My August Retreat 2019

2019 Retreat

 

What happens to me when I take my annual 11 days of silent retreat? Our Lady of Guadalupe Benedictine Monastery in Pecos, New Mexico is a beautiful isolated space among trees, rivers and mountains.

 

The Benedictine monks hold public prayer services six times a day. Psalms and scriptures are the backbone of the services. It relaxes me to fall into the cadence of the monks who chant and walk slowly. It fills me with awe to watch their reverent bows before the cross, the Reserved Sacrament, and each other.

 

The day before I left for the retreat, I had an encounter with a friend. My ego had temporarily emerged and I asked him a question that was more intended to impress him than to get advice. “How do I be loving when I meet people who cause such suffering to children?”

 

Without hesitation, he responded, “It is only possible with a non-dualistic mind.”

 

That shook me up as I realized how much I divided people into good (usually me) and bad (others). I know better. I know that living in an either/or dualistic perspective makes it impossible to see the whole situation from the perspective that all people have equal value and that goodness can be seen in each person.

 

So the next 11 days I spent in examining the many situations in which I find myself putting people in either/or rather than both/and. I found that my interior life blossomed as began to embrace all people that I had once labeled “bad.”

 

This was not easy. I work with refugees and hear the terrible stories of how they are abused and humiliated by ICE and Border guards. I hear the stories of the homeless and how they are ignored or abused by public. I listen to those who are “not white or powerful” and discover how much our American cultural system beats them down. I read about the treatment of the Indigenous people of the Amazon and the fires that is set to clear land in the Rain Forest.

 

As usual, my spiritual exercises consists of prayer, meditation and contemplation. I recite my usual morning prayer:

 

 “Be present, Spirit of God,
Within us, your dwelling place and home,
That this house may be one where all darkness is penetrated by your light,
All troubles calmed by your peace”

Then I pray for the 211 people who asked for prayers during my retreat. Writing their names on index cards allows me to pray for them as I walk the halls or during our silent meals.  I conclude by my writing prayers of gratitude in my journal.

 

For contemplation, I spend twenty minutes of silence in centering prayer, twice a day. This involves going deep inside to the source of being and ignoring the thoughts that crowd me. As soon as I realize that thoughts have emerged, I return to the depths. This happens over and over again. Sometimes I feel that maybe for a few seconds I relaxed at the center even though the center is experienced as being emptied out. This exercise, although it feels like a failure sometimes, helps me let go of those things that clutter my life. After doing contemplation for many years, I feel more connected to what is real. And more able to let go.

 

For meditation, I read Richard Rohr’s Universal Christ and wrote down the many insights that it gave me. During the four or five religious services (ten to thirty minutes each) I attended, I pondered deeply on the many psalms and scripture we chanted.

 

The best part of my day is sitting outside twice a day, on a bench under a leafy tree. For whatever reason, I so enjoy watching the Sun rise or set each day, staring at the mountains and trees.

 

During my retreat, I want to keep increasing the holiness in my life by opening up to every aspect of my life. In reading Richard Rohr, I rediscover that “Once we know that the entire physical world around us, all of creation, is both the hiding place and the revelation place for God, this world becomes home, safe, enchanted, offering grace to any who look deeply.” He concludes that there is no distinction between the holy and the profane.

 

I spend those eleven days to re-experience “the spontaneous awe at the sacredness of life and the infused presence of Mystery in one’s inner depth.” I keep quoting Rohr because he says so precisely what I experience.

 

As I try to make sense out of why it is so important for me to spend time outdoors each day, this sentence spoke to me. “To touch and to be touched by the Source–Everything visible, without exception, is the outpouring of God. It is essential to be connected with everything.

 

So, what happened to me on my retreat.

 

I felt myself slowing down each day and becoming quieter inside and out. Stress duties, aches, posturing, achievements, insights and control slipped away without effort. Somehow, in the dignified pace of the monastery, I let go of those things that I thought had to sustain me, especially my electronic tools and analytical mind. I found awe in a cycle of going to the center and returning.

The more I emptied out my self, more goodness poured in. I can’t explain the mechanism–it just happens.

I am ready to throw myself back into the fray, and see my kinship in every person; to be open to the sacredness in every tree.