It has been a good summer.
I’ve taken a break from sending BWP emails as I have traveled and played with my summer-break-scheduled children.
This summer I took two retreats. One to the Order of the Holy Cross in West Park, New York. I am an Associate (oblate) of this Order so retreats to the motherhouse feel like a spiritual homecoming.
Apart from a minor electrical emergency, the retreat at Holy Cross was beautiful and life-giving. The monks are warm and welcoming as we spiritual interlopers pop into their monastic existence for short stays.
The second retreat was at a retreat center in Maryland run by the Catholic Sisters of Bon Secour. This retreat was part of a formation program for folks who lead retreats and small groups. It is a two-year deep dive into contemplative leadership.
The retreat center was gorgeous and the program was full of learning and growth.
This week’s poem emerged from an experience during the silent portion of this second retreat - a wonderful 48-hour immersion into the Presence of God in silence.
Silent retreats can be a trap for me. I tend to enter them with lofty ideas of groundbreaking spiritual insights I will gain from my reading or prayers. I often bring my Western secular view that everything in life is something to be conquered or mastered - including my spiritual life.
This runs counter to the Gospel of Jesus who calls his followers to die to self and live as small, hidden, forgettable things like yeast and mustard seeds. The same Jesus calls his followers to sneak into their closets and pray in secret and then to go serve the least, the little, and the lost.
Br. David Vrhof, SSJE, once told me prior to a retreat in seminary that it is “a retreat, not an advance.”
This time around the most profound spiritual experience didn’t happen before the Blessed Sacrament or deep in my spiritual reading. Instead, it happened in the dining hall at lunch.
18. At the halfway point of a silent retreat At the halfway point of a silent retreat I wandered into lunch and found a seat between the sisters and the other tourists like me dipping a toe into monastic waters. At the end of the buffet line was a revelation. Sweet potato cheesecake. Thick-sliced. Could I enjoy this delight here in the midst of an austere ascetic exercise? Merton didn’t write about cheesecake. I heard a voice say, “Enjoy.” It very well could have been my own rationalizing mind though who’s to say it wasn’t God. Not me. I plunged my fork into four floors of heaven, careful to build a bite that held it all. I smiled before the cake touched my lips; savored the very thought of the taste. The sweetness struck my tongue like lightning and I was pushed back in my chair by the sheer force of the flavor. This sweet potato sacrament, a grace infused in the substance and accidents of cheesecake, divinity in a crumbling crust. Once again, a dining table became an altar and the gathered crowd of nuns and newbs sat in silence eating their lunch oblivious to the latter day Bethel at the end of the line.
Hey Connor,
enjoying keeping up with your writings. It is helping inspire me to hope to get back into writing more than sermons in my own practices!
The formation program for folks that lead retreats and small groups, referenced regarding your second retreat, can you share what program that is?
Thanks! Hope all is well in your world.