2025 Silent Retreat
Broken/Open:Fragments Together
Five Day Silent Retreat
June 15th to 20st, 2025
St. Rafaela Retreat Center
Haverford, Pa
with Shoshana Cooper, Miriam Eisenberger, Rabbi Shir Feit
What a world we live in now! Taking 5 days to calm, reflect, and just be alone yet not alone is such a gift to oneself…
Over the past few years, our retreats have focused on intimacy with who we each are under some of the veils and shields we can use to protect ourselves .We have delved into some of the absurdities and/or mysteries of our lives. We are inner-world explorers, which opens each of us more to our outer worlds. This year we will continue this deepening.
We, the guides of this meditation retreat, are each in deep transformational work of our own. We will be bringing this to all of us, just as each of you who come will be bringing your part of the tapestry that forms from our being together.
ABOUT THE LOCATION
The retreat center is comfortable and beautiful with a deeply saturated sense of lovingkindness. The grounds are like a well-tended park. The food is pescatarian (no shellfish), lovingly prepared, abundant, and tasty. The Center offers limited gluten and dairy free alternatives and can accomodate most allergies for those who let us know in advance. They cannot handle complex special dietary needs however there is a refrigerator available to retreatants who wish to bring their own food. The center has a variety of food items available at all times for snacks and simple alternatives if meals do not meet your needs.
ABOUT OUR PRACTICES
Each day there are 6-7 scheduled thirty-five minute long silent meditation sittings followed by a 15 minute walking session, usually outdoors, followed by a ten minute break and then repeat. There is davvenen(musical prayer event) each morning after breakfast. Each afternoon is a meditation class which delves into mindfulness practices. Each evening is a talk by one of the guides about hopefully relevant themes permeating the retreat.
NEW THIS YEAR
We will be renting the house next to the pool in addition to the main center, so we will have a few extra rooms. There will be about 40 people in total.
The majority of the rooms( both in the main center and the poolside house) are private with shared bath arrangements as in previous years. There are only a few rooms with private baths and they will go to those with the greatest need.
REGISTRATION AND PAYMENT
The cost for a single room with shared bathroom is $825.
The cost for a shared (double occupancy) with shared bathroom is $650.
To reserve a space you will need to pay a $250 deposit.
Full payment is due for the retreat by May 25th, 2025.
To register, send an email to Shoshana at coopertea99@yahoo.com to confirm availability and when confirmed you will need to send a $250 deposit either to Venmo@ShoshanaCooper99 or send a check to Shoshana at 624 St. Lucie Crescent, Apt 406, Stuart FL 34994.
SCHOLARSHIPS
There are 4 scholarships being offered this year. The full cost for that will be $250 which includes a shared double occupancy room and all meals. It will be lottery for those slots so let Shoshana know if you are interested. A drawing will occur later in October or as soon as we have full registration.
CANCELLATION POLICY
If you have to cancel for any reason before May 1 2025, we will return $200. ($50 is kept for administrative costs) From May 1st and onwards we will return $150 ($100 is kept for admin costs) only if we are able to fill your spot with someone on our waiting list. We have to guarantee to the retreat center about 3 weeks before the retreat and will not receive any reimbursement for last minute cancellations. We try hard to fill a space but there are no guarantees.
If you have any questions you can contact Shoshana at coopertea99@yahoo.com or Ruthie, our retreat manager at ruthieLR@gmail
Background Information About Silent Retreats
A silent retreat is one of the essential and most important practices for any spiritual aspirant. Each spiritual discipline and many teachers have unique practices, schedules, relationships between the teachers and students along with other nuances of the training. The retreats we offer have their own flavor.
Mindfulness meditation is frequently learned to find a way to come to some calm and balance in one's everyday life. It is also a phenomenal path to a complete human transformation from a thought obscured person to one who is clear minded. The journey for most is arduous, humbling and incredibly valuable. Upon awakening one must encounter everything in a way that is awesome in its magnitude and far beyond the current human preoccupation of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.
This retreat offers a path and brings guidance and collaboration to those who have chosen this journey. It assumes that a strong foundation of ethics and values has already been learned and integrated. The skills needed for this stage are: 1. concentration capacity and discipline 2. powerful mindfulness training practices 3. A thinking mind that can be released into stillness and can grow in that ability in more and more complex engagements. This final skill and stage is not as well mapped as the earlier skills. So collaboration with others can be very helpful to understand some of the commonalities but also the uniqueness that happens in this stage.
On our retreats we emphasize silence. Not every part of the day is silent, we actually chant and sing/pray together every morning. In some instruction periods, questions or comments are invited from the participants. Retreatants have opportunities to engage teachers, either one-on-one or in small groups. In our silence we are committed to not engage one another on a social level. We do not have mundane conversations. We do not greet one another verbally. Why is this so important? The answer is that something happens deep within each of us when we maintain an outer silence as described. An inner silence for practitioners on our retreats arises after a few days. It is a spaciousness that makes itself known on a very deep level. We experience an ease that is uniquely satisfying and deeply content on some kind of soul level that is inexplicable. We begin to feel profoundly connected with others around us, even though we are not speaking. And we begin to experience a fascinating integration with our surroundings, nature, life.
It is true that initially, for the first few days, the experience may feel a bit strange. We are social beings. But we are also very adaptable and soon we begin to realize the extraordinary wonder of the possibility of a moment-to-moment connection with what is happening right now--the magic and mystery of the unfolding NOW. When this happens, the silence becomes a precious gift. Indeed, on our retreats, after the third or fourth day, retreatants love the silence so much they want it to last as long as possible.
The fees for retreats are for room and board only. There is no tuition for teachers, however, free will donations for teachers are asked for and welcomed at the end of each retreat. Normally tuition fees run from $300 to $1000 for a 5 day retreat. We work on a donation system so that that those who can pay more and those who cannot pay less. It has worked out fairly for over 25 years.