A Gathering of Women: The Gift of Years (Mondays)

During our lives, we come to moments that challenge our understandings of who we are and the many aspects of our lives. As women of faith, we frequently thought that through studying scriptures and practicing within a faith community, our lives would settle down at a certain point. Many of us remember our mid-life crises in our 30’s and 40’s that precipitated a major transition for us. We did our inner work and processing and moved into a new chapter. As we aged, we talked and walked with others and listened and grew and learned that doing our inner work is precious and priceless.

What is the wisdom that you have gained over the years that is guiding your life now, especially in your walk with God?

Are desiring to hear more and know how to process some new events in your life; or perhaps some losses you hadn’t anticipated?

If so, we hope you will join us this next year (September 2024-June 2025) for our monthly Monday evening Gathering of Women. Together we will explore and discuss Sister Joan Chittister’s wisdom in The Gift of Years: Growing Older Gracefully.

Rev. Lee A. Ireland will facilitate this opportunity ONLINE on the 3rd Mondays of every month from 7:00-9:00 pm eastern. She will also offer a second opportunity on 4th Saturdaysfrom 9:30-11:30 am eastern.

Cost: $159 for the series which includes 10 online monthly sessions. No part-time rates for participation are available.

FromThe Gift of Yearsby Joan Chittister
"The very act of reviewing one’s own values, then and now, stands as a marker for us all. It reminds us that it is possible to learn as we go through life. It is even more important to be open to doing it and willing to report it. Life grows us. Life shapes us. Life converts us. Life opens us as we age to think differently, even about ourselves. Whatever our physical age, we must go on dreaming of the desirable so that we can do our bit to make it happen. To simply withdraw from the arena of ideas, from public discourse on public issues, from the value formation of the young––to shrug our shoulders and say, “I don’t know” or, worse, “I don’t care about those things anymore” is to abandon the young to the mercy of their own ideas without the benefit of experience to guide them.  We must allow ourselves to dream about what life could really be like if enough of us demanded that it were. But to do that means to open for examination all the assumptions that have driven the world to this point. All of them.  In our dreams lies our unfinished work for the world. What we hope for is a guide to our present obligations to bring wisdom to the world. It is, of course, a wisdom derived from experience of all ilk: from our mistakes and our ideals, from our losses and our insights, from pain and from the little joys of our own past life and present situation."