Lord, help me to desire the quiet stillness of prayer this weekend.
This was my prayer on the spiritual retreat I took during the last semester of seminary. I had felt a deep resistance to prayer and scripture before my time at Mt. Angel Abbey. I was in the middle of a church internship that wasn’t going well, I was grieving the loss of a former community, and struggling to accept our childless fate. This was a different retreat from others because I had a Spiritual Director to help guide me through the weekend. She advised me to walk through St. Ignascian’s Spiritual Exercises and we planned to meet Saturday morning for direction. As I walked through each movement, the resistance grew fierce. But I had planted myself in this spot and my expectation for God to show up was present. And he did, as he always does. Thanks be to God. It was this weekend I learned the vital importance of the spiritual retreat to wrestle.
Our resistance to silence and stillness comes from the fact that there is very little of it in regular life. We are conditioned to the noisy distractions that life conveniently offers minute by minute. We have become so accustomed to being pulled in a million directions that sitting with directionlessness is sheer torture. So to deliberately isolate and sit quietly without our controllable agendas is counterintuitive. But if we continue to live in the noise, we will never learn to truly hear. We will eventually become deaf to ourselves, others, and ultimately God. And we don’t need the noise of screens or a busy life to do this, our egos are loud enough to deafen our hearts.
The Spiritual Retreat has been one of the most vital practices I value the most when it comes to spiritual nourishment. For those who are new to this idea, a spiritual retreat is not a church retreat with a group of ladies or a men’s prayer breakfast. This is a solo retreat, to be done between you and God. This is often intimidating, especially if you haven’t done one before. I want to make it approachable for you by offering a suggested schedule, readings, and practices.
Since we have been discussing the Welcoming Prayer, thought we could create a few retreats from it. The retreats below offer different timelines created to fit your schedule. Though a 20-minute retreat often feels too short, you’d be surprised what can happen in the soul when you give it intentional space to expand and speak its wisdom.
Let’s begin.
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