Dear friends of Coracle and fellow pilgrims,

I am so excited to share with you an invitation and a significant update in the life of Coracle Baltimore. Below I share about our journey in Baltimore and what we have discerned and what we see on the horizon!

On Thursday, May 21st, we’ll host a special evening commemorating Coracle’s work in Baltimore (10 years!) and our next step as the first Coracle Chapter. We would love to celebrate this with you!

An Evening With Bill Haley to Celebrate the Launch of Coracle’s First Chapter Right Here in Baltimore

We share a common hunger to rest ever more securely in the overflowing love of the holy Trinity, Abba, Jesus and Holy Spirit.  And to see that love expressed and manifested in every dimension of our lives and communities.  We sense deeply that we are created for communion with God and with each other.  And that our calling is to steward His kingdom shalom throughout the created world.  We have grown to recognize that God loves us in all things and that His love is not limited in scope and capacity.  And our hearts cry for the fullness of Jesus’s kingdom reign to be realized in our shared communities and world.  We groan with all creation and the Holy Spirit that the brokenness and suffering all around us, personal and societal, breaks God’s heart as well and we cry out for His kingdom to come and His will be done just as it is in the kingdom of the heavens.

Since 2016, Coracle has been a common gathering place with like-minded companions who share our longings and hunger to truly be God’s embodied expressions of love in the world.   Birthed by Bill and Tara Haley in 2009 with the opening of Corhaven in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia, Coracle has been a beacon of hope for those hungering for more of God.  Through the offering of spiritual direction, day and weekend long retreats, the Coracle Fellowship, Space for God, pilgrimages, and weekly reflections, Coracle offered hope, vision, healing and sustenance for hungry seekers of God.  Once Wanda Bickers and I tasted of the richness of these offerings we wanted to make them more accessible to our friends and neighbors here in Baltimore.

We began with an Advent Retreat at Greg and Kit Elmer’s house in 2016 which led to the Coracle Fellowship coming to Baltimore in 2020, annual pilgrimages to St. Cuthbert’s (2018) & Iona (2024), Maryland Slavery Pilgrimages (2023 and 2024), deeper journeys of prayer and community through the Deeper Journey, Ignatian and Teresa of Avila prayer experiences, and beginning this past Fall the full Ignatian Exercises.  Our engagement with kingdom action in Baltimore has had its strongest communal expression in our deepening partnership with BUILD to address the blight of 70,000 vacant homes and properties in Baltimore, in addition to a number of other challenges to human flourishing across our city and adjacent counties.  We have experienced God bringing together brothers and sisters from across the rich cultural and racial expressions of His people across the wide array of congregational expressions of His church in loving communion amid the larger societal tensions of our day.

When we began, Wanda and I did not imagine we would become spiritual directors and I certainly didn’t imagine that God had another season of rich engagement of creating with Him that would lead to me transitioning to full time partnership with Coracle and a home-grown facilitation and oversight team.  And we sense there is more on the horizon which includes the opportunity to facilitate a non-residential monastic community here in Baltimore!  Our heart in all we do is to complement the work of congregations across Baltimore by offering respite and deepening for His people and their leaders to sustain them in the work of bringing shalom in His fullness in increasing degrees to the communities where He has placed us.

God’s expression of Coracle in Baltimore has grown organically alongside His faithful ministering of equipping for joining Him in the broken places in our world through Coracle as a whole.  Through mutual discernment and recognition of the movement of the Holy Spirit we have sensed it is time for Coracle in Baltimore to grow organizationally in its expression of God’s heart.  To that end we have discerned a model of partnership that allows for autonomy and creativity for local expressions of Coracle in collaboration with Coracle as a whole.  Coracle is ready to launch Coracle Baltimore as its first official chapter with the hope that others will follow.

To celebrate and bless this launch, we have invited Coracle’s founder and executive director, Rev. Bill Haley, to come to Baltimore the evening of May 21st to cast vision, bless, and celebrate the unique contribution God has for Coracle Baltimore in blessing His people and communities in Baltimore in partnership with all those who are faithfully serving Him here.  We will gather at Central Presbyterian Church in Towson, MD, 6:30-8:30 pm.

We would love for you to join us for this celebration as you have helped make this expression of God’s kingdom possible by your participation.  Come celebrate with us what God has done and learn the role we sense He has for us going forward and how that might bless you in your journey of ongoing growth and formation for the sake of His kingdom.

May grace and peace be yours in abundance,
Scott for the Baltimore Coracle Team