Vulnerability and Cruciformity: Opening Hearts with Resurrection Joy

Program Details

As we continue our 2025-2026 theme of "Seeing Holy Presence," our spring Eastertide series focuses on celebrating new life and living our best spiritual lives.

We live in a hurried, polarized, and fearful time. Our natural instinct is to react with hardness, protection, and isolation. Yet, both modern psychology and sound Christian theology beckon us to do the opposite: live life with arms wide open. As Brené Brown would say, "Live vulnerably." Let your life be cruciform: taking the very shape of Jesus' own life and even his cross and resurrection.

Join Dr. Elizabeth Woodard, Ph.D., Catholic theologian and spiritual director, for a post-Easter Day Apart retreat that will focus on how to live with open hearts during a time such as this. We will investigate vulnerability as it is presented in the work of psychological researcher Dr. Brene Brown, and we will investigate cruciformity as it is presented in the Christian theological tradition. These two, very different scholastic approaches seem to call us to quite similar ends.

Discover the joy of the Easter season at Rolling Ridge.

Cost: $92 (includes program from 9:30-3:30, pastries and lunch)

About the Leaders

Elizabeth Woodard

Dr. Elizabeth Woodard is a unity hopeful; her ministry is focused on healing the divisions that exist among Christians, between humans and God, and within ourselves. She is a lay Catholic theologian and spiritual director. She holds a Ph.D. in systematic theology from the Catholic University of America as well as a Master of Sacred Music and Master of Divinity from Boston University. She is the author of Cruciform Ecumenism: The Intersection of Ecclesiology, Episcopacy, and Apostolicity from a Catholic Perspective. Her writing, as well as information about meeting one-on-one with her as a spiritual director or hiring her to speak at your parish, can be found at unityhopeful.com. She is the pastoral associate at Sacred Hearts Parish in Bradford and also a sacred musician, composing liturgical music and serving as the director of the Regis College Alumni Chorus.