The Evelyn Underhill Association

Welcome to the Evelyn Underhill Association

In Memoriam

Dana K. Greene
1942 – 2023

Dana Katherine Greene, President Emerita of the Evelyn Underhill Association, died on December 29, 2023, at her home in Alexandria, Virginia, surrounded by family members.

Born in 1942 in Port Monmouth, New Jersey, to Charles and Dorothea Greene, she had two sisters, Mary and Karen, and a brother, David. She graduated from the College of New Rochelle in New York, where she wrote her senior thesis on Dorothy Day, an early inspiration for her. She then joined the second group of Peace Corps volunteers to go overseas and served for two years in Costa Rica. On her return home, she earned a master’s degree in history at Northern Illinois University and a PhD in humanities at Emory University, where she met her husband, Richard Roesel, at the local Newman House. They were married for 55 … Read more

Annual Quiet Day 2024

“Kindle our cold hearts and light up our dark minds:”
Evelyn Underhill’s encouragement during fragile times

Robyn Wrigley-Carr

Led by theologian Robyn Wrigley-Carr

Saturday, June 15, 2024, 9:30am – 3:30pm

Nourse Hall, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church
3001 Wisconsin Ave N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20016

Please bring a sack lunch

Registration begins May 1, 2024
Download Registration Form


We live in a fragile world, with wars, COVID and climate change. Underhill’s words written during World War II provide us with light amidst this darkness. As World War II struck, Underhill was revising her retreat talks on the Lord’s Prayer (Abba) for publication in 1940. Then during World War II (until her death in June 1941), Underhill wrote words of support, inspiration and challenge to her Prayer Group (quaintly named the “Theological Kindergarten”). In these letters and in Abba, we … Read more

Encounters with Evelyn Underhill

Esther Moir de Waal

Esther Moir de Waal is a foremost scholar in the Benedictine and Celtic traditions and a beloved spiritual writer who pioneered the application of monastic spirituality to everyday life. A historian trained at Cambridge University and the mother of four adult sons, she has lectured and offered retreats in her native United Kingdom and globally. She is the author of many articles and eight books on spiritual life. The Evelyn Underhill Association is grateful she agreed to a brief interview with Dana Geene, president emerita of the EUA, on her memories of reading Underhill, her recollections of the sense of place she associates with Underhill, and the importance of Evelyn Underhill in her own world–and ours.


My first encounter with Evelyn Underhill was by way of Pleshey, and I remember it vividly. I was a graduate … Read more

2021-22 The Evelyn Underhill Association Newsletter

“Curing Solitude”? Retreats and the Experience of Solitude in Community – Celebration of Evelyn Underhill on the Eightieth Anniversary of Her Death – Authentic Prayer and Authentic Leadership: Reflections on Bishop Frank Griswold’s talk on Evelyn’s Day 2021 – Evelyn Underhill and Jacopone Da Todi

Evelyn Underhill and Jacopone Da Todi

By Dana Greene

Dana Greene

I begin with a disclaimer. I am not a theologian or historian of spirituality but rather a biographer. I mention this because one of the descriptors of a biographer is as detective, one who searches for every clue in order to understand a life. I say this because it will help explain why I have chosen to speak about a great lacuna of EU life, the period after the Great War, 1918-1920. We know little about this time, but it is an axial point in Underhill’s life, a turning from her life as a scholar of mysticism to a vocation as retreat leader and spiritual guide. By 1921 she has returned to the Anglican church from which she had been estranged for many years and she sought out the counsel of Baron F. von Hugel, … Read more

Authentic Prayer and Authentic Leadership: Reflections on Bishop Frank Griswold’s talk on Evelyn’s Day 2021

By Kathy Staudt, EUA President

Kathy Staudt, EUA President

In his talk on Evelyn’s feast day, June 15, 2021, Bishop Frank Griswold both modeled and reflected on what it means to be a “person of prayer.” He said he does not study Evelyn Underhill, but that he has found her to be a companion, experiencing in her teaching the way that Christ comes to us through the saints.

He began by reflecting and expanding on the importance of worship and adoration in the life of prayer, so foundational to all of Underhill’s work. A person of prayer is someone who is attached to God at the very deepest level, and who is learning that praise, worship and service are all part of our “yes” to the Holy Spirit praying in us, a “yes” to who God has made us to … Read more

“‘Curing Solitude’? Retreats and the Experience of Solitude in Community”

By Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw, July 2, 2020

Rev. Dr. Jane Shaw

“The intense silence seemed to slow down one’s far too quick mental time and give one’s soul a chance. To my surprise a regime of daily communion and four services a day with silence between, was the most easy, unstrained and natural life I had ever lived. One sank down into it, and doing it always with the same people, all meaning it intensely, and the general atmosphere of deep devotion – for the whole house seemed soaked in love and prayer – cured solitude. [1]

This was the experience of the writer Evelyn Underhill when she went on her first retreat in the summer of 1922. She went to Pleshey, a recently established retreat house in Essex, alongside a group of elementary school teachers from the East … Read more

A Memorial for Evelyn Underhill (1875 – 1941)

An important anniversary

June 15th 2021 was the 80th anniversary of the death of a remarkable woman, Evelyn Underhill. She is one of only 18 modern women whose lives are commemorated in the Church of England’s Calendar of Holy Days.

As a gifted writer and retreat leader she helped, and still helps, countless people around the world who are searching for a relationship with God. She asked the questions that Christians and others seeking God are still asking, and through her writing was able to address them in a way that is still meaningful in the 21st century.

A new memorial

Evelyn Underhill is buried in the Additional Burial Ground of Hampstead Parish Church. Followers from all over the world come looking for her grave, but it is hard to spot because she is described simply as ‘Evelyn’, ‘the wife … Read more

Our “Spiritual War-Work” in the Age of COVID-19

By Robyn Wrigley-Carr – May 10, 2020

During World War 2, the British, Anglican, mystical theologian and spiritual director, Evelyn Underhill (1875-1941), encouraged a small “Prayer Group” to pray for world leaders, calling it their “spiritual war-work.”[1]

Our current pandemic has often been referred to as a “war,” yet a battle against an invisible enemy that is somehow uniting us all in our common humanity—regardless of nationality, race, gender or sexuality. The language of “war” when referring to COVID-19, has caused me to reflect upon Underhill’s insights—written during our last world war—as a challenge to our Christian response to this current global health crisis.

During World War 1, Underhill contributed to the war effort through writing and translating guide-books for Naval Intelligence. But towards the end of that war, Underhill (in her words) “went to pieces.”[2] The reality of war … Read more