What is SELS?
The Spiritual Enrichment Lecture Series (SELS) is an annual event hosted by the Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality (CACS), Oxford. CACS is a global educational centre offering in-depth spiritual formation at all levels. SELS brings together scholars, spirituality practitioners, and those interested in deepening their spiritual life for an annual exploration of spirituality in action.
SELS 2027 takes that promise as its theme, following six Carmelite figures — mystics, a foundress, a philosopher, a martyr — who each met, in their own age, what it costs to truly live: loneliness, despair, the will to dominate, the question of what makes us human, and the discipline of really listening. Each lecture, delivered by an eminent scholar in Carmelite spirituality, shows how their hard-won wisdom still lights a path today.
Why attend SELS 2027?
Deepen your spiritual life
Learn from experts in Carmelite spirituality and apply their insights to daily life.
Connect with like-minded seekers
Join a global learning community of spiritual practitioners and those seeking to deepen their spiritual lives.
Engage in reflection & dialogue
Each lecture invites reflection and contemplation, and the chance to talk it through.
The six lectures
Held in the Dark: John of the Cross and the End of Loneliness
There is a particular kind of tired that comes from being endlessly reachable and rarely met — surrounded by contacts, feeds and group chats, and still, somehow, alone. Loneliness like this doesn’t always look like isolation; often it hides in plain sight, in rooms full of people. John of the Cross knew this darkness from the inside — imprisoned, abandoned, stripped of everything he loved — and discovered there something almost impossible to believe: that God was not absent from that cell, but nearer than ever, hidden inside the very silence that felt like abandonment. This lecture explores loneliness and solitude as two different things, and how John’s dark night still holds a companion for anyone who has ever felt unseen.
Life to the Full: Thérèse’s Trial of Faith and the Courage to Live
There are seasons when believing feels like effort with no reward — when the sky stays silent, love feels one-sided, and getting up each day is itself an act of will. Thérèse of Lisieux knew this not as a passing mood but as the daily reality of her final eighteen months, when heaven itself seemed to vanish and doubt pressed in from every side. And still she chose, again and again, to love as if it were true. This lecture sits inside her trial of faith and Christ’s own promise of life “to the full” — not a promise for the untroubled, but a hand held out to anyone for whom simply continuing feels like the hardest thing they’ll do today.
Almeida
All Must Be Friends: Teresa of Ávila and the Roots of Violence
Something in us reaches for control when we feel threatened — to dominate before we can be dominated, to see the other person as a rival or an obstacle rather than someone made, like us, in love. It is the oldest story there is, and it is still the story behind every war, every broken relationship, every quiet cruelty at work or at home. Teresa of Ávila lived through a Spain riven by suspicion and division, and built instead communities where her one non-negotiable rule was “in this house, all must be friends” (Way of Perfection 4:6). This lecture asks what actually feeds the will to dominate and victimise another person — and argues that friendship, not victory, is the only antidote that has ever really worked.
The Face the Machine Cannot See: Edith Stein and Human Dignity in the Age of AI
It is a strange, quiet unease many people carry now: the sense of having become a profile to be predicted, a pattern to be optimised, data to be used rather than a person to be known. As algorithms learn to imitate empathy, insight, even affection, an old question returns with new urgency — what actually makes us human, and can it survive an age that increasingly treats us as inputs? Edith Stein spent her life as a philosopher answering exactly this question, long before any machine could pretend to answer it for us. This lecture explores the beauty and irreducible dignity of the human person, and what Carmelite spirituality offers for staying fully human in an age that quietly tempts us not to.
The Listening Heart: Elizabeth of the Trinity and the Art of Loving Attention
Everyone is talking and hardly anyone feels heard — a strange loneliness of a hyper-connected age, and just as true inside families and parishes as it is online. Real listening, the kind that makes someone feel less alone in the world, has become rare enough to notice when it actually happens. Elizabeth of the Trinity built her entire spiritual life around one radical act of attention: listening to the God who dwells within, before speaking a single word back. This lecture explores contemplative listening as the root of every other kind — the discipline our whole age is quietly starving for.
I Want to See You: Marie-Eugène and the Grace of Being Truly Heard
To be truly seen and heard by another person is one of the rarer gifts we give or receive — rarer, perhaps, than we’d like to admit, in a world that rewards being impressive over being present, and where even close relationships can leave us feeling politely unknown. Marie-Eugène spent his life forming others in exactly this kind of attention, convinced that the way we accompany one another is itself a school of prayer. This closing lecture takes his own I Want to See God and turns it outward: what it means, in practice, to help someone else feel truly seen — a fitting note to end a year spent asking what it means to live, not merely to get by.
What’s included
- By registering you will be given access to the talk’s recordings for six months.
- One hour of live presentation, 2pm–3pm (UK time).
- Each talk stands alone but taken together they weave a common thread across the year.
- Whatever the stage of your journey, meet fellow pilgrims in a supportive, safe and sacred space.
- Shared silence and prayer at the beginning and end of each session.
Register for the full series
All six lectures as one registration. Early-bird and full rates are listed in the facts strip above.
REGISTER FOR THE FULL SERIESThe prices reflect the need to achieve self-sufficiency; if you’re able to give a little more, we would be very grateful. Donate here.
Centre for Applied Carmelite Spirituality · Carmelite Priory, Chilswell, Boars Hill, Oxford OX1 5HB · cacs.org.uk