The path for individuals.
The Goldenwood Institute envisions a world where work is not just a means of earning a living but a creative expression of a flourishing humanity—a place where ongoing formation is experiential, integrative, and life-long. Guided by a robust theology of creation, work, and renewal, we believe that spiritual formation, imagination, nature, and justice are critical and often missing elements that expand our vision of what is possible in our world.
Hear again.
Slowing down and learning to hear and perceive again. Faith comes from hearing. This is the “being before doing” work: grounding, listening, health.
The most intensive individual formation program. A structured arc, September through April, forming people in their relationship with time, God, self, others, and work. Weekly on Zoom plus three in-person retreats. Communal, not a do-it-yourself workbook.
A lighter formation rhythm that tracks alongside Nautilus. Six times a year, two weeks per theme; a short daily guided listening session at midday with a two-week Listening Book. Best after Nautilus, reconnecting with community in a listening mode.
Contemplative spaces to process and reflect. A Friday night into Saturday, each quarter, of solitude and guided conversation: time to rest, and to learn to listen through Scripture, prayer and the voices of one another.
Immersive experiences to advance learning. The multi-day, in-person formation experience: being over doing; perception, prayer, shared story.
Dream anew.
Turning that renewed hearing into dreaming. Helping people slow down enough to see what is beginning to emerge, and understand it.
Takes an emerging dream and slows people down to understand what is really surfacing. Formerly the Dream Forum, born when people's dreams were being dashed and we wanted to revive the sense that we could still dream.
Make together.
The careful, communal work of nurturing a dream into something real: prototyping the new into existence, in community rather than through speed or profit-first logic.
Takes cultivated ideas and does the careful work of bringing something into the world, communally: bringing people in to test and prototype ideas into existence, deliberately unlike venture-capital speed and profit logic. Runs a few times a year.
