First Half Century

On Sunday I will complete the first half century of my life.  Doesn't it sound cool?  A half century. Jan likes to say "half a hundred," and I like the alliteration of it, but half a century just sounds so solid.  I'm very excited.  It's the start of a new half century, a new decade, a new year.  50.  I don't know why I'm so excited, but I am.  I bumped into a former parishioner at the grocery store today who said she'd been weighing whether to send me a card that included the number 50.
"Of course," I said, laughing.  "I think it's cool."

My adult life has seemed to be organized in decades, and each time I enter a new one, I wonder, "What life changing thing will happen in the next ten years.?"

The 20s were my theatre years.  I finished college, interned at the Berkshire Theatre Festival and Actors' Theatre of Louisville, taught a year of high school drama, spent five summers at Interlochen, and moved to Virginia to work at Virginia Stage Company for twelve year, with summer stints in PA and RI.  I attended church, mostly as a stealth parishioner, traveled some during spells of in-between-employment, and suffered through a variety of temp jobs and substitute teaching.  I bought a house toward the end of that decade and started to grow restless.

The year I turned 30, I went to the Holy Land on a pilgrimage with my church and began exploring a call to ordination.  The rest of that decade was spent discerning my call, jumping through hoops, three years of seminary, ordination as deacon and then priest, and my first year of ministry.  When I told people in the theatre that I was going to seminary, many laughed, thinking I was pulling their leg.  "I'm serious," I would tell them.  They couldn't imagine such a dramatic shift, so many of them refugees from the religion that had hurt them or cast them out.  Everything had to change, and it did, and yet, it seemed to be the fulfillment of the longing I had felt all my life to serve God.  The first time I celebrated the Eucharist, I thought this is what I was born for.

Turning 40 was the first time a birthday was hard for me.  It signaled that I most likely wouldn't be having any biological children.  Not impossible, but not likely.  I had a lot of grieving to do for a life that I had imagined.  Even when we choose the road less traveled and it makes all the difference, and we're leading a good life, there is still grief for other roads not taken, and it's important to feel the loss so that it can move on through.  This has been a decade of inner work as well as outer work. Much healing has happened, as I've experienced my first 10 years of ordained life: Hickory Neck Church and CNU campus ministry, SpiritWorks and Bruton Parish.  Jan.  I realized in a conversation with my spiritual director that the pool of sadness which lurked deep inside me is no longer there - or no longer as large.  How grateful I am.

Sunday I begin the 50s.  I've decided that 50 will be fun.  I don't have big plans for my birthday.  It falls on a Sunday, so I will be in church - no place I'd rather be than doing what I was born to do.  Planning a nice lunch and maybe a little kayaking and a nap.  We'll see.  My retreat was a present to myself.  I think I'm going to start tap class on Wednesday.  And maybe Jan and I will go to Greece with our little bear in the coming year.  Hopefully I'll finish my book.  Perhaps I'll even get something published.
Who knows what's next?  Here am I, God.  Your servant is listening.

One of my favorite lines from Sunday in the Park with George, "A blank page or canvas. His favorite.  So many possibilities."

The next half century:  So many possibilities...

Re-entry

Grandfather Mountain from Valle Crucis

One of the most challenging parts about a retreat is ending it and re-entering – the proverbial "coming down from the mountaintop."  In my case literally coming down from the mountains.  This is the first time I've made a personal retreat that lasted 5 full days plus a travel day on each side.  Although I could have stayed longer, this felt like the right length.  Usually I'm longing for at least another day if not more.  But I had done the things I had intended except for one.  I hadn't hiked.  I was saving it as a treat for my last day if I got my writing work done.  Forecast for the day was low 80's and sunshine.

Lavender House

On the afternoon of Day 5, Friday, after getting my book manuscript in as good an order as I could, I left the hermitage for the first time and drove down into the valley to visit the Lavender House and to get a sandwich from the Ham Shoppe.  I was running out of salad, and ready for some meat!  When I got down to the shops, I was overwhelmed by the people and cars.  Aplace as small as Valle Crucis doesn't have real traffic, but there were almost no parking places at the Mast General Store or the sandwich place.  I waited long stretches of time to be able to turn onto the main road.  All around, people were starting their summer weekend in the mountains.  After a week of quiet, I couldn't wait to drive back up the mountain and slip back into the quiet safety of my hermitage porch to eat.  As I ate and rocked, I felt peace creeping in and gently replacing the anxiety of my foray back to civilization.

