Preparing to go on Silent Retreat

It is Saturday morning and I can hear the clothes dryer going with some clothing that I need to pack for a week away.  Tomorrow evening is the beginning of a seven day silent retreat at Our Lady of the Pines.  I am going to be silent and for an hour a day companioned by a spiritual director.

It took some time to decide whether or not I wanted to go to this.  Last year I went as a "Director in Training" and it was a powerful week of sitting with two directees, writing and reflecting on the experience and having supervision the whole time.  That week I received a call from my doctor saying that Chuck's mailed in fecal sample tested positive.  And that was the beginning of the journey that led to his colonscopy, surgery, gradual weakness and then death. 

Now I live in a very different place.  I still carry deep sorrow and grief but am remaking my life as a widow, a single woman, living alone.  It is about 8 months since his passing and it does feel like a good time for extended time with God and reflection with another.

My preparation for this time away is not only packing.  It is also my trip to Toledo today to release Chuck's final ashes into the Maumee River.  It was clear when he died that he would not want to be "in the ground" and this seemed a fitting last place.  When I met him he was a devoted fisherman.  I remember being amazed that he had - at the time - 40 - (Forty!) tackle boxes!  When we lived in Bowling Green he went through about 7 boats - buying and selling them and also fishing in the Maumee and Lake Erie.    So there is definitely a sense of appropriateness to this occasion today - both for him and for me in saying goodbye.

Tomorrow I will meet with Rachel and Brad to do some more premarital counseling for their wedding in January.  Which is so nice for me - a sign of new life for them and my continued part in the Truex family even though Chuck is gone.

So, it is a lot to hold in my heart today.  I trust that the retreat will be what my soul needs.  Silence to be with God's healing and holding presence.

May it be so.

You can not see yourself

That is a wisdom statement that I gave to Alyse this summer.  She had asked me to give her a life lesson every day and that was my second one. What I was thinking at the time was that she cannot see how beautiful she is and we often cannot see what we are projecting on our faces.

And I thought about it today.  I cannot see myself.

When I went to church on Sunday the usher asked - do you want a large print bulletin?  What I said NO, he said that I was lucky that I could read the smaller print.  All of which points to the truth that he identified me as an older woman.  And I  was  surprised  and actually - annoyed - by that.

I cannot see myself as others see me.  I keep thinking I am in my fifties or maybe even my forties.  I keep thinking I am still working, productive, energetic, younger.  I continue to be living in a fair amount of confusion and not knowing things that older people should know.  Things like how furnaces and air conditioners or cars should work.  Things about the economy or the universe or medicine.  I continue to live in so much ignorance and actually probably naivete.   I continue to live with a certain amount of wonder and excitement about the future, too.   Wanting to learn and meet new people and try some new things.  Like a young person.

But here I am - 70  - with wrinkles and age spots. . And feeling inside - I think - different from how I look outside.  As I sat with that this morning, I thought that I need to stick with the inside feelings. Maybe it is true - you are as young as you feel.

I'm going to go with that.

Welcoming Prayer

       Thursday night I co lead a meeting of Spiritual Directors for the Spirituality Network Spiritual Directors Association.  It was designed to be a time of connecting with each other.  I shared a reading by Mark Nepo about the "practice of return."
Here it is

Despite all the blessings of an awakened life, and all the support we can give each other, we can stumble and lose ourselves in a second. 

I can leave home tomorrow and trip into an old insecurity and flounder for days.

 And you can become lost, no matter how many times you’ve found your way.

  Accepting how quickly our course can change opens each of us to the practice of return.

Being human is to always be in return: to sacredness, to wakefulness, to the fact that we’re on the same journey, alone and together.

We’re safe, then afraid. 

We’re calm, then agitated.

We’re clear, then confused.

We’re enthusiastic, then numb.

We long for the moments of lift, and run from the moments that weigh us down.

But the inescapable rhythm of life lifts us and weights us down by turns, just as the ocean swells and dips with each wave.

When we lose our way, each of us is challenged to discern and embody a very personal practice of return – to what matters and to what has heart.

So we talked about the personal practices of return.  Lisa, who was leading with me, shared that she is praying the" welcoming prayer" these days.  I was unfamiliar with it. And today, Richard Rohr included it in his daily meditation.  So, I sat on my front porch this morning - and in my own very peculiar way - prayed it.  And thought I would include it here in this blog.

For me practices like these enable me to get a little bit centered in the living of my life.  It has been a pretty busy time  after a BIG garage sale,  four days leading small groups at Camp Christian, boundary training, and o anti racism training   I continue to feel somewhat strange in this new life of living alone.  Audrey has been gone about two months and it is just different to be the only occupant of 1812 white pine court. Sometimes it is peaceful and sometimes it is lonely.  As I sat on my front porch this morning, I was struck by all the blessings I cherish - family, friends, my home, my car, my memories.

