A Rachel's Vineyard weekend is a chance to get away from all the
daily pressures of work and family and focus on this painful
time in your life through a supportive and non-judgmental
process. The time away provides an opportunity to deeply enter
the grieving process and identify all the ways your abortion may
have effected you.
Rachel's Vineyard has a number of powerful exercises which
allow the soul to speak its grief and sorrow. The exercises help
to connect participants to their inner voice, to each other, and
to the love and compassion of God. The retreat exercises help
participants to accept forgiveness for themselves and others.
There is also an opportunity to re-connect with the children
that have been aborted on a spiritual level, to give them honor
and dignity through many special and creative spiritual
exercises as well as in a memorial service.
The weekend is a lot of work, but those who are willing to
journey through their grief will experience the power of
resurrection in their own lives. They will find meaning in what
has happened and allow God to transform the experience into
something that gives hope, liberation and peace.
Rachel's Vineyard belongs to those who intuitively sense that
life is a precious seed which has been given to us for
cultivation. We acknowledge the loss of that irreplaceable life
and the grief that comes from relinquishing one so intimately
connected to us.
Rachel's Vineyard is meant to help those who are trying to
fit the very normal epiphany of grief into a world that would
rather have them feel numb and blind, so as to maintain a safe
distance from the truth.
Its purpose is to allow the process of birthing self and
faith to proceed, rather than to be squashed by rhetoric, denial
and avoidance. It provides a safe, loving and non-judgmental
environment to search the fabric of our lives, the innermost
depths of the soul, an opportunity to be supported through
bereavement and grief and a lighted path to discover forgiveness
and reconciliation.
Mourning and grieving are necessary milestones which must be
passed so that our lives can continue. When this process is
complete there is re-birth and resurrection. There is new life
within our spirit which gives us hope in the future. There is an
opportunity to explore our lives, and appreciate our human
fragility. Through a very personal and intimate encounter with
the Living God, we come to know that God knows and loves us
despite our many weaknesses and human failures.