The One Life We’re Given with Mark Nepo

The Shallowford Family Counseling Center and friends of our local community welcome Mark Nepo, one of Oprah's bestselling authors, poet, and philosopher in person for a weekend-long retreat and more!

(Event #1) - TWO-DAY RETREAT: Based on several of Mark Nepo's books, this retreat will explore how we might truly inhabit the one life we’re given: by getting closer to life, loving what you do, finding what can last, and by being kind and useful. Drawn from his years of teaching, Nepo explores how our hard work and authenticity ready us for meaning and grace. Using ancient and contemporary stories, poetry, journaling, and dialogue, he unfolds how our sincerity and labor help us to survive and thrive.

• DATE: Friday, November 18 & Saturday, November 19, 2022
• TIME: 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.
• COST: XXXX (Pay what you can — no pressure! Larger donations help sustain our programs and fund scholarships for to those with limited capacity to pay yet want to attend.)

(Event #2) - POETRY SIGNING: We hope you’ll join us as Mark Nepo, bestselling author and poet, gives voice to poetry as a way to enliven what’s true, beautiful and good in us. Mark Nepo describes poetry as "the unexpected utterance of the soul. Much more than the manipulation of language, it is a necessary art by which we live and breathe. It is the art of embodied perception; a braiding of heart and mind around experience. **Bring your favorite Mark Nepo book(s) for a personal signing by Mark himself!**

• DATE: Saturday, November 19, 2022
• TIME: 7:00 p.m. to 8:00 p.m.
• COST: Free and open to the public

(Event #3) - Q&A & Worship Service: We will start the morning with time of “poetic inquiry” enlivened by one of the finest spiritual teachers of our times. Through poetry and story, Mark Nepo will inspire us as we wonder together how care erases the walls we keep building between us…how a life of meaning and love unfolds through adversity.

Following the Q&A, you're invited to attend Shallowford Presbyterian Church's worship service where Mark will lead a talk entitled: "Heart Work: Being a Spirit in the World." In this talk, Mark will explore how a life of meaning and love unfolds through adversity, how love awakens everything, and how care erases the walls we keep building between us.

• DATE: Sunday, November 20, 2022
• TIME: 9:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. & 11:00 a.m. to 11:45 a.m.
• COST: Free and open to the public

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

These events and offerings are offered to you by The Shallowford Family Counseling Center. Through the connection with Shallowford Presbyterian Church, we welcome all people, regardless of faith tradition, to grow and learn through practice and experience, moving slowly, with gentleness, to a place of courageous curiosity, accepting hardship as a pathway to peace.

To learn more about The Shallowford Family Counseling Center, visit shallowfordfamilycounselingcenter.org.

Event Venue

Shallowford Presbyterian Church, 2375 Shallowford Road, Atlanta, United States