After a late lunch, I grabbed one of the cabin walking sticks and went for a hike, down the mountain through the woods to a waterfall I have visited before, but never from this direction.  I had always climbed up from the conference center.  This time I climbed down from the hermitages, a much longer journey.  Rhododendrons greeted me along the way, and my walking stick served for removing spider webs from the path.  As I approached the waterfall, I could hear the water rushing over the rocks.  Once down among the rocks, I turned my face to the sunlight streaming through the leafy bower overhead and soaked up the warmth.  With help from my trusty staff, I clambered out onto a flat rock in the center of the river and sat in a beam of sunshine facing upstream.  A fine mist blew above the water, droplets not even heavy enough to wet my skin.  I sang, as I often do when I'm out in nature alone.
"Rivers belong where they can ramble.  Eagles belong where they can fly."

Of course, she who hikes down must also hike back up.  The climb back to the hermitages earned me 14 peak cardio minutes on my Fitbit.  The entire journey took less than two hours, and despite the cool temperatures, I was breathing and sweating heavily when I had returned to the top.  I spent some time in the wooden swing below my cabin before heading to the shower and my last evening of retreat.
I had intended to go to bed early, thinking my hike would guarantee me a good night's sleep, and I would have time to write in the morning.  But the 3/4 moon illuminated the sky so it seemed like perpetual twilight, and the fireflies flashed brilliantly and the stars called me to gaze at their light.  I sat on the porch wrapped in a shawl in the cool, still air and felt deep peace in my soul.

The last morning, mostly packed, I took time to journal and to ask God to help me with re-entry.  I had decided to take an alternate route home, up 81 and over to the Blue Ridge Parkway so that I could visit a favorite "God spot" at Yankee Horse Ridge.  In my journaling, I prayed that I could tap back into the peace that I had felt so deeply at the Valle Crucis retreat.  That I wouldn't rush, that I would stay strong and centered and not be buffeted by ALL THE THINGS that would engulf me upon return.  That I would be able to endure the 95 plus degrees and thick humidity that I had so blessedly escaped for a week.  That I would remember the moonlit sky and stars the bird song and the stillness the serenity and tranquility of my hermitage stay.

Yankee Ridge - waterfall above me to the right

I did take my time, but I almost lost my peace when I got to my spot at the Yankee Horse Ridge Overlook.  It was barricaded due to construction on the Parkway and machinery they were storing in the parking area.  I couldn't figure out how to park and I kept going, fuming and discouraged because it was quite out of my way and there had been a number of slow downs on 81.  I was starting to get worked up when I remembered my journaling.  "You can't lose your peace that quickly," I told myself, and I said a little prayer, asking God to help me find a solution.  Finally, I saw a side road that allowed me to turn around and head back.  Someone had already pulled down the yellow tape and coming from that direction, I was able to slip in between two orange barrels and park.  I took my lunch, climbed up on my favorite rock, and completed my retreat gazing at the much slimmer waterfall above me.  I have had many conversations with God there, and it seemed like a perfect way to bring my retreat to a close and look toward my birthday in a couple of weeks.

Re-entry was still hard.  My disposal wasn't working, and Williamsburg was a sauna, but the most difficult was having my computer stop working the day I returned.  I've spent the week erasing my computer, rebooting the Operating System, and restoring all my files.  I still don't have it all back, but I'm functional again.  And the peace hasn't evaporated yet, either, though there were a few challenging moments.  How grateful I am for the gift of retreat, of Sabbath rest, of renewal.

Rhythm of Retreat

From the day after Easter until July 1, I served as Acting Rector of Bruton Parish while our Rector was on sabbatical.  What an experience of having to think about ALL THE THINGS!  It was my job to keep the ship on course, and I did.  When Chris returned, I happily turned the wheel back over to him, and after a week of overlap drove away for my annual retreat.

Mountains are my favorite place to be, and after discovering the hermitages at the Valle Crucis Conference Center near Boone, NC last year, I had decided to return.  Perfect little cozy wooden cabins each with its own porch and rocking chairs, a jewel of a tiny chapel, mountains, cool nights with windows open to the mountain air, quiet, no mosquitos.

I have now been on enough retreats that I have discovered they have a rhythm.  And my rhythm is not necessarily like anyone else's - if only I could remember that!

First day = sleep.  Lots of it.  Usually sleeping late and falling back asleep and sometimes even going to bed early.  It's also a good day to take care of details like paying for the retreat, making sure I have food, getting unpacked and organized, and if there's something pulling at me like shopping in the local town or hiking, then it's a good day for that, too. Being gentle is important.  If I want to sit and stare, then I need to do that.  If I want to shop and hike, best to get it out of my system.  This time I knew that sleep would be the order of the first day.  Plus a trip to the Mast General Store and a walk on the labyrinth in the field below the main conference center.  Since I often intend to write on my retreats, it's important to remember that I'm not going to write on that first day.  Maybe a journal entry, but most of my time is spent settling in.  I am full of gratitude to be away.

