Advent is a time of looking forward with hope to the coming of Christ, of attending to darkness in anticipation of the light.

Advent is a time of looking forward with hope to the coming of Christ, of attending to darkness and the hope for light, the fulfilling of God’s promise. In this day, we will give space to explore where these aspects of Advent are connecting with us personally, the nature of our hopes and longings, and to help give them prayerful expression.

Nick Helm is an Anglican priest who was ordained in 1988, He was he Bishop of Sheffield’s Advisor in Spirituality and Chaplain to Whirlow Grange where some of you may have met him previously.

In the mid 90’s it was experiencing Ignatian Individually Guided Retreats that had a profound and transforming effect on his life and ministry. Since then, the Ignatian Spiritual Exercises have been foundational to his own spirituality and his spiritual direction.

He has been offering Spiritual Direction for over 25 years. This includes offering individual spiritual direction, accompanying people praying the Spiritual Exercises and Individually Guided Retreats. He has been involved in developing and running training courses in Spiritual Direction since 1997.

He is now retired from diocesan ministry but continues to be involved in the ministry of spiritual direction. He is also co-chair of the Spiritual Direction Forum UK and vice chair of the Society of Retreat Conductors.

Nick says: I am passionate about enabling people to dance their dream, God’s dream. I do this through one to one work of spiritual direction and spiritual direction formation programmes. I’ve been particularly helped by the wisdom of Ignatian Spirituality, continually finding it helps my engagement with the deepest realities of life and how I choose and live.

The key values that I seek to live from are love, commitment, integrity and compassion.

I know these are a gift of grace and continually desire to be open to grace touching me and enabling grace to touch others.

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