This endowed program, sponsored by Berkeley Divinity School but open to all YDS students, is committed to preparing students for spiritually informed service and scholarship as well as lay and ordained ministry. Annand’s initiatives are intended to foster personal spiritual formation, provide experience with a variety of spiritual disciplines, offer students a broad view on trends in spiritual expression, and nurture integration of students’ spiritual and intellectual life. Among Annand’s programs are the First Year Formation Groups—small groups specially designed to support spiritual growth as students make the transition to Divinity School life. Other offerings include individual and group spiritual mentoring, quiet days, workshops, and a variety of other small-group activities. The Annand Program is a helpful resource for students asking questions about faith or striving to deepen their own spiritual formation. M.Div. students often find Annand initiatives particularly supportive as they seek to fulfill spiritual growth and formation expectations for their portfolio. 

The program, a gift from Berkeley Divinity School to the wider YDS community, provides resources for spiritual formation free to all YDS students. Among Annand’s offerings are:

• spiritual wayfinding, regular individual meetings with a mentor trained to listen deeply and respectfully to and with students to the Spirit at work or play in their life;
• contemplative retreats held at convents/monasteries;
• day retreats or small groups on campus; and
• Ignatian spiritual exercises in everyday life, involving a commitment to daily prayer and weekly meetings with a director over more than forty weeks throughout the academic year.

Annand offerings are meant to help students integrate their spiritual and intellectual lives, find new ways to pray, deepen their awareness of God in their lives, discern their path forward, and live out their faith struggles with the support of others.

More information is available by contacting Berkeley Divinity School at Yale, 203.432.9291, or annand@yale.edu.