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Waiting for the Soul to Catch Up W


By Terry Hershey


e are wired to achieve, to see accomplishment as a sign of our esteem


and worth. It is in our blood. Most of us can’t make it through the day without our lists, our BlackBerrys, or some new technology designed to save time. Ah, the ecstasy of crossing off each consummated to-do. In the end, as Pascal noted (a few hundred years ago), “By means of a diversion, a man can avoid his own company twenty-four hours a day.”


Thomas Merton put it even more bluntly, saying that it is “a pervasive form of contemporary violence . . . to surrender to too many demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone in everything.” But look on the bright side: at least we are skilled at such violence. The Girl Scouts now have a “stress-free merit badge.” In the bookstore the other day, I found One Minute Bedtime Stories, “for parents with not very much time.”


Oh, my. I didn’t want that -- not anymore. Like most everyone, I was busy, with work, getting ahead, trying to accomplish everything: teaching, writing, reading,


counseling, parenting, growing the best garden. One day I realized I wanted to change, because I wanted to know what it meant to keep my own company. The demon was my insistence that time was meant to be filled, and I wanted my soul back. I wanted to learn how to be alone and like it, because I wasn’t very good at that. I wanted to learn how to be alone with God and like it, because I wasn’t very good at that, either. I just didn’t figure it involved sitting still. But that is basically the plan: in my case, finding time to learn the art of doing nothing.


. . .


Indeed, what for? Well, there are those lucky days when a swallowtail butterfly provides a cabaret while sipping at a wallflower, or a rainbow arches through the northern sky after a morning of foreboding clouds have skittered and leapt, or daffodils flow, faithfully sanguine, around the maple tree, or the summer sun stays in the sky well into evening, letting you listen to the crickets ’til


life without sparing hardly a breath for God. For me, there is something special about leaving the ordinary life and going to a holy place on retreat. The Celtic tradition speaks of thin places, where heaven touches earth, “through a glass darkly,” (1 Corinthians 13:12).


Yes, I’d gone to Women’s Quiet Days at Good Samaritan, UTC and to weekend getaways at a Julian bed-and-breakfast with my hubby. I’d even tried making Sunday a real Sabbath with varying amounts of success.


Finding Sabbath at a Monastery I


By Leanne Shawler, Good Samaritan


started to seek more Sabbath-time because I found myself rushing through


which is probably overkill, but each trip added to my spiritual life at home. I now say a form of morning and evening prayer. I strive to find silent time during the day to halt the headlong rush and reflect.


Staying with monastics allows you to live into their rhythms.


In June, I heard about a retreat being offered by St. Paul’s Cathedral at Mt. Calvary’s new location (St. Mary’s Retreat House, next to the Old Mission). I hadn’t gone away on a retreat since 2006 and it seemed time to go again. I wanted to experience the profound presence of God I’d felt on the mountaintop.


Let me say straight up, it’s best not to have expectations about a retreat. Those “clue by fours” from God don’t happen all that often. On that June retreat, I did experience God again, but in a quieter voice, via a series of different sources: a psalm, a story, a stained glass window, walking a labyrinth.


For me, listening to God, for God, is easier on retreat than at home, where God competes with the usual daily distractions (work, chores, TV, Internet). Being on retreat gives me a chance to try out new tools, and take them home with me.


I’ve gone on a spate of retreats since June,


I also discovered that even if you leave behind your community of faith to go on retreat, a new community and new friends await you at a convent or monastery. Not just because of the living arrangements of the monks or nuns but by being in community with fellow pilgrims, strangers.


There are different kinds of retreats, each with their own benefits. Whether the retreat has a set topic and schedule


(usual for group retreats), or whether you go alone or with a few trusted companions, there should be a balance between learning, prayer, eating, sleeping, and free time.


If something is out of balance in my life, I spend more time fulfilling that lack when on retreat, such as praying more or sleeping more. Even if it means missing a session, or a service. Just don’t skip the meals at a Benedictine monastery. They’re quite yummy.


Mt. Calvary at St. Mary’s Retreat House is run by an Episcopal order of monks (so you can take communion, unlike staying at a Catholic monastic house!), and is just as special as its former mountaintop location.


Staying with monastics allows you to live in their rhythms: praying several offices a day and experiencing a Great Silence (approximately from Compline to after breakfast the next day) which is a time free


A Retreat from It All: Leanne Shawler shares her St. Mary’s retreat experience. Shawler is the administrative assistant at Good Sam, UTC.


of distraction (or for me, a time of reading or scribbling all the words I can’t say into a journal).


For me, going on retreat is spending quality time with God, and helps me have more quality time with Him in my day-to-day living. I’d recommend it to anyone who is trying to grow in their relationship with God but just can’t seem to find the time. X


To learn more about Mt. Calvary, visit the web site: mount-calvary.org or call 805-682- 4117.


it’s way past your bedtime. The candied scent of a bearded iris transports you back to a high school dance when the best-looking girl in town draped her arms around your neck.


...there are those lucky days when a swallowtail butterfly provides a cabaret while sipping at a wallflower.


Yes, there are those lucky days when public opinion means something only to pollsters and politicians, when you realize that the elastic jurisdiction of what “they” think cannot find you here in this little corner of the globe, and you raise your head to the stars and shout to no one in particular, “If this isn’t nice, what is?”


It is no secret that our culture is not very good at this. Some call it idleness. Some just call it laziness. However, some of the enlightened call it rest, or play. A rare few call it “letting the soul catch up.” Here’s a story:


An American traveler was on safari in Kenya. He was loaded down with maps, and timetables, and agendas. Porters from a local tribe were carrying his cumbersome supplies, luggage, and “essential stuff.”


WAITING Continued on Page 4


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