Busy Person's Retreat

I'm at The College of Wooster this morning, where I'll spend a few hours for each of the next four days helping to direct a Busy Person's Retreat.  (That's last year's FB page, but you'll get the idea.)  We had our orientation last night, so at the moment I'm curled under my blankets at the lovely Black Squirrel Inn  ~ it's 12 degrees out there!

 

What a Busy Person's Retreat?  These opportunities got started about a decade ago, developed by  the Young Adult Ministries Council of the Cleveland Catholic Diocese and focused on a different theme each year.  They have expanded to include faculty and staff at the several colleges at which they're offered.  Although the orientation is a group event involving introductions and explanations and a delicious meal, the retreat itself is an individual affair.

 

Each retreatant is provided with a packet of material containing a number of prayer resources, including a sheet filled with quotes, questions, Scripture passages, and other suggestions for each day of the week.  And . . . here's where we come in: each retreatant also has an hour or so a day to meet one-on-one with a spiritual director, a time in which to explore and process the day's journey, undertaken in the midst of each person's busy life.

 

I've been able to do this a couple of times before, once for a Busy Student's Retreat on Discernment at Case Western Reserve, and once for a Busy Person's Lenten Retreat which a friend and I designed for our home church.  This week the topic is Stress, and I have three retreatants, a college senior and two college administration staffers.

 

Back at my church (about thirty minutes away), a usual week is underway, and lots of Lenten preparation lies ahead ~ but I am very much looking forward to these hours each day of helping others to savor their lives of prayer.