Second day = more sleep.  This is where I fall into the trap of thinking that I have rested enough and it's time to Get To Work.  Whether that work is writing or hanging out with God or whatever, I feel the need to be productive at retreating.  This time I gave it a name - 2nd Day Low.  I'm no longer generous and gentle.  My inner critic starts expounding upon how I'm already failing at retreat - time's a ticking, and I'm wasting all this precious time that I've set aside to do nothing.  I start looking around for snacks, preferably of the chocolate variety.  I organize the books, notebooks, and I start reading.  Surely reading counts as productivity.  This time I read about Valle Crucis, Julian of Norwich, the enneagram - particularly type 9 which is me, and writing as a spiritual practice.  I also worked on The Recovering and the memoir that I've been assigned in my writing class.  And a cute little pocket edition of Monk in the Marketplace which led to a necessary internet search to see how much it would cost to order the full edition.  I wish I were one of those people who would take a technology sabbatical while on retreat, but I'm not.  Frequently I get pulled to the Internet to look up some important detail which CANNOT WAIT.  Late in the afternoon I was able to convince myself to start laying out the notecards for my book project and putting them in order while reading through old journals to get my chronology right.  With notecards spread across the floor and no writing done, at the end of the day, I'm still full of gratitude, but frustrated that I'm not better at retreat.

By the third day, I'm starting to be less tired.  More settled in.  I can usually cajole myself into getting up a little earlier and sitting down to write something.  Progress at last.  I stop reading about Valle Crucis and Julian and start focusing on writing or reading that pertains to what I'm writing.  I get my cards done and start transferring the scene and chapter titles into the material I've already written.  Bring order to the whole.  My writing class about creating a blueprint for the memoir is helping me with structure, and once I get all these headings in, I'll know what else I need to write, what I need to cut, and where this whole thing is headed.  There are discrete sections now that need to be written, and I can start anywhere I like.  It's just that there are so many of them; it's overwhelming.  Still, I've started, and that's progress.  Plus I removed about 15,000 words that don't fit in the current structure.  I'll keep them elsewhere for something else.  I get a short walk in and am happy to move my body. On this night I finish reading the memoir for my writing class - homework done, I can concentrate more fully on my own writing for day 4.

Day Four - Usually this is the last day, the most productive day, the day when I'm motivated because it's the last day, and sometimes the day for a hike or nice dinner.  But on this retreat I have given myself an extra day.  I'm still motivated, wanting to write, but I'm also restless.  It storms all day, but I'm no longer so tired that I want to curl up and sleep.  I can't get away from myself by taking a walk. I'm stuck in the cabin with me and my book, and suddenly I hate my book.  I know I'm a terrible writer.  Everything I'm putting down is boring.  It's not like I'm going to get published anyway.  I might as well trash the whole thing.  I finally convince myself to journal and I beg God, "Help me!"  Then I text my writer priest friend Elizabeth who helps me get unstuck and writing again, and I spend several hours typing steadily. The rain stops for sunset, so I take a longer walk to enjoy the beauty all around me, I pray Compline in St. Anthony's tiny chapel,  and then write and read more before bed. Sleep comes slowly, but I'm still so grateful for this time and that I have one more full day.

Day 5 is today.  I don't think I've ever allowed myself this many days, so this is a new one. Unfortunately my inability to get to sleep last night wrecked my attempt to start getting back to a more normal schedule - when left to my own devices, I will always migrate toward staying up late and sleeping late.  So I slept later than intended and have gotten off to a slower start.  It wasn't supposed to be raining today, but it is off and on.  My reward for work today is a hike down to the waterfall this afternoon.  It may seem like I'm avoiding by writing this post, but another goal for the retreat was to make a blog post, and so I'm getting that done now.  Then I'll turn back to the book.

It has been such a good time of rest and renewal.  Porch sitting, gazing at clouds and rainbows and birds and flowers and bunnies and trees.  Eating vegetarian all week with salads and fruit and whole wheat pasta.  Sinking into books.  Still getting distracted plenty, but having enough time to be distracted and then return to my purpose.  There is no right way to take a retreat.  No single right observance of Sabbath.  The only right way is doing it at all.  Finding the rhythm that works and not worrying about what gets accomplished.  Letting go of the need to produce and paying attention to what I need.  Listening to God.  Getting restless and distracted.  Returning to listening.  The rhythm speeds up and slows down.  All a part of the whole.  Thanks be to God.