About the Retreat / Online zoom

The word “Lent” is related to Latin cognates meaning long and slow (“lente,” “lento”). Like Advent, Lent is a speed bump in the year, inviting us into reflection, confession, and prayer, a time of remembering God’s costly love for us. We enter the retreat seeking God’s Light in the darkness of war, political tensions, environmental devastations, social turmoil around the globe, and seeking God’s Light, too, in the privacy of our own hearts. 

Together (via Zoom) we will contemplate God's great love for us and our aching world as we focus on the Stations of the Cross which symbolize Jesus’ walk to the Cross and help us notice His suffering, and also how He was accompanied.

Co-sponsored by New College Berkeley and First Presbyterian Church of Berkeley

About Susan Phillips

A spiritual director and professor of sociology and Christian spirituality, Susan Phillips earned a Ph.D. in sociology at U.C. Berkeley and served as the Executive Director of New College Berkeley from 1994 to 2022. In addition to serving on the doctoral faculty of the Graduate Theological Union, Berkeley, Susan has taught for many years for Fuller Theological Seminary, Regent College (Canada), and San Francisco Theological Seminary. Her books, like her teaching, explore the intersection of Christian spirituality and social science, and include the award-winning Crisis of Care: Affirming and Restoring Caring Practices in the Helping Professions, Candlelight: Illuminating the Art of Spiritual Direction, and The Cultivated Life: From Ceaseless Striving to Receiving Joy. Susan loves listening to people as they pray and seek the Holy in spiritual direction, retreats, and everyday life