the first part... thinking about land and a friend

Reflecting back on Saturday....

I am sitting in a retreat center with several members of my church. I am pondering if I will be a sweaty mess for the celebration I am attending later in the evening, and if I will survive a retreat which is so heavy on group time. But the retreat is a time for us to build relationships, so I relax into the group and hope to stay cool.


I am pondering who has been important in my spiritual journey. I pick up the stone to show the group I am prepared to speak and say... "John Touchberry." A few members ignore the fact that I am holding the stone and say, "His obituary was in the paper today." Now there are bigger things taking over my thoughts. I think of a trip to Bartram's Garden, and a year of weekly conversations, and how on a Christmas morning he began the cleansing of thoughts keeping me from a life with Christ, and about a friend who broke through years of silence to say hello just the other week on facebook, and of a trip to visit him on a mountain top, and I think about his wife, and I think about what an amazing blessing it was to know him....


Given free time I walk down a hill and I am standing beside the Monocacy Creek. My feet and spirit are at home. If I walked a mile south I would be in a highly favored birdwatching spot of my younger days. Turn north and go upstream, the creek becomes two... the east and west branches. There is a hill that divides those branches and that is where my family moved when I was five. In early spring I would race down that 2-3 mile hill on my bike, ride 10-20 miles and suffer my way back up it. By the fall, I would be exloring 60-80 miles on a weekend day. I can only hope that I will ever know a place so well.

John Touchberry loved that mountain in NC and because of that many folk were sad when he retired and left Pennsylvania.

At 2:20 my friends left the retreat center. I sat on a bench and waited for Mosaic Woman. In silence and in the shade, I had time to think some more.

Seven hours later I knew a haircut was going to happen (it has been years since the last)... but that is another story for another day.

...

unfolding through the iPod

Sunday morning at the retreat center, I was still craving silence. So after a breakfast conversation, I move to an empty table, take out my iPod and fill out the evaluation form.

I think some of the classic jazz standards speak volumes. This one showed me yet again that God's unfolding kingdom can come at us after being digitalized and shuffled.

Etta James steps backs from the blues to sing about a longing and love that is as deep as the ocean
How far would you travel? How far is this journey? and if this love was lost, how many tears would flow?

Thanks to Irving Berlin for wondering about love.

not quite silent

It has been three years since I attended a Walking With God Retreat, and I was not quite up for one. too much noise for this silent guy. so I adapted.

Friday morning, I being not on top of things asked.... What is the topic of this retreat I am packing up for?

Mosaic Woman.... Dark Night Of The Soul.

Me..... I signed up for a dark night of a soul! How stupid is that?

MW..... Hmmmm

I largely signed up to see some good folk, especially WC. We each consider the other a spiritual master. I may be right. And there she was as I entered the building. Soon enough we were laughing. She is like that, exuberant.

I tell WC..... we need to talk. We set a time.

The Mennonite Catholic (she loves singing hymns with the first and the daily mass of the second) who presented on St John of the Cross and dark nights of souls, makes it clear to me that I have been in a dark place for the past 4-5 weeks. I begin to think that maybe, just maybe God remembered what I had signed up for and said, "OK, so now is a good time to have his past crash back on top of him."

I skip the first workshop which I had signed up for and head to the labyrinth in the woods. It actually loops around a few trees! I have walked them many times and this may have been the deepest a labyrinth has taken me. I went places I won't go to here, but God, WC and Mosaic Woman have agreed to go on the journey with me and it just goes to prove that no matter how much one thinks one has healed, there is room for more. I need to go there. Or I can stay where I am. Wholeness is not all that it is said to be.

I skip the second workshop and head back to the labyrinth. I am calmer. I go take a nap.

I sit with WC and she listens. I ask for help. I swat mosquitoes away from her.

After dinner. After the Taize service. After the Eucharist. After the campfire. After the chat with a stranger in the dining hall, who clearly does not understand personal space isssues... gave me a hug this morning. After I drive down to another part of the camp.... another car pulls into the parking lot. A young woman is looking for someone. It is a name I know. A woman I know from many retreats. I say, "I can take you to her."

Riding back up the hill, I find out that the husband of my friend is in the hospital. Soon I will be in bed listening to Keith Jarrett's piano soothe me as I think of friends who have received bad news while retreating with God.

