Staying Awake: An Ordinary Art, a three-day/two-night retreat with MARK NEPO

This event is hosted by Hollyhock. You can register early by calling 1.800.933.6339. Additional online registration details are coming soon.

Those who wake are the students.

Those who stay awake are the teachers.

Staying awake is an applied art of spirit. It is not something we can manipulate, but only live into. Each of us is born instinctively awake and yet it takes courage to stay awake, to remember that all we encounter is real. As such, staying awake is a timeless practice we must, ultimately, inhabit alone, but one which we can enliven together. The journey back to wakefulness is an invitation each day to delve into what it means to be alive. We all have the chance to wake and love, to welcome the gift of surprise and befriend the Whole. To do this, we must wake, more than once, in order to learn the ordinary art of living at the pace of what is real. Regardless of what we do or where we live, the journey is the same: How to open our pain and listen to all that matters, so we can make it through and rejoice from day to day. Poet, teacher, and cancer survivor Mark Nepo offers a fresh perspective on the art of being alive, providing essential insight into how we can minimize what stands between us and our experience of life.