Umbellifer Into Advent Retreat

Monday 23rd November 2026 

 (Arrivals from 9.30am) Start 10am – 3pm. COST: £40

You are warmly invited to a day retreat as we step into Advent, Watch for the little Child!

Advent invites us to live between what is and what might be. We live in a world of facts, plans, deadlines, control, and carefully constructed expectations. Yet the prophets speak in another way. They offer poems: visions of newness, healing, freedom, justice, peace, and the surprising activity of God. Isaiah 11 is one such poem. It begins with a stump and imagines a shoot; it looks at a world marked by violence and imagines a peaceable creation; it sees what appears to be finished and invites us to watch for what God may yet bring to life. We will spend time not trying to explain the poem or make it manageable, but learning to dwell within it. We will allow the vision of Isaiah to stretch our imagination and open us to hope. At the end, Matthew’s account of John the Baptist will remind us that Advent hope is not passive: if we receive the poem as a vision of God’s future, we are also invited to become people who begin to live its reality now.

Retreat Includes: Guided reflections on Isiah 11:1-9 and Matthew 3:1-12 , times of silence and spaciousness, optional creative engagement. Refreshments & lunch provided.

Cost: £40 (Refreshments, lunch and materials included)) There are 12 spaces.

Sign up by Monday 16th November
Further details and location will be shared upon registration.

Note: Ministers of the Church of Scotland, may have up to £250 available annually for retreat through Ascend— details here: ascend.churchofscotland.org.uk/services/retreat

If you have any questions please don’t hesitate to email.

Register for this Retreat

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