Welcome to Brothers and Sisters, the weekly meetup for prayer* and community at Daily Kos. We put an asterisk on pray* to acknowledge that not everyone uses conventional religious language, but may want to share joys and concerns, or simply take solace in a meditative atmosphere. Anyone who comes in the spirit of mutual respect, warmth and healing is welcome.
Site regulars and friends of mine might have noticed that I was awfully quiet for the week before Christmas. That was because I took the week off, after a long and busy and stressful year at work, to make a retreat at New Melleray Abbey outside of Dubuque. I was hoping to use the time away to calm down and relax from the stresses of everyday life, and to think/reflect/pray on a number of issues that have been stirring around in the back of my head for some time now.
It was a bit of a job getting there, thanks to some seasonal weather. I was scheduled to start my retreat sometime on Saturday afternoon, December 11. But by Friday afternoon, the forecasters were calling for heavy snow, mixed with or preceded by, freezing drizzle--and I had a long drive on mostly back country roads ahead of me, through hilly country. So I booked a hotel room in Dubuque and drove up Friday night after finishing up at the office and hastily packing my bags. I met up as planned with some friends in Dubuque on Saturday morning, but by the time we'd finished with lunch, the rain that had followed the freezing drizzle had turned to quite heavy snow. It took me upwards of half an hour to drive the 15 miles from their house to the monastery, on roads that were bad and getting worse by the minute. Blizzard warnings had been posted for the Dubuque area from Saturday evening through Monday, so I was fortunate to get there at all--and even more so that once I'd parked my car, I didn't have to move it for a week, or venture outside except for work periods or recreation.
I brought along a half-dozen books to keep me company and to provide material on which to reflect during my time away:
Fortunately, I had plenty of scheduled time for doing exactly that:
The book I spent most of the time working through and reflecting on was John Shea's Starlight: Beholding the Christmas Miracle All Year Long, usually at the rate of about a chapter a day. One of his chapters deals with the stories of the Magi or the three wise men who show up at the manger after the birth of Christ, bearing gifts--in other words, the progenitors of the feast we celebrated yesterday.
One of Shea's comments resonated with me, as it reinforced something I'd already come to realize earlier in the retreat. I had remarked to a friend before leaving that I was actually worried about how much I was looking forward to this time away, by which I meant that I was concerned about how short my fuse had gotten and by how eagerly I was anticipating a radical unplugging from the workaday world and all of its cares. Those attitudes resulted in quite a bit of what can only be called "magical thinking" about my retreat and what it was going to do for me. Shea, reflecting on one of the "alternative" Magi stories, said this:
The search may be its own reward; the struggle may be the goal. In the search for Christ we are already experiencing him, but in an incognito form. The task may not be to gauge the distance we have still to travel to find what we are looking for, but to be attentive to what is happening to us as we travel. Spiritual journeys are often struggles to awaken to what is already there.
--John Shea, Starlight (Chicago: ACTA Publications, 1992), p. 138
Here's a bit of what I wrote in my journal the afternoon after reading that passage:
As I should have known, while coming here for some time apart would certainly be therapeutic, that was not going to solve all of my various problems; present me with tidy answers, neatly wrapped and tied with pretty ribbons, to all of my pressing problems; or instantly infuse me with grace, peace, and tranquility to spare. This retreat provides a start on all of those things, it points a finger in the direction of what I was seeking, and it provides an important re-setting of the baseline. Beyond that, the rest is up to me. If I stayed here a year, I'd still have that work to do--just as I will when I go home again...
Sometimes, the important thing is just to show up: and to keep your eyes, both physical and otherwise, open. You never know what you might see.
Here's a bit more seasonal music to rock us on home.