What is the 5 Day Academy for Spiritual Formation?

The 5 Day Academy is for laity and clergy of all denominations who hunger for renewal and spiritual growth. The Academy model invites participants to spend time apart in a Christian retreat setting with worship at the center. Morning and evening prayers, eucharist, and silence provide the container for each day. The faculty make a daily presentation on their theme - one in the morning and the other in the afternoon. Participants are then provided the time and space to respond to this theme through silence, written and spoken word, prayer, worship, and community sharing. The daily schedule is based on the Benedictine monastic schedule.
The intent of the Academy is for participants to be informed, nurtured, encouraged, and sustained by the spirit of God and to provide means to carry that into their daily lives. When the Academy is over our hope is for participants to be renewed in mind, body, and soul to live as faithful disciples of Christ in relationship with God, community, and creation.
This 5 Day Academy is sponsored by the Great Plains Conference of the United Methodist Church under the guidance of The Upper Room®.

The 2025 Great Plains Five Day Academy for Spiritual Formation

is scheduled for

May 4 through 9, 2025

Attend virtually via Zoom or in-person at the St. Benedict Center near Schuyler, Nebraska.

The theme of this Academy is

“Eyes to see and ears to hear - Attentiveness to the Wor[l]d"

with presenters Amy Oden and Juan Carlos Huertas.

We have a flood of sensory input that we must sort through to live our lives. This is not just a modern problem, but the inundation of information from the internet has only increased the storm surge. To cope, we quickly habituate ignoring things - seeing what we do only through a particular angle and hearing things only in a particular tone. Details get lost. Whole scenarios get lost. The Jesus' exhortation to his followers quoted in the theme attest to this as an ancient problem. Our perception limited to what we habitually see and hear constricts our flexibility to dance the dance of following Christ with our mind, body, and spirit. Our presenters will serve as our spiritual guides pointing out beauties and challenges on our way - things we miss because of habit - holding before us new sights and singing for us new harmonies for inspiration from the World and from the Word through which the World was made.

Amy Oden will be giving presentations on “Jesus’ invitation to Mindful Living”. Jesus invites us to have eyes to see and ears to hear, to be attentive to God in the present moment in daily life, especially in times of trouble or challenge. We’ll explore spiritual practices that help root us in Christian mindfulness.

Juan Carlos Huertas’ presentations will be on “Scripture as Liberative Text”. In these we will be invited to approach the reading of scripture and meditating on it in a way that liberates not just the reader but the communities where we live, work, and play. They will invite the community to a type of reading and hearing of the story that is formative, communal, and liberative.

Optional reading:

  • Amy Oden, Right Here, Right Now: The Practice of Christian Mindfulness, Abingdon Press, 2017.

  • Tricia Hersey, Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto, Little, Brown Spark, 2022.

  • Miguel de la Torre, Reading the Bible from the Margins, Orbis, 2013.

  • Cole Arthur Riley, This Here Flesh: Spirituality, Liberation, and the Stories that Make Us, Random House, 2023.

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