But most of all, I am grateful for my faith - that - in the words of the "welcoming prayer",  God's "healing action and grace" are at work.  Here is a quote by Mary Mrozowski:

"I am where i need to be

Everything around me

includes and hides the sacred."

I trust that.

Here is the prayer she wrote:

The Welcoming Prayer

Gently become aware of your body and 

your interior state

Welcome, welcome, welcome.

I welcome everything that comes to me in this moment

because i know it is for my healing.

I welcome all thoughts, feelings, emotions,

persons, situations, and conditions.

I let go of my desire for security.

I let go of my desire for approval.

I let go of my desire for control.

I let go of my desire to change any

situation, condition,

person, or myself.

I open to the

 love and presence of God

and 

the healing action and grace within. 

Serendipity

Yesterday  I went to St Anne's Hospital to begin my new adventure as a hospital volunteer.  I have already been to orientation, gotten my TB test, and purchased a red smock.  I went to Kohl's to buy a black shirt to wear under the smock and so I was ready.

I am going to be working at the Women's Health Center where women come for mammograms.  I picked this place because that is where I always go for mammograms and I have always loved the experience of it.  So, I went yesterday to shadow an experienced volunteer and Friday I begin on my own.  I will be working every Friday morning from 8 to noon.

The big surprise - the serendipitous surprise - was that I knew the experienced volunteer.  It was Phyllis who was a former member of my church who I knew peripherally because she remained friends with many of the women of Karl Road.  And I knew her to be a really nice and kind person.

So, I learned that women come here for several reasons: mammograms, diagnostics, biopsys and bone density tests.  There are different questions that you ask:  did you use deodorant (mammogerams) or are you wearing metal?  (bone density.)  I learned where to file the different papers that they were given.  And how to make coffee and fill the water and where to put the dirty robes and where to restock robes.  And I walked over 5000 steps in three hours.  This was all good.

But the greatest gift was the down time we had between patients.  Phyllis - like me - is a widow.  Her husband died a year ago.  And we talked about all the issues that have come up.  About how much harder this is than we imagined, about how the tears continue long after his passing, about how difficult it is to get rid of clothes and pictures and all kinds of sentimental and practical items.  It was good to just share with someone who is on the journey that I am walking.

So, I look forward to Friday and doing this task by myself but I know I was blessed yesterday to be mentored and companioned by Phyllis.  God continues to give me the people that I need as I walk this lonely path.

Here is a blessing by Maxine Shonk

May God bless you on ordinary days,
gracing you with an awareness of the beauty of everyday, the comfort of the commonplace, and the awe of life as usual.
May you hear the invitation to new excitement over the constancy of God's care for you and to profound thanksgiving for God's faithful presence.
May the God of ordinary days, your COMPANION  God, bless you.

No words

I have not written for a week in which I have been extremely busy.  I led small groups at camp for young adults from Monday through Thursday.  During that time I heard some powerful keynotes and found myself pondering much about life. On Friday I led boundary training for the ministers of the DOC and UCC which was enjoyable and got be in touch with the gift and challenge of being a pastor. Saturday I went to anti racism training and was confronted anew with the sin of slavery and the reality of white privelege.

The past two days there were horrific killings in Texas and Ohio and after six days of soul work and heightened awareness of our call to community and love, I find I have no words.  No words that can express the frustration, sadness, grief, anger I feel about the continued hateful speech of our president and the failure of our congress to do something about gun control.  No words.

I found this article written by Michael Gerson - a conservative republican - and will let his words speak for me.  I wish I were this articulate.

Michael Gerson: The return of America's cruelest passion

I HAD intended to ignore President Trump's latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it.

But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone's "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" off my shelf — a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918, that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner's enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her, and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary Turner was "stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death."

God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil — the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder — is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of American history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and murdering her child.

During 300 years of routine horrors — the slave ships, the brandings, the separation of families, the beatings, the lynchings, the constant flood of humiliation, the racist ads for soap and toothpaste, the anti-black riots, the segregation of buses and pools and schools and suburbs, the sundown towns, the kangaroo courts, the police dogs and water cannons, the church bombings, the cruel and petty tyranny of whites, reinforced by the most prominent politicians in the country — during all of this, none of the descendants of Europe were able to stamp this evil out. As James Baldwin said in 1963, "The only people in the country at the moment who believe either in Christianity or in the country are the most despised minority in it."

Racism is the fire that left our country horribly disfigured. It is the beast we try to keep locked in the basement. When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs' graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal — the re-betrayal — of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist, reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.

What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump's divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and enflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump's continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means — whatever their intent — that those who downplay, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.

Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country's cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us.