“Where there is sorrow, there is holy ground.”

~ Oscar Wilde

We’ve created our Blue Christmas service to hold you who are grieving, pained and burdened together in the presence of God to receive compassion and care. 

We gather contemplatively around a simple liturgy of Scripture and song, in Taizé style, that illuminates the suffering inherent in the Christmas story and makes room for our sorrows. Your depression, grief, anger, shame, loneliness and pain are welcomed, and it is our hope that you, too, can come to the manger, poor as you feel. 

The Christmas story reverberates with difficult realities–doubt, oppression, poverty, broken relationships, helplessness, grief, danger and death–but we often don’t make room to acknowledge these. It is the same in our lives: we need to make room for the painful realities amidst and underlying the joys. We invite you to come and lay your burdens down in the sacred space of the Blue Christmas service where we find Jesus in our suffering and ourselves in Jesus.

Jesus wept.

John 11:35

We will not be sharing our stories with each other in order to let ourselves be known by God without anxiety as to how another will receive us. However, we also know that some of you will come desiring to share your story with someone, needing someone to listen. We will have Spiritual Directors available afterward to listen, with whom you can set up additional times to meet if you wish. Spiritual Direction is another sacred space where your whole self and whole experience of life is welcome, where pain, burdens, and grief are “allowed.” For more information on Spiritual Direction, follow this link.

Dominican Center

1700 Fulton St. E

Grand Rapids, MI 49503

Note: If you enter the street address, Google Maps shows the wrong building, but if you enter “Dominican Center at Marywood” it shows the correct building. Apple Maps shows the incorrect building with either search.