This week marks the
seventh anniversary of beginning this weekly blog!
“Be unconstructively in the presence of the
sacred.”
Try
this on for Lent, the forty day period leading to Holy Week, which begins today,
Ash Wednesday:
“Be
unconstructively in the presence of the sacred.”
How long has it been since
you allowed your Good Shepherd to give you rest in green pastures beside still
waters, restoring your soul? The “still waters” of the 23rd Psalm
are waters gentle enough to drink from to safely quench our thirst; the Hebrew
means “waters of rest.”
To
you, O Lord, I lift up my soul.
O my God, in you I trust.
Nothing
compares to a contemplative retreat in a monastic setting, surrounded by fellow
pilgrims and an authentic monastic community. Trying to capture that ethos once
more, I read again the reflections I wrote after a men’s contemplative retreat at
St. Bernard Abbey in Cullman, Alabama, and a Hildegard of Bingen retreat at
Sacred Heart Monastery, also in Cullman.
The
respective experiences elevated not only my spirit but my prose, and I’m
certain this post will pale in comparison—both to the experience and to the
poetry required to capture the rhythms of words, songs, and silence of a
monastic community.
O
Lord, open thou my lips.
And my mouth shall show
forth thy praise.
Especially welcomed to join
the sisters in the chancel area of the church at Sacred Heart, and given their gentle
guidance in saying the offices that punctuate their day, helped us taste the
pleasure and the power of reciting psalms and prayers together. We thus stepped
carefully into a stream of a centuries-old tradition.
As
I wrote in one of my papers, the contemplative retreat unveiled again for me
how the multitude feeds the boy with the modest lunch, the reverse of the boy
whose peasant’s lunch fed the multitude through the blessing of Jesus. I felt
surrounded and nourished by “so great a cloud of witnesses.”
When
we are listening, God speaks to us in a myriad of ways, and God was echoing all
over the place at both monasteries and their grounds. Silence, scripture,
songs, lectio divina, the Daily Office, readings, prayers, homilies, teachings,
and conversations offered me voices from the past (memories, tradition,
spiritual guides) as well as from the present (fellow pilgrims, colleagues,
fellowship). Even the silence was deafening. And outside, the sounds, smells,
sights, breezes, warmth of day, coolness of evening of the natural setting
completed the feel of God’s embrace.
The
afternoon that began our 24 hours of silence midway through the contemplative retreat,
I spent much longer in the sanctuary of the church than I imagined I would. I
pleasured in the profound silence. I started constructing my final paper in my
mind, but then reminded myself that this was not what the silence was for.
The silence was simply to
be unconstructively in the presence of the sacred. To be “useless.” To welcome
the “schola” (“free time”) of “scholar.”
That
silence unveiled a second kind of silence for me, the need for Sabbath, a time
of no work, no activity, no planning, only recreating, allowing myself to be
re-created and refreshed and renewed, hopefully in God’s presence. Since that
experience, I’ve given myself some slack in my ever-present need for
accomplishment, turning off my laptop to avoid work and the internet from time
to time, relaxing my workouts and runs, reading more for fun than I’ve done in
the past.
Peace!
Be still!
Be still and know that I
am God.
Come, join us beside the
still waters of the Sacred Heart Monastery April 30-May 4, 2018. I will be co-leading
a contemplative retreat with Debra Weir, Beside Still Waters, to which you are welcome. For more information, click on the title or copy and paste into your browser:
For previous posts to read for Lent, click on or copy into your browser:
https://chrisglaser.blogspot.com/search?q=lent (Scroll down for multiple posts. At the end of the collection you will find a couple of posts included simply because they used the word "lent"!)
Thank you for your financial support of this blog ministry:
Be sure to scroll down to
the donate link below its description.
Or mail to MCC, P.O. Box 50488, Sarasota FL 34232 USA, designating
“Progressive Christian Reflections” in the memo area of your check or money
order. Thank you!
Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser.
Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite.
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