
Come celebrate together!
Why Tell Ordinary Stories?
For the past decade, since my father’s death opened up space for big questions about what it means to live a good life, and even before that as a narrative non-fiction writer, telling stories about my daily life as an exchange student, or in my city-stories blog about daily life in New York City, I’ve been cultivating a discipline of paying attention to the everyday events and scenery of my life, noticing what is good, beautiful and true. By nature, I’m prone to all kinds of envy, from FOMO to wanderlust, to persistent grass is greener syndrome.
But this discipline has helped reshape my sense of what it means to lead a life well-lived. I’ve been amazed time and time again that the things that matter most don’t require me to have a different job or different family or go to some different place—they are present in the ordinary life I’m already living, when I pay attention. For me this discipline is intertwined with my Christian faith, and God’s varied goodness, beauty and truth is the treasure I find in the ordinary. I also believe this goodness, beauty and truth are available to anyone who is willing to seek it and pay attention, even if you do not know it to be a gift from or reflection of God.
Career Transitions Retreat
In this season of so much job-related change and uncertainty, many need space to work through what work looks like going forward, and sit with all the emotions this can generate. Co-facilitator Marlee Carlos of JourneyUp Solutions and I have created a retreat which can flex as whole or half day, and (Christian) faith-based or secular. We’ve hosted several iterations to date and looking to add more. Reach out to discuss a retreat for your community.
Past
RESERVOIR – DAY RETREAT FOR WOMEN IN MINISTRY
September 2025, Rock Creek Sanctuary: A day retreat for an intimate group of women clergy and spiritual leaders, making space to be filled, mind, body and soul. Co-facilitated with Bonni Mace of Empathetic Enneagram.
ORDINARY TIME EXPERIENTIAL STORYTELLING WORKSHOPS
Summer 2025, Rock Creek Sanctuary: A chance to practice actively engaging in an element of ordinary life, reflecting on what it held for you, writing a story of your own, then sharing and debriefing in a small group. Not writing coaching or teaching, just space for us to practice and learn from each other. Fun, weird, risky, insightful, and beautiful.
Career Transitions GUIDED SMALL GROUP RETREAT
Spring 2025, Rock Creek Sanctuary: A faith-based retreat providing space to look back, savor, grieve and let go, before moving towards imagining and designing a new future. Co-facilitated with JourneyUp Solutions.
Career Transitions – Private Retreat
Spring 2025, Rock Creek Sanctuary: A private, secular retreat providing a former leadership team space to savor, grieve and let go before moving towards imagining and designing a new future. Co-facilitated with JourneyUp Solutions.
La Sala Gatherings – Ojai
February 2025, Ojai, CA: A retreat for lawyers who want to unplug and connect with other lawyers that share their faith and who want to be a part of a deeper community to walk through career and life.
Church of the Advent Women’s Retreat
February 2025, Skycroft Conference Center, MD: Private church retreat for women.
Empty / Full / Overflowing
An Advent 2024 retreat
Advent 2024, Rock Creek Sanctuary: Time gathered at Rock Creek Sanctuary with a few other like-minded travelers, time to be alone with God, time to engage the ideas of empty / full / overflowing with different parts of your heart and mind, and a satisfying seasonal lunch.
+ Virtual Mini-Retreats
A non-interactive time of guided contemplative prayer.
Seasonal VIRTUAL LECTIO