The next day, I offer up a prayer to these two women.

Then I am helping a Mennonite Catholic prophetess with her luggage. You never know who will bring you out of the darkness by taking you deeper into it. WC seems to think I need to contact this prophetess. So I ask her for her e-mail. For now, the perennials I planted last week need some water.

silence!

tower on the Jesuit Center
Wernersville, PA

OK, so I am going to resist the world especially a desire to know what other think of Sophia and how the Phillies are doing, but use the blessing of the computer at the Jesuit Center to keep up with my Blog.

two days of silence and I have not been given a Bible scripture to reflect upon; I should have had 6 bu now. Sister Maria seems to be knowing what she is doing as she directs me to Sophia, and though I don't know much of anything about Sophia, I have at least figured out that it is a feminine image of God. Well, that's the name of the retreat I signed up for with a strange heart. Sister Maria is trying to have me open it.

On the night I got here she gave me a prayer by Joyce Rupp (and yes, she is the reason I walk these halls with a beautiful mug made by a friend). That night as we sat in silence, that would be my fellow retreatants and myself the lone male, I change the pronouns to include all.

On the first full day Sister Maria had me bring Sophia into three aspects of my life which I have brought into silence. The administrators at my school who are supporting my desire to get a degree in spiritual direction, my relationship with my students, and missing Margaret. It goes well. I realize the students are at times like the wedding guest who is not dressed properly and gets thrown out (that day's Gospel), but I then take it further to the importance of the reentering of the kingdom or of my classroom. Can I greet the students like the father greets the prodigal son? The importance of missing Margaret strikes more after I call her, in a moment of clarity that could have come a lot sooner, I realize I need to call her as much for my own sake as for hers and if I look at it that way, I may have a better attitude while doing it.

This morning I tell Sister Maria I resisted the urge to go to the library to research who exactly this Sophia I am praying to is. She encourages that behavior. Provides no scripture to help me and says to keep listening for Sophia. I listen to Madeleiene Peyroux sing "I am going to sit write down and write myself a letter and make believe it came from you, going to write words oh so sweet, they are going to knock me off my feet...." wow, I say that's what Sister Maria wants me to do, so I take the poem by Joyce Rupp and rewrite it as if it is written to me, and yes the words are sweet and full of love.

Later during my evening prayer, I read the letter and respond to it line by line. It's all about mindfulness and opening one's heart and about God's desire, Sophia's desire to be with me. And after two days my attitude is bared to Sophia. I came here because OTHER folk believe in this stuff, and it will help me in working with them. Once again I am afraid of what will happen to ME if I believe in a feminine image of God. Will, I become new age and move to Santa Fe, or possibly will I be a man with a more complete image of God who hangs out with Episcopalians in Lansdale. who knows anything, but there are five full days of silence yet to go and I may yet get a Bible passage.

packing for silence

two of my favorite mugs,  I take the one in the background to Wernersville

M looks at the dining room table and says, "It looks like you are going away for a week."

I am and I will be silent for most of it. There are many tough parts of an eight day silent retreat and saying good bye is close to the top.

Wondering why you paid money to do such a thing at the beginning, and leaving the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, PA when it is over are two other difficult things.

The dining room table is loaded. Maybe it shouldn't be, but it is. There are six items that did not make it on my first 8 day retreat in 2004, but I made note of it and have taken them ever since. And there is one new item I hope to be able to find.

The six:
Jazz to inspire me while doing art
My own mug for water and tea
clothing to exercise
an autobiography, this time by Dorothy Day
a bottle of port, to sip while doing my examen
envelopes to write M a few letters

the one:
my pool stick if I can find it.

My hope is that I can be mindful. That I can slow down, feel what is in my heart, present it to God, and then listen to what happens next.

My anxiety about the gardens being dry has been destroyed by three days of rain. I probably won't even do my normal drive to the school halfway through the retreat.

The silence will be broken three time a day. Meeting with my spiritual director for an hour, singing and praying at mass, and calling M at night to say good night. This makes my absence easier, especially for her. The first time I did not call her, but I kept connected by writing an epic letter which I gave her on my return home.

This is my hope. This is what I can imagine happening. I am answering the call to be still in order to know God. I come home knowing myself better and introduce M to what I have learned. I love her for understanding and respecting my need to do this. It all starts with saying good bye and one last day of teaching.