Falling Upward while Running with Wolves

Program Details

As Retreat Leader, Lee Ireland was working on a retreat on chapter 3 of Clarissa Estés masterpiece, “Women who Run with Wolves,” she felt that something was incomplete. At that time, she was also teaching Rohr’s masterpiece, “Falling Upward,” in her local church setting. She could see that if she wove together their concluding insights, she could lead the group to a neat conclusion, as Rohr and Estés complemented each other. It truly added a great dimension to the retreat. Now she is offering another retreat that will intentionally engage attendees to work with these messages and apply them to their own lives for greater insights into their personal choices, and also to help them learn skills with the hope they can get closer to claiming their authentic voices.

Rohr and Estés come from unique upbringings and cultures and they each came to moments when they knew they weren’t at peace with how they were living their lives. During their spiritual journeys, they learned how to listen within for their own voices and that of the Spirit, so they could detach from the voices of their past that were constrictive and be transformed by the voice of love calling them forward and diminish the power of the voice of fear to stay as they were. New life began to unfold for each of them and they thankfully had the ability to then begin to teach this wisdom to others.

About the Leaders

Lee Ireland

Rev. Lee A. Ireland is now retired after serving many churches as a long-time Interim Pastor. She lives in Niantic, CT and is focusing on spiritual formation programs, retreats and offering Individual Spiritual Direction sessions. She received her M.Div. from Andover Newton Theological School, and was trained as a Spiritual Director at Mercy Center, Madison, CT from 1997-99. She has served in 14 different congregational settings as well as working in a women's prison and as a per diem hospital chaplain. Since 1990, she has had the joy of leading retreats. She is well aware of how life throws us curve balls and we can become distracted from our soul's journey by many events that may lead us to dead-ends. As we choose to study the wisdom of others, journal, listen to our dreams or participate in retreats and spiritual formation programs, we learn how to listen within so we can stay on our faith journeys. We discern the guidance we need so we can live into our personal Calls, and live into unexpected moments which nurture the peace within and make our hearts and souls sing. We can then make new life choices that enable us to live in the Now as we love and serve from our centeredness, a sense of gratitude due our deepening relationship with God.