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Franciscan Retreat III

I'm wrapping up work early today to start getting into retreat mode. Our third and final Summer 2008 Franciscan Retreat is tonight and tomorrow up at Covenant.

I'm trying to slow down my pace and be open to being surprised or fed or sustained or challenged or strengthened.

A second RLP Franciscan Retreat

this weekend we had the second in our summer Franciscan retreat series. These are more or less identical to the Franciscan retreats we do for our own church family, but we host folks from around the country. And there are no spiritual prerequisites to coming; as one woman said recently, "I'm a tourist in Christianity this weekend." And that's really cool.

Met a lot of great people with great stories, and connected on a deep level with a few. I was able to experience a little rest and relaxation myself and do some thinking about my life. Four, no, five conversations over the last week now have confirmed my desire to find some additional spiritual direction, and the retreat confirmed it in its own way.

Here are photos I took this weekend. Hey: If I met you this weekend, just know that although I'm a little too tired to articulate it well, I really enjoyed the weekend. You all fed my soul. Your very presence, whether you were a curious onlooker wanting depth or a Jesus-follower wanting spiritual nourishment or just someone wanting a free place to be alone and breathe a bit, your very presence was a gift to us at Covenant.

I hope he doesn't mind the direct quote; one of my new friends Mark had this to say (stuff like this makes the preparation details all worth it, no? ... Excerpt from Only Dicta (sorry for the long pull quote):

"…I expected it to be great, and it was. But I wasn't expecting to feel so loved by Jeanene. I wasn't expecting Ben to look at me with compassion and speak a blessing over me - stirring even now some place inside of me I had been doubting even existed. I wasn't expecting Paul, Tim, or Cynthia. Or Lexie's voice. I wasn't expecting beautiful little Anna to cap the experience on such a high. It was almost too much. I'm so thankful that I have had the fortune of crossing paths with these remarkable people. I hope to see each of them again soon.

As I left the retreat, I can't say that all of my doubts had lifted and I found God and Jesus again. To be honest, I dread the days to come. They will be full of difficult questions, many of which tie my stomach in knots just to think of them. But I want to be with these people. I want to be a part of their journey. I want them to join with me in mine, if they will. And if it was okay for us to practice faith together this weekend, even though we didn't all share the same beliefs, then maybe it will be okay today. Maybe it will be okay tomorrow. Even as the light has gone out on my faith, I have kept walking on in the dark, refusing to give up. For a short time, it was nice to have a few fellow pilgrims to stumble with in the dark.

I can't say I will ever believe all of the right things again. It may not be possible for me anymore. But this weekend it didn't matter. This weekend, being a christian didn't turn on doctrinal statements or professions of faith. This weekend, being a christian somehow meant more than that. It meant joining together graciously with others to celebrate all that is good, to embrace love, to recite together the holy poems of the fathers of faith, to pray for one another, and to acknowledge that, although the world can be a tragically lonely place, we are not alone.

We didn't all have faith. But we did faith. And we did it together. And it was good."

amen.

unrelated to the retreat: thanks, chris for the sunday afternoon discussion and for the microphone.  thanks, tim and jeff for a wonderful time of conversation on Sunday night. and thanks, bob for a meaningful lunch conversation earlier today. i've got some great friends on this little planet. thanks amy and kids for making it back safe to SA and for a fund evening playing charades in the living room. right now, i feel like the luckiest man.

Franciscan Retreat Blogpost 3.01 - Friday, Saturday, Sunday

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.

Franciscan Retreat Blogpost 2.02 - Friday, June 6, 2008

This summer we're hosting free Franciscan retreats at the church. Here's more of my account of the retreat, interrupted slightly by a wedding I'm attending in San Marcos...

5:15 p.m. -- 6:02 p.m.
Here I am, driving like a maniac to get inside the sanctuary before the bride starts walking down the aisle. Two things that stress me out are getting to weddings and surprise parties on time simply because of their go / no-go mandates. I pulled into the Episcopal church here at the Texas State University campus at two minutes past six, fearing the worst. Luckily, the service isn't going to start for another five minutes or so. I'm slipping into the pew with Tim and Ryan and Michael and other Netzer Co-op friends.

6:03 p.m. -- 7:something p.m.
After the bridesmaids make their way down the aisle, Jack, their dog, lumbers down as well. Matt looks grown-up and confident; his usual stoic persona is working to good effect alongside his tailored suit. Brianna is beautiful. I was proud of these kids: nothing was overdone, overblown. Their shared values of restraint and simplicity were evident.  No embarrassing wince-worthy situations, dog notwithstanding.

And here I participate in this really, really beautiful moment as well, one of the best moments I've ever witnessed at a wedding. Toward the end of the service, Bri and Matt are handed the consecrated elements and they administer the Eucharist to their family and friends. The sheer weight of the symbolism, the mystical reality and the holism on display really are too much for me in my sleep-deprived state. But it is good to cry. In that way I stand in solidarity with the bride, I suppose: with half-smiling furtive glances we both acknowledge each others' tears as she hands me the bread. "This is the body of Christ." Matt has the chalice. "The blood of Christ."

