Annual Symposium on Benedictine Spirituality

The Sixth Annual Symposium on Benedictine Spirituality will focus on creativity as a basic part of the Divine Nature and a defining characteristic of being human. While central to artistic expression, creativity is also critical in forming community, building fruitful relationships and shaping a nourishing experience of solitude.

Brother Mark Brown, our keynote speaker, is a monk, retreat leader, and priest, serving at the Society of Saint John the Evangelist in Cambridge, Massachusetts. “I would like to explore the origins of the creative impulse,” he says, “especially as it is expressed in the most ordinary ways in community, and along the way, offer a more expansive vision of the ‘grace upon grace’, as John 1 puts it.”

Expanding the discussion are two distinguished panelists:

Dr. Kathleen Henderson Staudt is a teacher, poet and spiritual director in the Washington, DC area. Her courses, offered at Wesley Theological Seminary and Virginia Theological Seminary, often focus on connections between literature, theology and spiritual practices. Her poetry, essays and reviews have appeared in Christianity and Literature, Cross Currents, Sewanee Theological Review, Living Prayer, The Anglican Theological Review, Ruminate, Spiritus, and Presence. She is the author of At the Turn of a Civilization: David Jones and Modern Poetics, as well as three volumes of poetry: Annunciations: Poems out of Scripture, Waving Back: Poems of Mothering Life, and Good Places.

Patricia Wudel since 1998 has been the Executive Director of Joseph’s House, which offers end-of life care and hospitality to homeless men and women with advanced HIV disease or terminal cancer. A graduate of the Metta Institute’s End-of-Life Practitioner Program, she is described by a colleague as knowing “the ability of beauty to heal all of us.”

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