Friday night had a certain purity to it. The evening moved fluidly between a Vespers prayer time, replete with Chris A on cello, and some words on St. Francis and his life before God. We introduced the rule of life and bantered back and forth about individual rules of life versus a community rule of life. Later we shared Compline as well as a a gourmet chocolate tasting thanks to Melissa Anne's Seattle fare and later I took a group out for a meaningful midnight labyrinth walk.
Click here to see a flickr slideshow of the entire retreat, thanks to RealLivePreacher.com + Retreatants from the weekend have posted here and here and here and here.
A little after midnight, I started setting up the altar space for the purely optional Matins prayer time at 3 a.m.; I put out Fauré's Cantique (a Matins text) on the iPod as a listening station; I also set out three Bibles opened to Psalm 19 & 20. Then I set my alarm to 2:45 a.m. and went to sleep. By 2:50 I was up and lighting tea lights around the altar. Unbeknownst to me, two of the retreatants, still on Eastern Standard Time, had already arrived at 2 a.m. and had gone through Matins, sans-candlelight. But I waited to see if anyone would show, and sure enough a friend showed up and prayed the hour in silent candlelight. I went back to bed after a half-hour.
4:50 a.m. came quickly, and Lauds and the subsequent free time were pretty much a blur this time around. I caught up on a little sleep, then got some art supplies ready for the retreatants at 7:00. The rest of Saturday pretty much followed the official schedule:
8:00
A South Texas Breakfast (Ben's blueberry pancakes)
9:00
Terce Prayer Service
9:30
Making a Rule of Life II
10:30
Free Time: Rest / Work / Art / Meditation
12:00
Sext Prayer Service
12:30
Lunch, Free Time
1:30
Free Time (Some will pack for departure)
2:00
Making a Rule of Life III
3:00
None Prayer and Communion Service
3:30
Benediction / Group Photo
±4:00
Cars leave for Airport & Downtown
±6:00
Dinner on San Antonio Riverwalk
±10:00
Cars return to Covenant
± 11:00
Late Night Conversations TBD
But what the schedule can't describe, I'll try to briefly fill in. Deep conversations in the margins of the rooms and along the prayer paths. Healing conversations, or so it seemed. Gifts shared in the form of Cynthia's homemade soup (read about it here if you haven't) being prepared in the background, and in Elisa and Brooke and others sketching and watercoloring: all signs and symbols of the Imago Dei; and in Lisa's quilting: itself a picture of new wineskins for new wine ... and Melissa Anne's knitting: a parable of redemption, of tactile, cashmere redemption, borne from threads coaxed from remnants of an old Eddie Bauer garage sale sweater; the parable of the thread. Some of us traded music on the mandolin, others traded life-stories, hopes and dreams; others walked the labyrinth or worked outside.
Healing wasn't a theme I had anticipated, yet there it was in manifold bloom. What a wonderful surprise. [note: pause now, and go read this]
As that afternoon waned and evening waxed, the group set aside retreat mode and headed down to the Riverwalk for some TexMax food at Casa Rio, followed by a river barge tour. We said farewell to Sumana and Lisa, and the rest of us headed back to the church. Drivetime provided for meaningful conversation. Stories were shared; depths plumbed. We broke back into the church's bathroom window since someone inadvertently left the door locked.
While I was holed up in the back of the church working on Sunday's order of worship, the retreat guests cleaned up almost all of the chaos from the weekend. When I emerged an hour later, it looked like no one had ever been there. We talked some more and eventually drifted to our monastic cells (sunday school classrooms with air mattresses). Compared to Lauds, sleeping in til 7:00 seemed a luxury.
Maybe I'll post about Sunday someday soon.
