Past Events

Past Events

Sep 25, 2025
Spirited Book Club September 2025 selection: The Serviceberry by Robin Wall Kimmerer

Spirited Book Club ~ The Serviceberry

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Braiding Sweetgrass, ‘The Serviceberry’ is a bold and inspiring vision for how to orient our lives around gratitude, reciprocity, and community, based on the lessons of the natural world.
Aug 28, 2025

Spirited Book Club ~ Refugia Faith

‘Refugia Faith: Seeking Hidden Shelters, Ordinary Wonders, and the Healing of the Earth’ explores how Christian spirituality and practice must adapt to prepare for life on a climate-altered planet.
Jul 28, 2025
Spirited Centering Prayer; photo image of open hands, palms up, at sunrise

Spirited Centering Prayer

Centering Prayer is founded on the basic goodness of human nature and is a way of cultivating union with God through silence and surrender. It is said that one may or may not “feel” the presence of God during centering prayer but, with repeated practice, one grows into a deeper sense of God’s abiding presence in all places and at all times.
Jul 24, 2025
Jeff Chu, author of Good Soil

Spirited Book Club ~ Good Soil

In this beautifully written memoir, an accomplished journalist leaves New York City to work as an amateur farmhand at Princeton Seminary, while harvesting spiritual lessons that change his life.
Jun 26, 2025
Marianne Edgar Budde

Spirited Book Club ~ How We Learn to Be Brave

An inspirational guide to the key junctures in life that, if navigated with faith and discernment, pave the way for us to become our most courageous selves, by the bishop of the famed Episcopal Diocese of Washington, D.C.
May 22, 2025

Spirited Book Club ~ See No Stranger

a spirited book club dissicoun of See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love, by Valerie Kaur How do we love in a time of rage? How do we fix a broken world while not breaking ourselves? Valarie Kaur—renowned Sikh activist, filmmaker, and civil rights lawyer—describes revolutionary love as the call of our time, a radical, joyful practice that extends in three directions: to others, to our opponents, and to ourselves. It enjoins us to see no stranger…
Apr 10, 2025

Spirited Book Club ~ The Tears of Things

Prophets and mystics recognize what most of us do not—that all things have tears and all things deserve tears. – Richard Rohr In his first major work since “The Universal Christ,” Richard Rohr offers a hope-filled model for the world today, grounded in the timeless wisdom of the Hebrew prophets. In “The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outrage,” Fr. Richard draws on a century of biblical scholarship to breathe new life into ancient wisdom, revealing how some of the lesser-read books of the Bible offer us a crucial path forward today. “The Tears of Things” paves a path of enlightenment for anyone seeking a compassionate way of living in a hurting world. Released on March 4, “The Tears of Things” is available wherever books are sold. Dear Spirited Readers: To learn more about whether this book is for you, take Amazon up on its offer to read a free sample. Here’s a nugget from the Introduction that I find inspiring from where I’m living of late – out here on the exhausting edge of outrage: “My favorite thing about the prophetic books of the Bible,” writes Fr. Rohr, “is that they show a whole series of people in evolution in their understanding of God. Like most of us, the prophets started not only with judgmentalism and anger but also with a superiority complex of placing themselves above others. Then, in various ways, that outlook falls apart over the course of their writings. They move from that anger and judgmentalism to a reordered awareness in which they become more like God: more patient like God, more forgiving like God, more loving like God. Sign me up for some reordered awareness! Let’s talk more about that this month – April 10: 3 pm (Arizona/PDT) Chapters 1 – 5 April 24: 3 pm (Arizona/PDT) Chapters 6 – 10 Sheri Coming Up! Save the Dates, Get the Books: MAY 8 and 22, 2025: See No Stranger: A Memoir and Manifesto of Revolutionary Love by Valarie Kaur JUNE 12 and 26, 2025: How We Learn to Be Brave: Decisive Moments in Life and Faith by Mariann Edgar Budde
Mar 16 – 20, 2025
Illustration of a baseball set against a desert landscape with cacti and mountains at sunset.

Play Ball and Connect: A Desert Sojourn Retreat

‘Play Ball! – A Desert Sojourn Retreat’ at Spirit in the Desert Retreat Center from March 16-20, 2025. This unique retreat invites baseball-loving pastors to combine their passion for the game with spiritual reflection and fellowship. Enjoy daily gatherings, MLB Spring Training games, and evenings filled with classic baseball films, all set against the stunning backdrop of Arizona’s desert landscape.
Mar 3 – 6, 2025

Gourding in the Desert

The Arizona Gourd Society’s annual Gourding in the Desert Retreat brings together gourders for class time and creative camaraderie.
Feb 20, 2025
Spirited Book Club: We Survived the End of the World; picture of author Steven Charleston

Spirited Book Club ~ We Survived the End of the World

From the moment European settlers reached these shores, the American apocalypse began. But Native Americans did not vanish. Apocalypse did not fully destroy them, and it doesn’t have to destroy us. Pandemics and war, social turmoil and corrupt governments, natural disasters and environmental collapse–it’s hard not to watch the signs of the times and feel afraid. But we can journey through that fear to find hope. With the warnings of a prophet and the lively voice of a storyteller, Choctaw elder and author of Ladder to the Light Steven Charleston speaks to all who sense apocalyptic dread rising around and within.
Jan 23, 2025
Spirited Book Club January 2025; photo image of author Marilyn Chandler McEntyre

Spirited Book Club ~ Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies

In Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn McEntyre exposes the commercial and political forces that affect public discourse in American culture and counters with twelve constructive “strategies of stewardship”—such as challenging lies, fostering the art of conversation, and encouraging playfulness and prayerfulness in writing and speaking.
Jan 17 – 19, 2025
From the Inside Out Retreat; image of Heather Wiest in red dress, standing on one foot in yoga pose

From the Inside Out Retreat

Restore your body, renew your mind and refresh your spirit at the ‘From the Inside Out’ Retreat with Heather Wiest, Jan. 17-19, 2025 in Carefree, AZ.