May 25-30, 2025
St. Edmund’s Retreat Center in Mystic, CT
Beautiful images have a unique ability to incite our imaginations and open our hearts to the wonder of God’s creative glory. Sacred art, especially, has the power to draw us closer to God. Join us at this five-day retreat and writing class to learn an approach to spiritual journaling centered on the contemplation of sacred art. Inspired by the time-honored practices of Ignatian spirituality, we will build bridges through our own writing to the Holy Trinity and the saints. Our class resources will be images of sacred art, individual prayer time, written examples from saints and other Catholic writers, and thoughtful conversation about examples of the rich devotional literature of Catholicism. I encourage you to plan a day with about 3 1/2 hrs. class time, then unstructured time to pray, nap, write, stroll the beautiful grounds.
Sarah Cortez, writer and editor, has taught creative writing in first-grade classrooms, juvenile detention centers, book festivals, police departments, universities, high schools, and corporate boardrooms. She is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters and Fellow of the Dallas Institute of Humanities and Culture. Her poems, essays, book reviews, and short stories are anthologized and published in journals, such as Southwestern American Literature, Presence: A Journal of Catholic Poetry. Recently anthologized in The Saint Mary’s Book of Christian Verse, she is a contributing editor for Catholic Arts Today, and arts columnist for St. Austin Review, she writes for National Catholic Register and Texas Catholic Herald. She is a developmental editor for several publishers, and is founder and president of Catholic Literary Arts, a national community of faith-filled educators and writers dedicated to furthering creative writing skills.