Contemplative Retreat

This weekend I went along with some folks from Lakeland Community Church, where we have been attending, to Conception Abbey on a contemplative retreat. I called it a silence and solitude retreat but there is really more to it than just getting away for some peace and quiet. The photo is of a tunnel that ran underground between some of the buildings.

We stayed in private rooms that use to be student dorm rooms. They also reserved a meeting room for our times together and we had freedom to roam the grounds with the exception of the Monk's residence. The Monks pray together three or four times a day and we were free to sit in the Basilica during their prayer times. They mostly sing Psalms in a Gregorian Chant style, it was very different but in a moving spiritual way.

Saturday we had free time and were instructed to be silent from 10 AM until 5 PM. We read some things about the value of silence, in preparation. It provides a time we give the Lord to shape and transform us. One writer said, "The art of praying, as we grow, is really the art of learning to waste time gracefully--to be simply the clay in the hands of the potter".

I started reading Thomas Merton's "No Man Is An Island" last week and I took that along. It was the perfect book for the time there. Merton has a whole chapter on silence and solitude but the chapter that had the most impact for me was called Being and Doing.

Merton isn't an easy read, sometimes I get what he is saying and other times I can read and reread and not quite grasp it. In this chapter about being and doing, he says that we have trouble being because we don't believe in our own existence. As a result, we are always doing and trying to see ourselves in our doing, to see who we are and our impact on those around us. This all comes back around to our failure to believe and trust in God.

If we believe and trust God, we know he exists and accept our own existence in him. The less we are able to "be", the more we have to "do". When we strive to see ourselves, we are trying to see our own god-like characteristics. This is not the same as striving to be Christlike, in fact, it is just the opposite. Even Christ said he must be in the father and reflect the will and ways of the father - he can only do what the father tells him and what he learned from the father.

I've heard lots of comments about why Adam and Eve sinned. They were disobedient, they didn't understand God's instructions and or they failed to trust God's heart for them. But wasn't it the desire to be god-like?

It was a good time on a spiritual and personal level. Got to know some people at Lakeland and understand more of their ministry philosophy.