Silent retreat


The first part of this year's course was to lead a nine day silent retreat at the university's own retreat centre at Griswold, Iowa. It's a beautiful place, a few acres of woodlands attracting hummingbirds, woodpeckers and deer, all surrounded by farmland (corn) as far as the eye can see.

I did seriously underestimate the challenge though. I expected that there would be a few hours a day where we (my third-year classmates and I) would be giving spiritual direction (a one-on-one conversation with a retreatant where we don't so much direct as accompany and help them explore what is happening as they pray) and doing some reflection on this, and then there would be half a day free to basically have my own retreat.

Nup. Every day was two one-hour spiritual direction sessions, followed by writing up a reflection and excerpts of the conversation, then a one hour meeting with a supervisor, plus writing that up, then a two hour small group "peer supervision" session. Plus myself and one other priest took turns celebrating Mass each day. I'm lucky, I can process things and write pretty quickly, meaning I still had time for an hour of my own prayer first thing in the morning, and a walk to watch the sunset in the evening after I finished all my papers at about 8.30pm. But I know some of my classmates were writing late into the night.

All in all it was quite intense, but a really beautiful experience. My two directees were both protestant pastors of 30+ years experience in ministry, and it was a privilege to be of service to them. It's good that this model of spiritual direction isn't about teaching, because there's nothing I could have taught them. Instead, it's about listening closely, noticing what is going on in myself spiritually as a barometer of what might be going on in them spiritually, and then inviting them to notice certain aspects of their experience, sometimes helping to join the dots.

So I got to watch my two directees up close as they rediscovered aspects of their relationship with God which can often get submerged under the busyness of life, which is why we go on retreat. I also got to notice the change in the congregation at Mass, as each day there seemed to be both a greater stillness in silence and a greater gusto in shared prayer and song, plus a noticeable but hard to describe deepening look of love on people's faces as they came forward for communion.

Harder work than I expected, but all of us intern directors finished up with a sense of -wow, we just did that! 

Now, back to college, with orientation tomorrow (Sunday - we're 15 hours behind), and classes beginning on Monday.

Comments

  1. Charmaine9 June 2018 at 16:39

    Looking forward to hear your experiences and learning from your

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Fr Jim McKeon11 June 2018 at 18:50

      Thanks Charmaine. It was a truly wonderful experience

      Delete

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