Well, I survived the retreat, and all retreatants survived me. Ha! We all have a long way to go to Christ likeness. The good thing, the really happy-happy joy-joy thing is there will be no more giant retreats. YEA!

A retreat to me is not something where things are scheduled, at least not a retreat at Gethsemani. There, a retreat is hours of unbroken silence, and an hour or so of talk, and not the other way around. Also, sitting and listening to someone talk in a room with 70 people isn't a retreat either, that's like work. Even if the speakers are people you love and care about, it's still a lecture series and not a retreat. Retreat leaders often want to keep an iron grip on things, and that is just plain old irritating.

However I loved the wine, cheese, and bourbon party on Sunday night, when the lightweights among us (you know who you are) hehehehehe, had already gone home. Then again, those who attended were spending the night, and I only had to drive to Bardstown. But that was when the real "fellowship" began. Food and wine brings out the family feeling far more easily than just saying "we're all a big family."

There are levels of love, and levels of family, and levels of solidarity. My local once a month group is my best love, best family, and best solidarity. The rest of the people, sure, they are part of my spiritual family, and Lay Cistercian family, but I have no real connection to them. They are faces I recognize; names on a list or a name card; that, and nothing more. I pray for all Lay Cistercians of Gethsemani, and all Lay Cistercians in the entire world, but I have about the same connection with most of the LCG as I do with the people who live in the Grange of St. Bernard, in France.

In the end I have to agree with Michael Brown. If today the Abbot General should say, "No more lay anything, I dissolve you." That would not change my relationship to the Abbey one stitch, or my relationship to those in my group. The love of Christ impels us, or it does not. It's just that simple.

125th Sunday in Ordinary Time

I do grow bored with Ordinary Time, and I hope that's not a sign of acedia. It probably is, and if so, then I haven't given in, I sitll say all my prayers, go to daily mass, and do lectio with an ever more obscure bible. That's not completely fair to say, I get a lot out of the daily lectio, but I have to wonder why does it feel like work instead of joy?

Maybe that's what's wrong with a lot of spirituality, we think it's supposed to be joy filled all the time, just happy happy joyjoy, like Ren and Stimpy used to sing. Most of the time I find lectio a dark path where the only knowledge is knowing nothing at all. I sit with verses, pray, reflect, and face the emptiness. And, somehow that is enough. It is comforting that wall of silence that sometimes comes from God. Luckily I know enough of the apophatic path to know this is just another one of those things, means nothing, and will sooner than later change. God will deal with me in God's way, in God's own time.

I am not going to the LCG retreat this year for two reasons that are public and one that is private. Public one. I have $28.00 to the first day of October. Public two. I have a second birthday party for my great nephew which is infinitely more important. The private reason remains private. But public reasons 1 and 2 are good enough.

That's all for tonight.


Adam Lay Bound

Adam lay ybounden, bounden in a bond,
Four thousand winter thoughte he not too long;
And al was for an apple, and apple that he took,
As clerkes finden writen, writen in hire book.
Ne hadde the apple taken been, the apple taken been,
Ne hadde nevere Oure Lady ybeen hevene Queen.
Blessed be the time that apple taken was:
Therfore we mown singen Deo Gratias

Vespers

The clouds are scattered, and some a quite thick,

but nothing is collecting for rain.

Day draws on toward the evening,

and the deep prayer God gave me at mass today

is urging me to remember that for Christ to Live in me,

I have to remember Christ alive in me.

How odd it should all come down to the simple amanuentic act.

Ever remembering to remember that Christ is alive in me.


If I should forget then sin will sink in through my pores

and rust the armor of God. I read, somewhere, once perhaps,

that our life in Christ is now, not in the life to come.

We are resurrected already as one who is dead,

but alive with our God within us.

LCG Loss

Bob Siegel passed away last night. He went to the presence of God. The God whom he had sought all his life, and now sees face to face. Here is my offering of sympathy, and condolence, comfort, and whatever else can be said.

'See, I am God. See, I am in all things. See, I do all things. See, I never left off the works of my hand, nor ever shall, without end. See, I lead all things to the end, to which I ordained them, from without beginning, by the same power, wisdom and love, that I made them with. How should then anything be amiss?' Julian of Norwich

Exaltation of the Holy Cross

That's pretty much all I have to say.

New Beginnings

I'm sure all two of you who read my blog already know that I am no longer writing the daily reflections for the Rule of Benedict for the benefit of the LCG. Why? Because it was time. To be honest is was grueling labor in the hours of the morning when I used to do Lectio Divina. Now I can do Lectio Divina and feel vaguely guilty about not doing the rule reflection. But! Someone was chomping at the bit to take it over, so good luck to her.

The next step for me is training in hospice work. No, it's not a job. The Lord, blessed by his Holy Name, has pestered me about this for literally months now. I would be quietly praying, minding my own business and then "you need to work with the dying." Usually my response was "eewww." A few weeks later, after receiving the Eucharist, "you need to work with the dying." Then it got to where every time I prayed "you need to work with the dying." That quickly transformed to "you will work with the dying." And then last week my mother said, "OH look, Flaget Healthcare is having a training for Hospice Volunteers, and here's the phone number."

So, that came into conflict with the ministry I was already involved in, caused me a bit of torment, and eventually I was shown that it was time to let go of the daily RB reflections and take on another ministry.

So my few readers. That's what's been up. I expect to be back on this blog a lot more since I'm not ravaging my brain daily to make sense of something written 1500 years ago for an unwieldy group of LCG'ers.

But because I am me, you won't get away without some awesome poetry from my boy, John Donne, 17th Century all the way, BABY!

HOLY SONNETS.

VII.

At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, dea[r]th, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there. Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.