The Christchurch/ Ōtautahi organising team are pleased to announce the upcoming 2024 ACSD Training Event is to be held from Friday 22nd to Sunday 24th November, with an Open Day on Thursday 21st November.
Things your planning group would like you to know:
- More about our Speakers
- The Thursday Open Day is open to Non Members – All Welcome Although the Open Day is open to those who are not members, the day itself will form a part of the overall direction of the other days of the Training Event, so recommended to try and come to all of it
- Training Event is for members only – Spiritual Direction Trainees also welcome
- Thursday and Friday morning will start at 10am with registration from 9.30
- Sunday will finish at 2pm
- People will be able to stay on Thursday night, even if not coming to the Open Day.
Sacred Space
Sacred World – Sacred Work – Sacred Word
Speakers, costs, and other details are currently being organised, but please save this date and consider joining us for this sacred time!
Contact for organising Group: Donald Scott donald@northcity.co.nz
Our Speakers
We are blessed to have a wonderful team of Speakers for ACSD conference and Open Day, diverse threads woven together to facilitate reflection on the overall theme of Sacred Space/ Tatau Pounamu
Kevin Gallagher
Kevin is a retired Physiotherapist began formation as a spiritual director in the Christchurch SEED course 2002 -2003. In 2016 Ignatian Spirituality New Zealand was established to form spiritual directors in the Ignatian tradition in NZ through Te Wairua Mahi. Kevin has been the coordinator of Ignatian Spirituality NZ since then.
Kevin’s sessions include titles such as “A Mysticism of Embodiment,” “Learning to See the Divine in World and Matter,” and “Attending to the more of our Sacred Work,” outworked through attending to the body in spiritual direction, but also considering the evolving context of the spiritual director in a dynamic unfinished universe and the new cosmology and the future
Kevin and his wife Lyn were directors of Sr Eveleen retreat house from 2008-2011. They have 4 adult children and 6 grandchildren, both work as spiritual directors at Rosary House in Christchurch. Kevin’s interests include; The spiritual exercises of St Ignatius. The spiritual exercises and the new cosmology. Formation of spiritual directors. Spirituality and the body.
Fran Francis
Fran Francis has over 17 years experience as a spiritual director and is 8 years into leading the SGM Spiritual Directors Formation Programme. She is married to Vic, they have four adult children, two grandchildren and a bonkers British shorthair. Fran is tauiwi, an Enneagram 7, loves books, films, making stuff, walking (especially pilgrimages); and is a self confessed spirituality nerd.
On Saturday evening Fran will explore spiritual direction as a tatau pounamu/sacred doorway. The peace-making tradition of Māori gives us the “greenstone door” – a way to peace; tatau pounamu is also “the sacred doorway of the light” while from our Christian tradition we have the door on which Jesus knocks, Teresa of Avilà’s creepy shadowed doorway, and let’s not forget JRR Tolkien’s mysterious hidden-in-plain-sight door into the Mines of Moria; metaphors galore for what we do, and how we do it. Fran hopes the session might also turn out to be a sacred doorway of insight for us.
Barbara McMillan
As a spiritual director, supervisor, and retreat leader, Barbara brings over 25 yrs experience at assisting people to develop relational connection with God, self and others. She is based at Treetops, a place of retreat focused on nourishment and reconnection set on 20 acres of re-wilding forest at Little River, Banks Peninsula.
“Clearing the way,” Barbara will draw on wisdom gleaned from the desert traditions and identify some of the habits we hide behind as substitutes for more genuine relating, and identify contemplative practices that assist us to transform these into relationship deepening virtues. Engaging beauty as a habitus of healing and wellbeing.
Watiri Maina
Watiri Maina lives in Nelson and serves as a spiritual director and ordained minister. She enjoys engaging in sacred conversations and leading spiritual retreats. Her greatest desire is to be a friend of God and to abide in God’s presence.
Watiri’s message on Sunday focuses on The sacred Word who became flesh calls us to come. Come and be with the Word and be a Word. This Sacred Word weaves our lives and invites us to weave the Word daily in our work and world. The Word is in us – in our breath, in our body, in our being and in our belonging. The Sacred Word is for us, with us and among us.
Susan Gill
Susan Gill has lived in different locations of our motu settling back into Canterbury six years ago. Her background is in community development. In some not-so-random way that led to ordained work in the Anglican church. Recent ‘retirement’ means there is more time for whānau along with work in Supervision and Spiritual Direction. Susan enjoys many craft projects which bring her joy, as does walking, reading and spending time with people.
The process of Sacred Weaving results in a lived integrity; that is a life where all of its components are integrated into the whole. Trinitarian weaving; pondering the various strands of Divine and human personhood.
(Susan will gather all these strands into a Sacred Wholeness, embodied in an actual weaving!)
Strahan Coleman
Strahan is a writer, musician and single origin coffee lover with a deep desire to help the church experience the richness of communion with God. He teaches prayer schools, has written three devotional prayer books and recently published Beholding, his story of discovering a transformative friendship with God through years of illness. He also currently works on the teaching team and as prayer curator with Practicing The Way. Strahan lives in Tairua, Coromandel with his wife Katie and three vivacious young boys.
Through his own story Strahan shares how suffering, and our greatest vulnerabilities, can become the very place of our deepest intimacy with God. As spiritual directors we help people navigate the thirst beneath their thirst (the desire beneath all desires) in a world that buys and sells human desire as a commodity. So that we’re curators of the deepest conversation in our culture and time. encouraging spiritual directors to see themselves as wells in a uniquely parched epoch.