Recently, I was part of a year-long online learning course on transformational leadership. The first session began with a ritual practice of acknowledging this new journey together in community. We opened with a simple yet nearly forgotten ritual: Welcoming each other and recognizing who is present. This sounds so obvious, and yet in a virtual world, this act of connecting human to human, is often forgotten.
At times, we are reluctant to engage in even the simplest ritual, out of a sensitivity to cultural appropriation. Our deep honor and respect for traditional peoples may keep us from learning from their wise ways. When this arises, it’s time to move into a leadership moment by acknowledging the tension and expressing cultural humility.
Angeles Arrien, the late Basque cultural anthropologist, urged us as modern people, to learn from these traditional cultures. Her ground-breaking work offers tremendous insight into the wisdom of ritual for leaders today.
Arrien said that rituals function as a bridge between the ‘inner world’ of our aspirations, values, beliefs, intuition and the ‘outer world’ or action, performance, results, and outcomes. As leaders we are continuously negotiating this boundary between our inner lives as leader and outer lives of actions.
Consider becoming intentional about what is truly meaningful to you by creating a ritual to recognize, honor, and sustain it.
NEW YEARS – OPEN HEART, PEACEFUL MIND: A RETREAT FOR REST & REFLECTION WITH VALERIE BROWN
On Campus @ Pendle Hill, Wallingford, PA
December 28, 2025-Jan 1, 2026
This retreat fills fast so claim your spot today!
This annual New Year’s retreat is designed to cultivate rest, reflection, renewal, and restoration. At these times of change, high stress, and high anxiety, we need now, more than ever, to exhale deeply and feel fully nourished through resilience-building, heart-opening, peace-making practices and a caring community.
Welcoming the New Year is a perfect time to explore issues of transition, vocation, life purpose, passion, meaning, direction and underlying life patterns to live in greater alignment with your core values. Listen to your own inner wisdom and reconnect who you are with what you do.
Savor extended periods of silence, reflection, group discussion, creative arts, walks in nature, deep relaxation, music, laughter, and mindful movement. Surrounded by a supportive and caring community, you’ll return home feeling restored, inspired, balanced and uplifted toward the best version of you.
Our theme for this retreat is Navigating Change and Uncertainty with Purpose and Heart.
You will learn how to:
- Align your values with your work for a greater sense of purpose and meaning.
- Navigate life’s uncertain and ambiguous moments.
- Cultivate courage and trust even when you don’t feel it.
- Reflect on what matters most with soul-amplifying questions, creative practices, small and large group dialogue and more.
- Cultivate body intelligence and body awareness.
- Show yourself real kindness through self-compassion.
- Practice self-stewardship while compassionately respecting your limits.
Valerie has offered this retreat for 20 years! Experience for yourself what others have said about this powerful and inspiring retreat.
What people are saying about this retreat:
- This retreat provided so many excellent opportunities for inward journey and identified ways that my energy, spiritual journey may be blocked.’
- ‘This retreat helped me to see more clearly the hindrances to my deepening/developing relationship to my joy and fullness.’
- ‘This is a retreat of great wisdom, great people, and a great compassionate leader.’
- ‘Opportunity to rest and reflect in a warm and welcoming community.’
- ‘Valerie created the spaciousness for me to heal, go deeper, be witnessed, learn from others, and explore the covered up places longing for me to come home.’
- ‘Sweet & lush’
Welcome the New Year with a Joyful Celebration & Feast!
Welcome the New Year in community and connection and with a celebratory, alcohol-free evening that includes an array of hors d’ oeuvres, choice of entrees, such as farfalle pasta with winter squash, toasted pine nuts, and sage, baked salmon with garden herbs, or roast pork loin with green apple sauce, choice of sides, like garlic crusted red potatoes, a fabulous homemade dessert bar, and concert, singing, and capping the New Year’s Eve Celebration with a Candlelight Meeting for Worship.
Here’s a Sampling of a Deep Dive into Soulful Reflection.
Reflection is an important component of this retreat and here’s a sampling of the type of reflection that you might experience, individually and with small groups. This reflection comes from beloved environmental activist, Joanna Macy, who is in hospice care at her home, surrounded by family and friends. Macy’s teachings have touched the lives of countless people and below is a sample of her extraordinary work.
| Consider this excerpt from Joanna Macy and Chris Johnstone’s book, Active Hope: “Active Hope is a practice. Like tai chi or gardening, it is something we do rather than have. It is a process we can apply to any situation, and it involves three key steps. First, we take in a clear view of reality; second, we identify what we hope for in terms of the direction we’d like things to move in or the values we’d like to see expressed; and third, we take steps to move ourselves or our situation in that direction.Since Active Hope doesn’t require our optimism, we can apply it even in areas where we feel hopeless. The guiding impetus is intention; we choose what we aim to bring about, act for, or express. Rather than weighing our chances and proceeding only when we feel hopeful, we focus on our intention and let it be our guide.” Reflection Queries: How does the concept and practice of “Active Hope” resonate with you? What areas of your life are calling out for “Active Hope”? |
| Supported by the Friends Foundation on Aging, I am thrilled that my Pendle Hill Pamphlet, Coming to Light, Cultivating Spiritual Discernment through the Quaker Clearness Committee is now available on Audible! |
| Coming to Light explores the practice and process of the clearness committee, a means of spiritual discernment used by Quakers that has also proved helpful to many others. I share my personal experience of clearness committees, first as a member of the Religious Society of Friends and then as a retreat leader for the Center for Courage & Renewal, which uses the clearness committee as the center of its practice. The pamphlet includes a sample format of a clearness committee and material that may be used as handouts. To celebrate this new release, Audible is offering ten free audio files of the pamphlet and I will send a promo code for your free audio copy of the pamphlet to the first 10 people to contact me @ valeriebrown95@gmail.com. |
