The 2023 InHabit group has recently completed the course. The course may run again in 2024. Please contact us at vesseltrust@gmail.com to find out more.
Introduction and Course Structure
The course seeks to enable participants to create a pattern for faithful living and a shape for deepening their life in God. It does so by encouraging the development of practices in prayer and reflection that foster a balanced life lived from and in reference to Christ as the Centre. Practical Christian living is explored through eight directions or ‘stances’ for growth: UP, DOWN, IN, WITH, FOR, OUT, UNDER AND THROUGH …. and the relationship and tensions between them. The course makes use of the physical structure and spiritual rhythm of the monastery as an image and symbol of whole life discipleship and practical prayerfulness.
Over the duration of the course a community of ordinary, down to earth ‘monastics’ is built! We will be reflecting (personally and together) on the whole of our lives in ways that will encourage a deeper experience of prayer and response to God’s purpose and calling. The material and means of delivery of each session aims to set up an action-reflection cycle of learning through building simple habits of contemplative practice and active outworking in everyday life.
To this end each day session will include:
*Communal prayers at the start and end of the day
*Teaching input and facilitated discussion
*Time spent building a practice of contemplative prayer. This half hour of shared silence will not follow a particular technique, approach or ‘school of prayer’ but where helpful may draw on simple resources to create space in which we remember and settle into God’s Presence.
*Time alone with resources for personal reflection
*Time within a small ‘Journey Group’ (maximum three or four people) to discuss, share, encourage and apply the learning of the day and the wider journey of faith and life
*Practical guidance for living out and applying the material explored in the session; often with a suggested ‘practice to practice’ between sessions
*Take away material to read and further resources on the theme of the day to explore if desired
Course Content
Day 1
Introduction: Action – Reflection model of learning,
Mapping out the Monastery : eight directions for growth
Getting into the Habit: inhabiting rhythm and daily practice
Introduction to Patterns for Living and Rule of Life : building a trellis
Day 2
Well : CENTRE
Drawing on Life giving water: praying well
Returning to Christ as the Centre
Developing contemplative practice: being in the Holy Here under the gaze of God’s love.
Cloister : CONNECTED WHOLE
Making the connections work
Minding the gap: the practice of sacred pausing and another look at praying the monastic hours
Day 3
Chapel : REACHING UP
Presence and ‘Temple’
Communal worship
What and where is church?
Day 4
Garden : ROOTED DOWN
Seasons and Sabbath
Environment and Incarnation : heaven and earth
Embodied prayer and earthed spirituality
Day 5
Refectory : SHARING WITH
Trinity and Community
Hospitality of heart and home
Simplicity and sharing life
Day 6
Infirmary : CARING FOR
Self care
Pastoral care of others
Listening and attention
Vesselhood: Containing brokenness and carrying wholeness
Day 7
Library : INVEST
Scripture and study
Reading the signs of our time
Culture, counter culture and the prophet’s voice
Discernment and wearing our witness
Day 8
Monastic Cell : DWELLING IN
Finding our story in the Big Story
Dreams and desires
Coming home to who we are
Personhood and poustinia: who am I to be?
Day 9
Kitchen : WORK OUT
What is ‘good’ work?
Laundry and liturgy and the ministry of the mundane
Is there such a thing as work/life balance?
Day 10
Scriptorium : CALLED OUT
Vocation : what is mine to do?
Making our mark : calling and creativity
Service and the offering of ourselves
Social transformation and the building of God’s kingdom
Day 11
Crypt : GOING UNDER
Stuck in the dark: navigating crisis
Being human
Facing doubt and the other side of faith
Can these bones live?
Day 12
Door : MOVING THROUGH
Liminal spaces and life stages
Change and transition
Leaving a legacy
Endings and beginnings ; cycles of life and death
Day 13
Monastery : REVIEW
Reflecting back: praying forwards
Making our vow ; revisiting Patterns for Living and Rule of Life
Living faithfully
A word about Journey Groups
Journey Groups are a key component of the course, both for the building of this little online community but also as a powerful means of deepening and enriching our making of the faith journey. Each participant of the course will meet with up to three or four other participants at a designated point during each of the course sessions (via zoom break out rooms). Where possible these journey groups (of three or four people) will remain the same throughout the course to enable people to build relationship and trust. It may be that a group of friends or existing prayer triplet or Home Group members may all like to be participants on the Inhabit course together and request to be formed into a Journey Group. The hope is that these Journey Groups will continue beyond the duration of the course and provide an experience that might be shared with (or facilitated for) others. Guidelines for a simple format and the creation of boundaries in these groups will be explained at the start of the course. These groups will enable participants to listen to each other and share together how God is meeting them in the joys and challenges of their daily lives and perhaps also what is resonating with them personally from the course content.
Who is the course for?
Our hope is that the course will be of interest for clergy and lay people alike. We also hope that some clergy will benefit from the monthly space for reflection and prayer and ongoing discernment of their own life in God as well as in their role as church leaders. Clergy and Home Group leaders may choose to participate in the course themselves and then facilitate the course for other groups. The course will ask for a commitment from participants to attend (where at all possible) all of the sessions. This is because each session builds on the other sessions to form a shape and because participation in each session enables a real community of friendship and sharing to form. Practice takes practice and InHabit is about getting in the Habit! Having said all this, illness and circumstances that are out of our control do happen and hopefully the community that is formed through this course will be able to hold participants in support and prayer if they really have to miss a session at some point over the year.
The course offers something of a 360 degree stock take. During the turbulent and unsettling times we are living in the course will hopefully offer some grounding and centring in our relationship with God and a chance to navigate prayerfully and thoughtfully through possible transition and change in our lives. The symbolism of the monastery can be seen in terms of sanctuary, boundaried spaces contained in the rhythms and habits of ordinary life, lived attentively to the Spirit of God. InHabit offers a rich visual image of our inner life in God and its outworking. Through this we may be formed and shaped to live even the mundane aspects of our lives as called, held (contained) and enlivened people of faith, with God at the centre. There is an emphasis on rooting prayerful and reflective practice within the day to day patterns of our lives rather than too much elevated spiritual straining! The course honours and celebrates our human-ness as the place God has chosen to Inhabit.