The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pictures, the first of those “long-remembered”:/if_i_dont_make_it_back.php tall stone walls and the rest of the beautiful chapel:
It was a silent retreat – for us at least. There were three talks about “Teresa of Avila”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_Avila given by Father Tim Byerley, who also works with the “Collegium Center”:http://www.collegiumcenter.org/about.php, a kind of religious education outreach project for young adult Catholics in South Jersey (I mentioned it “a few months ago”:https://www.quakerranter.org/teaching_quakerism_again.php as a model of young adult youth outreach that Friends might want to consider). Much of what Teresa has to say about prayer is universal and very applicable to Friends, though I have to admit I started spacing out by around the fourth mansion of the “Interior Castle”:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.toc.html (I’ve never been good with numbered religious steps!).
I’m in no danger of following my wife Julie’s journey from Friends to Catholicism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gathered group committed to a spirituality. The idea of religious life as self-abnegation is an important one for all Christians in an age where “me-ism”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWdek6_Ids&eurl has become the “secular state religion”:http://www.walmart.com/ and I hope to return to it in the near future.
For the last five years, I’ve gone on at least one silent retreat a year. I think that’s something I’ll never give up, regardless of where my spiritual path ends up.
I’m glad to hear that it was a good experience for you. I love St. Teresa’s autobiography, but The Interior Castle is very “chewy” reading. 🙂
Well, I’m glad that you survived, and that you weren’t subjected to an “auto da fe,” like the Anabaptists in Voltaire’s ‘Candide.’ 😉
It sounds like a great experience, actually. My wife and I used to go on silent retreats fairly regularly, most of them inter-religious but with a strong Catholic flavor and presence. Ironically, we haven’t been on a silent retreat since joining the “silent assemblies of God’s people.” I think we might be due for a tune-up, so to speak.