When Your Soul Is Tired: An Advent Retreat at Brookland

Advent is a season of waiting, reflection, hope, and preparation. Yet for many people, the weeks leading up to Christmas can be anything but restful. The holidays can bring stress, loneliness, grief, family difficulties, and exhaustion.

When Your Soul Is Tired is an invitation to step away from the busyness of the season and make space for God.

This quiet Advent retreat at Brookland will create intentional space for prayer, silence, reflection, nature, fellowship, and simply resting. Rather than filling the weekend with activities and presentations, participants will be invited to slow down and embrace rest as a spiritual practice.

The retreat will center around five simple invitations:

Stop. Breathe. Pray. Rest. Wait.

Throughout the weekend, participants will have opportunities for Advent prayer, Scripture and reflection, prayerful walks through Brookland, personal quiet time, fellowship, and time around the fire.

The retreat will also include a gentle Blue Christmas service for those carrying grief, loss, loneliness, difficult circumstances, or simply a sense that Christmas does not feel joyful this year. Through Scripture, music, candle lighting, prayer, remembrance, and silence, the service will acknowledge that God meets us in our sadness, grief, and weariness.

A central element of the retreat will be “The Gift of Nothing”—intentional, unscheduled time when participants are invited to nap, read, journal, walk, pray, sit by the fire, or simply do nothing.

This is not wasted time. This is the retreat.

The weekend will conclude with a contemplative Advent Eucharist centered on hope, peace, and the presence of God with us.

Whether you are weary from the busyness of the season, carrying grief or loss, longing for quiet, or simply in need of a place to breathe, there is room for you at Brookland.

Registration will open soon at brooklandcenter.org.