7:something p.m. -- 8:30 p.m.
I rejoin the highway, heading back south toward Garden Ridge, Texas, and I pull into Covenant already filled by the experience of the wedding. I feel a bit unworthy to receive a two-day retreat tacked onto the end of a really good evening. I go inside and join the discussion: the group is going around the room doing introductions.

Next blogpost: Vespers, Compline, Matins…

Franciscan Retreat Blogpost 2.01 - Friday June 6, 2008

Playing catch-up on the blogposts.
This summer we're hosting free Franciscan retreats at the church. Here's more of my account...

3:00 pm -- 4:30 pm
I'm at work putting the finishing touches on details for the week, and huddling my design team together to discuss the thumbnails for the next issue of the magazine we design. I receive a call from Sumana, letting me know she's at the Greyhound Bus Station, ready to be met. As my studio is only two blocks from the station, I had happily agreed to meet her and take her out to Covenant. We exchange a welcome hug in front of the Greyhound logo there on St. Mary's Street, and head back to my design studio. At first I was amazed with the simplicity of her packing, then later was really thankful at how much simplicty was already a tacitly understood way of life for Sumana and many of the retreatants. I still had to lead the thumbnail review, and I asked if she wanted to observe, since I discovered she worked in a project management role at Behavior Design in New York. She enthusiastically accepted, and so we gave her a glimpse into our process. I think it was also good for some of my design team to have someone auditing the meeting.  (Next we hit IH-35 for the relatively quick drive out to Covenant over shared stories).

4:30 pm 5:15 pm
Commuting to Covenant. Starting to get nervous about the next hour of my life: I was to drop off Sumana and book it up the road to San Marcos, Texas where I was to attend the wedding of two of my friends, Brianna and Matt. But traffic wasn't necessarily cooperating.

Next post: Bri's Wedding

Franciscan Retreat Blogpost 1.01 - Thursday, June 5

This summer we're hosting free Franciscan retreats at the church. I'll try to chronicle this first one for posterity's sake. I won't attempt to go back and reconstruct the days of preparation; just know we've been looking forward to this.

5:00 pm -- 8:45 pm
Thursday afternoon. Still doing Wire-O bindery work on the little retreat guides for the retreat. My back hurts from the equipment. Try to talk Maria into coming to one of the retreats. And Dan. And Bob, who should bring Lisa or Rick or someone. I've gotta run up to La Cantera to the Apple Store and pick up a new sling for my new 17" Mac Book Pro -- the laptop's a work perk. Saw the Deeds family at the mall. Bought a wedding present for Bri and Matt. Headed home to check on flight information for Melissa Anne one of our retreatants, flying in from Seattle by way of Denver. The retreat starts tomorrow night, but she was able to come in a day early and kind of 'pre-retreat' which is cool. She'll be out at the church solo until Gordon gets there tomorrow. Other folks are flying in, driving in, and tomorrow night I pick up one from the Greyhound Bus Station.

8: 45 pm -- 9:15 pm
Finished with Apple Store and Anthropologie. Remembered I have to pick up breakfast for her as well. Stopped in H-E-B. Didn't know what to get, so I got a lot of stuff. Soy. Milk. O.J. Yogurt. Eggs. Cereal. Muffins. We'll all snack on the leftovers.

9:15 pm -- 10:15
Quick trip home. Hello to the girls (Jordan's heading to Colorado). Eat reheated pizza slices. Catch a little CNN because I'm too tired to sit at the upright chair in the dining room. Sofa. Pizza. Water bottle. A little work on the Mac. Noticed my external hard drive arrived. Yay. This must be technology week. I'm normally not at all focused on hardware, but it's upgrade season, both at work and home for some reason.

10: 15 pm
At Airport Baggage holding up a sign with Melissa Anne's surname. Feeling silly holding a sign. Feel like I should be wearing a chauffeur's hat and Ray-Bans. Hoping she'll be conversant.

10: 38 pm -- 12:00 am
Pick up Melissa Anne. She's great: lots of fun. Serious REI camping gearhead, AND she brought a mandolin! Cool camping equipment. You could hide a corpse in that duffel bag (designed for a whole external frame backpack). Got her oriented (literally. and several times: we were figuring out which direction the sun would rise at one point). We drove out to Covenant. Traded some stories. Helped her set up a very cool tent. The wind was blowing and I'm wondering if it'll rain tonight. We put up the rain-fly. Made sure she was cool with her surroundings and then I came home and had to work on work: on Thursdays at midnight our team verifies that the XML for a contest website uploaded correctly. And it did. Then I blogged. Now I retire.

And there was evening, and there was morning, the first day.