Retreat time

He said to them, 'Come away to a deserted place

all by yourselves and rest a while.'

Mark 6:31

And so I have. After missing the Berkeley junior class retreat last month, I promised to make it up by coming on an individual retreat during spring break. Much as I missed the fellowship and bonding that took place among the group, there is something very refreshing about being away by oneself. There are surely other people on retreat here at Holy Cross Monastery in West Park, NY, but there is still plenty of privacy and quiet. From my room, I can look out on the Hudson River flowing by and watch a flock of wild turkeys foraging around on the ground at the edge of the woods. It's a deliciously peaceful setting.

This is a deeply spiritual place. One senses this in the commitment of the brothers to their life in community, their welcoming of pilgrims to share this space, and the praying of the Office four times daily in addition to morning Eucharist. It creates a rhythm to the day that is very hard to find outside of a monastic community. I may pause for morning or evening prayer or compline on my own, but that is certainly a hit-or-miss proposition, and I certainly rarely 'hit' a set hour! There is a sign over the entryway here that says "Crux est medicina mundi" - the cross is medicine for the world. To come here, especially during this season of Lent, and meditate on the road that leads to Jerusalem, is, indeed, restorative medicine.

How is it that we missed Jesus' call to come away, to refresh ourselves, to pray? Each of the synoptic gospels tells us that this was common for Jesus. Luke implies that he did it regularly (5:16). How did I get so busy and so important that I can't do the same? It's not as if the world will stop spinning without me! In truth, I am a rather solitary figure anyway, so physically picking myself up and going to a retreat center is not always necessary for me to find some quiet space, but it is still important to do so from time to time.

There are plenty of things I should be doing these days. I have an endless amount of Hebrew I could be studying. There's all the reading that will begin to stack up again next week when classes resume. I could be thinking about my exegesis paper for Old Testament. But I'm not doing any of those things. I am reading one book for school, Knowledge in the Blood by Jonathan Jansen. It's about post-Apartheid South Africa and is assigned for my Ministry and the Disinherited class. It's the kind of book I read for enjoyment anyway, so I thought that would be okay to get started on. I'm going to save the book Tim lent me - The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love by Kristin Kimball - for after this term ends. I've also been working on a jigsaw puzzle in the common area. I was so excited to find an unopened, 1,000 piece picture of puppies! Puzzle putting together is a long and honored tradition in my family, and I am finding it amazingly contemplative as an exercise here.

My usual retreat spot is the Jesuit Center in Wernersville, PA. It was a novitiate built by a wealthy couple in the late 1920's, and it's another of those spirit-filled places where one can actually sense the supportive prayers of all who have walked those halls and the priests who have retired there. I haven't been there in a while. The last retreat I had scheduled fell on the day that we buried my son. I haven't thought much about going back, but perhaps I should, just to finally keep that time away. Maybe I could spend it just praying and journaling about Seth. Or maybe I can just go away to a quiet place again and rest a while. It's good medicine for the soul.