TH & Laity Lodge

Theological Horizons has a special friendship with the unique, ecumenical hidden paradise that is Laity Lodge, nestled along the Frio River in the hill country of Texas; both Karen and Christy have been invited there twice to share their speaking & artistic gifts. Karen has been the featured speaker for two of their annual women’s retreats sharing from her two books. Christy has been twice as the artist-in-residence to offer art workshops.

This past April, Christy was invited to a retreat for pastors with Winn Collier (author, Director of the Eugene Peterson Center for Christian Imagination, & Episcopal priest) and Kathleen Norris (author & poet). Christy led an exploratory abstract art workshop using homemade egg tempera.

The prompt for the retreat was belovedness. Explains Collier, “At his baptism, the Father spoke tender, thundering words over Jesus: you are my beloved. These are the first words we all must hear from the Father, the first words giving us our place in the world, our vocation. What followed, though, was the Spirit leading Jesus into the Wilderness for those grueling weeks of temptation—temptations to grab power and abandon his humanness and use God for his own purposes. This wilderness was Jesus commencing his public ministry, a harbinger of how ministry is often a place of wilderness tempting for many pastors. One of these seductive temptations is to make our sermons and our vocation about us (our personality, our pet issues, our insecurities), rather than allowing Scripture to illuminate the many ways God is calling his people to live out the concrete details of our lives. Faithful ministry — giving away the God who is alive in Scripture—requires first knowing we are the beloved.”

Browse photos below and check out the talks as well. For more information on the retreat & Laity Lodge, click here.