Tag Archives ⇒ stone walls

Call off the search parties

March 10, 2007
· Martin Kelley

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.

If I don’t make it back.…

March 9, 2007
· Martin Kelley

Monastery entranceTomor­row Julie and I are going on an all-day Lenten retreat at a Carmelite Monastery on Old York Road in Philadel­phia. She’s giv­en me creedal cheat sheets in case I feel led to read along, as I have to fake it on any­thing past the The Lord’s Prayer.
The monastery has forty-foot tall stone walls all around and is locat­ed a few blocks from where I grew up (pic­ture cour­tesy the “monastery’s organ­ist’s webpage”:http://home.att.net/~lucycarroll/page5.html) and it was a place of some intrigue. When­ev­er we would dri­ve by I’d press my face against the car win­dows think­ing maybe I’d catch a glimpse of a nun swing­ing her­self over the wall in an escape attempt. Need­less to say I was­n’t brought up Catholic or even Catholic-friendly and so did­n’t real­ize how ridicu­lous this imag­in­ing of mine was. Still, I’ve prob­a­bly nev­er passed the monastery as an adult with­out tak­ing a quick peek at those walls. In twelve hours I enter them myself!
Julie’s gone on the retreat a num­ber of times (it’s usu­al­ly women-only) and has always been released to my con­nu­bial arms at end’s day. Still, just in case some­thing hap­pens, y’all know where to look! The kids are going to be with Julie’s sis­ter and their cousin and should have a good time.