Dear Friends,
Last week, I spent three days tucked away in the woods at Bask Retreat Center. The wifi was spotty and cell-service non-existent in my cabin. I appreciated my time off-the-grid, and I spent most of it re-reading Walking on Water: Reflections on Faith & Art by Madeline L’Engle. I returned to this particular book because I’m leading a book club starting next week at Sophia’s Center on L’Engle’s classic A Wrinkle in Time (join us)! I wanted to immerse myself in the author’s spiritual reflections in preparation for the group.
The theme that most reverberates from L’Engle’s writing both in Walking on Water and in A Wrinkle in Time is: love. It’s not a mushy, romanticized, gloss-over-things love but a sturdy, revelatory, and demanding love. L’Engle calls it “the criterion of love,”and she goes on to say:
In moments of decision, we are to try to make what seems to be the most loving, the most creative decision […] In a day when we are taught to look for easy solutions, it is not always easy to hold on to that most difficult one of all, love.
If you are like me, decision fatigue follows you around like a hungry cat. Last week, I told my husband, that I wished Nashville had one general store with one type of everything, so the decisions would be made for me. Whether it’s choosing which brand of apple sauce to buy, what Netflix series to watch, or which new dentist to see, I get fixated on making the “right” decision. And that feeling of fixation pulls me out of the present, fast. I appreciate retreats, in part, because I’m relieved from the day-to-day decisions of modern life.
I decided to bring Sophia’s Center into the world because I wanted to carve out a place that could serve as a mini-retreat center, a place of refuge, where there are no “wrong” creative decisions. Especially as collective anxiety ramps up about the midterm elections and AI infiltrates every nook and cranny of life, “the criterion of love” is orienting to me. “Wisdom the heart”—another way to say “love”—does not offer quick-fix, linear solutions. It’s not naive or obsequious. But it is abiding, dependable like an old-growth forest and a well-loved children’s book.
I hope you’ll carve out some time to come by Sophia’s this month. Join for the Kid’s Book for Grown-Ups Club and/or my upcoming writing workshop, Writing as an Antidote to Existential Dread! We are also offering Gentle Flow Yoga and Poetry as Soul Medicine every week. I’d be grateful if you forwarded this email & shared these offerings with friends who might find them meaningful.
Know, with this note, I am sending love your way.
With gratitude,
Claire Coenen
Founder, Sophia’s Center for the Healing Arts
