Call off the search parties

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:
Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia Carmelite Monastery, Philadelphia
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.

14,023 thoughts on “Call off the search parties

  1. 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. 🙂

  2. 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.

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