Kicking Back (Friday Five)

Pat is way out west in one of my favorite places, the Tetons, asking about our plans for Easter Sabbaths.  Only ten more days! . . .  and I am off to the Wernersville Jesuit Center west of Philly for a week-plus silent retreat.  This will be a bit different than the past few times I've been there; I'll be between regularly scheduled retreats, so there won't be the usual forty or so people eating in silence and wandering around in solitude together.  I have no idea who will be there, but people do pop in and out for a day or a few days at a time.  Given this year's cold, I don't suppose that the grounds will have burst into bloom yet (I took the photo last April), but it will still be wonderful to settle into my small room in a massive building in which silence is the first language.

 

Another difference: I'll be making a retreat within a retreat, as Marty Laird, O.S.A, will be presenting a retreat over the week-end.  Here's the description:

 

INTO A SILENT LAND: A Contemplative Prayer Intensive
April 19-21, 2013
Martin Laird, O.S.A.

 

This silent retreat will feature sitting in silent prayer together as a way to affirm and deepen the life of contemplative prayer which most of us practice alone in the course of our daily lives.   Apart from times dedicated to sitting in silence together, Martin Laird will focus his conferences on some of the noble failures and encouraging defeats that we all face, like all the saints and sages, as we release into the God who is already shining out our eyes.  While praying and eating together in silence will keynote this retreat, there will also be time for solitary prayer and walks in nature.

 

Martin Laird, O.S.A., Ph.D., has studied Early Church thought and spirituality in Rome, London, and Oxford.  Since 1998 he has taught at Villanova University.  He is the translator or author of numerous books and articles, including two highly acclaimed books on the practice of contemplation:  Into the Silent Land and A Sunlit Absence: Silence, Awareness and Contemplation (each from Oxford University Press). For many years he has lectured and led retreats throughout the United States, Ireland, and Great Britain.

 

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Michelle and I spent some time awhile ago writing back and forth about Into the Silent Land (the posts are linked in the bar above).  I am SO excited for this opportunity to sink into even deeper silence and to learn and pray with a group of similarly-inclined folks.

 

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Now, if everything at church remains on an even keel for the next ten days . . .       .