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.

Blogging the Festival - Initial Thoughts

Last week Jan and I attended the Festival of Homiletics in Denver.  It fortuitously coincided with my niece's Confirmation in the Lutheran Church on Sunday, so I was able to enjoy family time and support my niece as well as being inspired by excellent preachers and speakers during the week.  I had been to the Festival when it was in Atlanta in 2009.  The keynoters that year were Archbishop Tutu and Barbara Brown Taylor.  This year it was Nadia Bolz-Weber and Sara Miles.  The theme this time was "Preaching from the Mountain:  Heralds of Good Tidings."  Pretty much if you include the word, mountain, I'm in!  I was pretty excited to be returning to Denver and the Rockies.

The first time I attended the Festival, I remember being overwhelmed - like drinking from a firehose.  There are 3 venues with speakers and preachers running concurrently, and attendees have to choose between preachers like Nadia and Michael Curry or David Lose and Brian McLaren or Will Willimon and Craig Barnes.  No matter who you choose, you're going to miss out on something great.  But you'll also be hearing something great, and I have learned to trust that wherever I choose to go, I will hear what I need to hear.

When I first began discerning my call to ordained ministry, I didn't think I could ever preach a sermon.  I had no confidence in my ability to say anything worth hearing.  I remember one session with my pastoral counselor (who was a Methodist minister,) in which I rattled on at great length about my anxiety around preaching.  She looked at me and said, "Okay, let's work on this.  If you were going to preach, what is the first thing you would do?"

"Well, since I'm in a lectionary based denomination, I would read the passage first."

"Great," she said, "And what would you do next?"

"Well, I think I'm supposed to look up a bunch of Greek words and figure out what they mean and then start reading commentaries and..."

"Stop right there," she said.  "They can teach you all that in seminary.  Go get a Bible off the shelf and let's look at a passage."

She then took me through a passage of scripture in which we read it out loud and she asked me questions about who I related to in the story, what would it have been like if I had been there, what were the questions I had, what images stuck out.  She asked me how it related to me.  And as I answered, she told me I had the beginning of a sermon.

It wasn't so hard after all.  In consultation with a mentoring priest, I chose a passage from the daily office about Jesus finding the lost sheep, and I wrote my first sermon while sitting in the backyard of my house in Norfolk.  It was actually fun!  I never preached that sermon, but it gave me the confidence to preach at my internship church when I was in the ordination exploration process.  As much as I angsted and worried and practiced that sermon, I found when I was done that I loved preaching.  And then I slept for 4 hours!  Ever since then I have felt a call to preach.

Attending something like the Festival of Homiletics is very humbling though.  I have received many compliments for my preaching over the years, the best of which are when people tell me they really thought about something in the sermon or that something changed for them.  I'm always grateful then that God has spoken to them through me.  But my ego also loves the praise, and I get to thinking of myself as an especially gifted preacher.  It never hurts to get a reality check.

The preachers at the Festival are phenomenal.  The first time I went I wanted to give up.  I felt that I didn't even belong in the same category with these people.  I was so intimidated that even though I had been inspired by all I had heard, I found writing my next sermon extremely hard because I had all these expectations.  You see, I think I have an African American preacher deep in my soul just waiting to be heard, only I'm a white girl manuscript preacher.  Whenever I have a chance to speak without notes, the Holy Spirit gives me silence, not words of wisdom.  And so I long to give passionate, inspiring, extemporaneous sermons, but it's just not who I am.  Maybe one day, that will be my gift, but for now, the Holy Spirit and I meet in the writing process. 

And so, as I come back down from the mountain, literally and figuratively, I am preparing 
to write a sermon for that most holy of days, Pentecost.  I pray, as I always do, that I will get out of God's way, and that God will help God's people hear what they need to hear, regardless of what it is that I say.  I give thanks for the opportunity to go up on that mountain, to hear the brilliant preachers, to learn new ways, to hear God say to me what I needed to hear, and to be renewed and restored.  I will blog more  about what I learned, but today what I feel is gratitude for each preacher out there who dares to take the risk to step into the pulpit or onto the chancel step or out into the aisle and proclaim the good news, to be a herald of good tidings, to speak the words of truth in love.  Thanks, God, for taking us up on the mountain, and then for bringing us back down again to share our experience with others.