What happens to us – and to others – when we find ways to write about the truth and depth and beauty and burden of the work that we do? Perhaps we discover connections we don’t yet know that we know. Perhaps we shock or delight or alarm. Perhaps we realize we’ve begun a project which deserves more attention over time. Or that we have something to teach, or to share, or to celebrate, or to learn. Who knows? One thing is sure, though: creative writing offers a reliable path to something new, both within and without, for all of us.
The Chaplaincy Innovation Lab is pleased to offer a writing group specifically created for chaplains. Join award winning journalist turned street-chaplain and Episcopal priest, Cristina Rathbone, for an 8 week generative writing workshop designed for chaplains of all spiritual traditions and none. The workshop will meet weekly, with sessions lasting 75 minutes, and will combine live writing from prompts, open exchange, and exploratory sharing of work.
At the end of the calendar year, the Chaplaincy Innovation Lab will publish a collection of selected works from the writers’ workshop for personal reflection and application in spiritual care.
Schedule
These writing groups will occur in 4 sequential cohorts, each with a maximum of 10 participants, during 2025.
DAYS AND TIMES TBD
DATES TBD
Cost
General public / Subscriber-level member of Chaplaincy Innovation Lab community:
$600
Innovator-level of Chaplaincy Innovation Lab community:
$500
Registration includes 8 group sessions, a printed copy of the year-end selected reflections, and a copy of [BOOK ON WRITING?]
Your facilitator
Rev. Cristina Rathbone is an award-winning author, turned Episcopal priest and Spiritual Director. Upon being ordained in 2009, she served for ten years as the Canon Missioner for Boston’s Cathedral Church of St. Paul, where she worked primarily with chronically homeless and marginally housed people. In partnership with them, she birthed a new faith community, MANNA (Many Angels Needed Now and Always) which remains a thriving and multi-faceted ministry of the Cathedral. The daughter of Cuban refugees on her mother’s side, Cristina went on to develop the Bridge Chaplaincy for the Diocese of the Rio Grande, helping them find plausible, pastoral and incarnate ways to serve migrants and asylum seekers along the international border between Ciudad Juárez and El Paso. Following the onset of COVID, she worked in partnership with Episcopal Migration Ministries to launch Neighbor to Neighbor, a national network designed to connect Episcopal congregations with newly arrived asylum seekers in their own, local contexts. Since the Summer of 2021 she has served as Rector of Grace Church: An Episcopal Community in the Southern Berkshires, a parish which sold their building in order to focus more deeply on God’s mission in the world.
Cristina recently returned to her earlier work as writer and journalist and completed her third book, The Asylum Seekers: A Chronicle of Life, Death and Community at the Border, which Broadleaf Books will publish in March 2025. She is the author of two earlier award-winning books of narrative non-fiction: On the Outside Looking In: A Year in the Life of an Inner City High School (Grove/Atlantic Press, 1998) and A World Apart: Women, Prisons and Life Behind Bars (Random House 2005).
Cristina is the mother of two grown sons, Jack and Lucas. She lives in Western Massachusetts.
Registration questions may be directed to Michael Skaggs, Lab Director of Programs, at michael@chaplaincyinnovation.org.