Looking Back & Giving Forward Retreat

                            Looking Back & Giving Forward: 
                         Our Workbooks as a Retreat Model

                                      

“Everyone should have a safe place to remember the past, evaluate where they are at this moment in their life, and look ahead to what they can contribute.”
This is what one participant said after her small group of friends from her retirement community gathered to do the workbook together. Through the workbook, your vision about the future becomes a living legacy that contributes to making this world better for yourself, friends, family, and future generations. In small groups, this experience becomes the common ground on which people will look back and give forward and continue to support one another.

You will find a safe place to:

• Discern the legacy that you have received from your life and others;
• Reflect on how you want this legacy to shape your future towards ever-increasing wholeness;
• Identify the your enduring strengths, core values, and beliefs that guide you;
• Discover ways in which your wisdom can be shared with family and community; and
• Build a supportive community to help sustain you now and in the future.
Each of the seven sessions has a theme, goals, readings and exercises, questions for sharing around the theme, and a “bridge” question for the next session. Stories are used to help discern what you may have in mind for your future. Sharing is done within a listening context that aims to affirm each individual’s experiences and not to fix or give advice. Participants are encouraged to write thoughts, musings, and questions in the workbook or keep a journal or notebook. Much comes to light as people share their stories. At the end of the program, each group explores ways to continue in community to support one another over time.
In writing this workbook, the staff of Lumunos received ideas, inspiration, critique, and encouragement from many wise people including the wise members of the Elder Council of Lumunos and three pilot groups. Without the real life stories and experiences of the many people who exemplify “living legacies,” the workbook would be one more “ho-hum” program.
May all who use this workbook find how positive and regenerative looking back and giving forward can be!