Monday, July 23, 2007
Friday, July 20, 2007
Silent Retreat 2007 summary
I went this year hoping, I think, to recapture something. I wouldn't have admitted that ahead of time, but as the retreat went on, it became clearer to me that God was more interested in the present moment than he was in transporting me back in time to give me an experience or feeling I've had before. Two years ago, I went at the end of a terrible time with Bill....really the culmination of all that was the worst in our marriage. By the time I actually went, some things had cleared and it was on the upswing, but I needed my retreat to help me sort out the marriage thing better and to recapture a sense of God in my life. I had just formally come into the Catholic Church three months before the retreat after a long and eventful journey, and I just needed to rest and regroup. At that time God made his presence known in a few 'big' ways: synchronicities, overwhelming insights, times of tears and wrestling, new perspectives, miraculous hiney-tingling hair-raising Presence. Needless to say it was a major event in my spiritual life, and it ushered in an almost-two year period of joy. Joy in God, joy in my marriage's turnaround, joy in life. But there is subtle trouble afoot when one neglects the present and tries to live off the fat of a past experience. You can go for awhile assuming everything is OK, you can brush off small offenses, you can ignore creeping aridity -- because you, in the past, experienced God so powerfully, or because you had a conversion in your marriage. But eventually the cumulation of those collective apathies catches up. In my case, I realized how long it had been since God was an everyday encounter for me; I realized all the signs of strain and tension that my marriage was sustaining; I realized how presumptuous I'd become.
So I thought going on a retreat would take me back to something I'd found before. But God doesn't seem to work like that. He didn't appear, speak, or otherwise grant me an 'experience' I could look back later on and say, "Yeah, that proves to me that God was present with me." Nope, the benefit of this retreat was in learning something else.
On the first day that I met with Sr. Barbara, after listening to the short version of my background, etc., she startled me by saying, "You are close to God." Just like that. Matter of factly. I was stunned....how could she dare to make such an assumption to me after 10 minutes? I asked her. She replied, "Because you ARE!" ( She was not, lest you suspect it, some touchy-feely sister who strummed a guitar and made sure everyone felt positive feelings. She was probably in her 50s and from Brookline MA and I envisioned her going to high school with Hillary Clinton.) So I stopped and thought about it. What if I just accepted her observation as true? What if I stopped beating myself up with how I SHOULD be close to God, and why I WASN'T close to God, and what I needed to do so I WOULD be close to God once again, and just accepted as true that I was now as close to God as I'd ever be? How would that change my life and thinking?
So again, I was dealing with the topic of God's presence, but now I was dealing with it as a reality. That God is already Present. That God never moves. That not only can nothing separate me from the love of God (height, depth, etc.) in an eternal kind of otherworldly sense, but nothing separates me from God in every single isolated present moment of my life. That I can awaken every morning and assume a stance of Presence, not Absence. I am close to God.
How would it seem different to live in that realization, really? It might mean that I'd never have another 'experience' of God's presence; could I live without it? It could mean that I'd begin to realize God's presence in dullness, in ordinary chores, and release my death-grip on needing to feel significant in some grand cosmic scheme, and just relax in being who I am in my little insignificant corner of the world.... and be okay with that. Can I come to grips with being Insignificant? Can I rest assured that God's Presence doesn't depend upon my achieving anything in my life or 'impacting' anyone? Maybe this perspective would mean that I would start to recognize that God is, in fact, the very person I'm talking to, the very pot I'm scrubbing, the very steering wheel I'm turning. God is appearing to me all the time; maybe I'm just not seeing it. Maybe his essence resides in the space between the whirling electrons of everything I see. Maybe his essence is love, and wherever something is done with love, wherever someone needs or senses love.... that's what God is. (Catholic theology even speaks to this idea ....Thomas Aquinas says that the Spirit is the generation of love between the Father and the Son.) Or as Erasmus, and Jung after him, said, "Bidden or not bidden, God is Present."
That I suppose sums up my retreat. There's a lot more. But at least I know my starting point now: I am close to God.
I discovered some good reading: I'm reading the autobiography of Therese of Liseaux. She's of a different time and frame of reference, but she's an interesting character who has a lot to say about laboring in obscurity! I also picked up two other really good books on the spiritual life: one is "The Saints' Guide to Happiness" and the other is an older classic "Abandonment to Divine Providence" -- both are worth going through a few times.
So I thought going on a retreat would take me back to something I'd found before. But God doesn't seem to work like that. He didn't appear, speak, or otherwise grant me an 'experience' I could look back later on and say, "Yeah, that proves to me that God was present with me." Nope, the benefit of this retreat was in learning something else.
On the first day that I met with Sr. Barbara, after listening to the short version of my background, etc., she startled me by saying, "You are close to God." Just like that. Matter of factly. I was stunned....how could she dare to make such an assumption to me after 10 minutes? I asked her. She replied, "Because you ARE!" ( She was not, lest you suspect it, some touchy-feely sister who strummed a guitar and made sure everyone felt positive feelings. She was probably in her 50s and from Brookline MA and I envisioned her going to high school with Hillary Clinton.) So I stopped and thought about it. What if I just accepted her observation as true? What if I stopped beating myself up with how I SHOULD be close to God, and why I WASN'T close to God, and what I needed to do so I WOULD be close to God once again, and just accepted as true that I was now as close to God as I'd ever be? How would that change my life and thinking?
So again, I was dealing with the topic of God's presence, but now I was dealing with it as a reality. That God is already Present. That God never moves. That not only can nothing separate me from the love of God (height, depth, etc.) in an eternal kind of otherworldly sense, but nothing separates me from God in every single isolated present moment of my life. That I can awaken every morning and assume a stance of Presence, not Absence. I am close to God.
How would it seem different to live in that realization, really? It might mean that I'd never have another 'experience' of God's presence; could I live without it? It could mean that I'd begin to realize God's presence in dullness, in ordinary chores, and release my death-grip on needing to feel significant in some grand cosmic scheme, and just relax in being who I am in my little insignificant corner of the world.... and be okay with that. Can I come to grips with being Insignificant? Can I rest assured that God's Presence doesn't depend upon my achieving anything in my life or 'impacting' anyone? Maybe this perspective would mean that I would start to recognize that God is, in fact, the very person I'm talking to, the very pot I'm scrubbing, the very steering wheel I'm turning. God is appearing to me all the time; maybe I'm just not seeing it. Maybe his essence resides in the space between the whirling electrons of everything I see. Maybe his essence is love, and wherever something is done with love, wherever someone needs or senses love.... that's what God is. (Catholic theology even speaks to this idea ....Thomas Aquinas says that the Spirit is the generation of love between the Father and the Son.) Or as Erasmus, and Jung after him, said, "Bidden or not bidden, God is Present."
That I suppose sums up my retreat. There's a lot more. But at least I know my starting point now: I am close to God.
I discovered some good reading: I'm reading the autobiography of Therese of Liseaux. She's of a different time and frame of reference, but she's an interesting character who has a lot to say about laboring in obscurity! I also picked up two other really good books on the spiritual life: one is "The Saints' Guide to Happiness" and the other is an older classic "Abandonment to Divine Providence" -- both are worth going through a few times.
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