Gratefulness Events

A Network for Grateful Living (ANG*L) offers periodic retreats, workshops, and symposiums.  We are happy to receive inquiries about offering an event in your area.  We also foster ongoing grateful-living groups and create e-courses which are available, after their debut, to schedule at your convenience.

5th Annual Spirituality and Health Summer Institute
George Washington University
Washington, DC
July 10 – 13, 2013

The 2013 Spirituality and Health Summer Institute will address spirituality as a solution to the current challenges in our healthcare system. Together we will look for opportunities in the changing healthcare environment, in which spirituality can be integrated as an essential component of care. The agenda will focus on the

• State of Science in Spirituality in Health
• Role of interdisciplinary teams in the development of a biopsychosocialspiritual treatment/care plan
• Models of excellence: Integrating spirituality-based care in clinical practice
• Compassion and spiritual practices
• Reflective Rounds in professional education.

ANG*L's Executive Director, Patricia Campbell Carlson, will be giving a Friday afternoon session on spiritual practice.  You can get more information and register here.

Die Kraft der Dankbarkeit

Join ANG*L staff and our European network May 2-5, 2013 at Seminarhaus Holzöstersee in Holzleithen near Salzburg, Austria, for a gathering on the power of gratefulness to bring us fully alive.  The program includes Dances of Universal Peace, workshops on empathic communication and gratitude in the family, and much more.  All sessions will be in the German language with some English spoken. 

Please note: This event almost instantly filled. If you would like your name added to the wait list, please see this site.

Pathways to Gratefulness
A full-day event with music, poetry and movement, with discussion and discourse from luminaries from around the world, including Brother David, David Whyte, Angeles Arrien, Fritjof Capra, and many others—all with intention of spreading the joy of gratefulness.

This event was held on June 23, 2012 10am-5:15pm PT
at The Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, California.  To learn more, see Pathways to Gratefulness.

The Art of Gratefulness
A meditative arts retreat
Led by Patricia Carlson and Margaret Wakeley

What does it mean to be grateful through the ups and downs of life? How can we appreciate the gift of each day without minimizing the challenges that face us personally and as a global community? Through the mediums of music, movement, poetry, conversation, and collage we will explore how we even come to ask such questions and how gratefulness applies to our losses, to our everyday lives, and to our relationships. 

The retreat was last offered May 18-20 at Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center in Windsor, Vermont.  If you would like to invite us to give this retreat in your area, please get in touch here.

Living the Hours
An Online Retreat led by Patricia Carlson, Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat

February 27-April 6, 2012

Living the Hours is a retreat based on the monastic tradition of marking nuances of dawn, day, dusk, and dark with prayer. Retreat sessions, delivered right to your email inbox, explore how this ancient Christian practice can be made universal and can enhance our daily lives.

This course was first presented it in the fall of 2009. We are now pleased to be offering it again with some new content. Even those who took it before may want to join us again as we create a new online community to explore this teaching. Doing it again is also a great way to reboot and refresh your practice! For more details and to sign up, see this page.

Restoring Gratitude in a Fast-paced World
A renewing retreat led by Patricia Carlson and Margaret Wakeley

This retreat is designed to help refill the reserves of people suffering from burn-out that results from compassion fatigue, overwork, or (as is often the case) a confluence of the two. We will explore gratefulness as a way of life with specific practices that restore our sense of sufficiency and wonder in the present moment – the only moment fully given to us – thus easing our anxiety about whether we have enough money, friendship, and other resources to get by. Through guided meditation, journaling, dialogue, life review, music, quiet space to breathe, and other tools, we will reconnect with what most inspires us. This is a non-judgmental retreat in which it is okay to be ungrateful, which is sometimes a necessary step in peeling off layers to a fundamental gratitude that springs from simply being alive.

This retreat was last offered September 2-4, 2011 at Rolling Ridge in Harpers Ferry, West Virginia.  If you would like to invite us to give this retreat in your area, please get in touch here.

Now you can relive the Poetry of Gratefulness 2008 or experience it for the first time, through a DVD or CD created by Conference Recording Services, or you can view free video clips.

E-courses for Reflection and Practice

Special readings several times a week and community interactions let you reflect, share, and practice at your convenience.  Taking part in e-courses benefits your personal growth and also supports the work of A Network for Grateful Living (ANG*L) and our sister site, Spirituality and Practice.

Click here to see an index of available courses.