Tag Archives: retreat

ALIVENESS AND RETREAT

Posted on by
Reply

THE WORD RETREAT is spoken by me or to me (thank God) a dozen times in the average week. I’ve had conversation today with someone who’s writing about Retreats, and yesterday with someone looking forward to being on one. And I’m reading retreat, and praying retreat – the bare necessities in a parish priest’s toolbag – every day.

Some days, although we cannot pray, a prayer
utters itself. So, a woman will lift
her head from the sieve of her hands and stare
at the minims sung by a tree, a sudden gift …

Carol Ann Duffy, from Prayer

Retreat affords the possibility of a lifting of the head, of a sitting or standing stock-still; the possibility of a Word that comes, surprisingly, from we know not where, except that we hear it, feel it, somewhere “deep in there”. Retreat does not involve lack of concern with the external world, our own, or the world of others. It is, rather, a place to take the world and its concerns – and our own – to. Retreat, as Brother David teaches (see his talk on The Meaning of Retreat in the video above), is often a place of solutions and resolutions. “The solutions lie”, he says, “in our aliveness. This is what spiritual practice is all about – aliveness.”

ONLY 10 DAYS AGO

Posted on by
1

A CONUNDRUM, I wrote, ten days ago. Hard to leave the parish behind, though I love holidays. Well I’ve come full circle. It’s hard today to leave this retreat, though I love my parish. Maybe that’s just what life is. Conundrum. Brain teaser, enigma, puzzle, a quandary.

What is the answer? There is no easy answer, no complete answer. I have only clues, shells from the sea. The bare beauty of the channelled whelk tells me that one answer, and perhaps a first step, is in simplification of life, in cutting out some of the distractions. But how? Total retirement is not possible. I cannot shed my responsibilities. I cannot permanently inhabit a desert island. I cannot be a nun in the midst of family life. I would not want to be. The solution for me, surely, is neither in total renunciation of the world, nor in total acceptance of it. I must find a balance, somewhere, or an alternating rhythm between these two extremes; a swinging of the pendulum between solitude and communion, between retreat and return. In my periods of retreat, perhaps I can learn something to carry back into my worldly life. I can at least practice in these two weeks the simplification of outward life, as a beginning. I can follow this superficial clue, and see where it leads. Here, in beach living, I can try. One learns first of all in beach living the art of shedding …

Anne Morrow Lindbergh
Gift from the Sea

A balance, somewhere, or an alternating rhythm, between the many different facets of the complex creature – the lifetime conundrum – that is me. Balance, yes, that’s what I’m after. So I’m thankful that contemplation is God-given grace, not only within silence, or in withdrawal, but also in happenstance, daily enterprise, everyday action. Another both / and. Conundrum. But we’re given a constant stream of clues. Like an alphabet, an equation, another person, or musical notation. Renewed vision. Solitude and communion. Shells from the sea.

posted from iPad by BlogPress

Fuerteventura, Spain

PROFOUND SIMPLICITY

Posted on by
Reply

TODAY I MET ANOTHER MEMBER of my family: the human family that is. And incidentally we share the same family name, together with a love for retreat houses and what goes on within them, and Pat’s forthcoming visit to Glenfall House brings joy to my heart as I recall the depths (the highs and the lows) of a long silent retreat there many years ago … blessed a thousandfold by the gifts that flowed fresh from a wonderful herb-garden, a glorious kitchen, and fluted white china coffee pots at breakfast! And from the silence itself? – an extraordinary intimacy with fellow retreatants with whom one had hardly spoken more than a few words. A knowing that lies beyond language. A faith possessed of what Pat was to come to call Profound Simplicity. It’s a lovely thought that we may meet someday at Glenfall House. But until then we’ll meet and know in the silence, and in my returning to her glorious, knowing, praying poetry. Thanks Pat Marsh … and to all the beloved people who know me, and allow me to know them, in simplicity’s silences.

Profound Simplicity
as simple
as washing one another’s feet

Lord, forgive us
when we make discipleship
difficult

that was never
how you taught it

when I search your gospel teachings
I discover nothing more
and nothing less
than great simplicity

a basin and a towel
bread and wine
a simple touch
a word of forgiveness
a rhythm of prayer

take nothing for the journey

a grain of wheat
a mustard seed
the profound simplicity
of love

as simple
as washing another’s feet

forgive us
when we complicate discipleship
help us instead
to simply serve
out of your great love
and our
naked vulnerability

Pat Marsh

via By the Grace of God: Profound Simplicity.

SAINTS AND FATHEADS

Posted on by
Reply
IMG_1507-1

Ann Hyde prepares to be ordained Deacon

I DROVE MY NEW COLLEAGUE over to Bishop’s House this morning, and drove home with a full heart, praying a bit, and hoping a lot, for Ann and for all who are preparing to be ordained this weekend. I pray they’ll have a good retreat, one and all. Whatever they hear there will live on in their hearts for the rest of their lives; along with Sunday’s episcopal bidding, already well rehearsed:

In the name of our Lord, we bid you remember the greatness of the trust in which you are now to share: the ministry of Christ himself, who for our sake took the form of a servant. Remember always with thanksgiving that the people among whom you will minister are made in God’s image and likeness. In serving them you are serving Christ himself, before whom you will be called to account. You cannot bear the weight of this calling in your own strength, but only by the grace and power of God. Pray therefore that your heart may daily be enlarged and your understanding of the Scriptures enlightened. Pray earnestly for the gift of the Holy Spirit.

Elation, I remember,  at my Deacon’s Retreat in 1982, alongside a gnawing terror that came upon me suddenly. Neither the years of training, nor the cathedral rehearsal, prepare you for the day: “we bid you remember the greatness of the trust”. Glory be! This is serious, serious stuff. About as serious as serious gets. And seriousness has remained. But so too elation.

Amongst the joys and the sorrows, trials and tribulations, great faith and lost faith, hectic round and R S Thomas’ absence of clamour, a theological twinkle has remained a constant companion:  Geoffrey Paul, on the occasion of his Enthronement as  sixth Bishop of Bradford, in 1981, said

I don’t find faith any easier than any of you, and must echo the words of the epileptic boy’s father in a modern translation: ‘Lord, I believe but not enough.’ I shall want to do everything I can to help you to believe in practice what you say you believe, and I shall rely greatly on your faith and love and prayers to help me in my unbelief, so that by enlarging the area of believing, we may give God room to demonstrate his strange Christalmightiness in our midst.

And then, being a Christian is a matter of belonging to Christ with those who are his, and of course there is no way of belonging to Christ except by belonging, gladly and irrevocably, to all that marvellous and extraordinary ragbag of saints and fatheads who make up the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church.

The Enthronement Sermon, in The Pattern of Faith, an exposition of Christian doctrine by Geoffrey Paul, Churchman Publishing, 1986, page 135

And all who heard him knew that he was a holy bishop, and serious, and humane, and Christ-like and absolutely-hit-the-nail-on-the-head-dead-right. Encouragement there for retreatants tonight. Elated and serious, “remember the greatness” … gladly and irrevocably you’re to be marvellous and extraordinary, in company with all God’s people, both a saint and a fathead. Thank God,  and sing alleluia!