Mary DeTurris Poust's Blog, page 48

Italy: A Feast for Body and Soul, October 2014

There seems to be some confusion out there. Many people think the Italy trip I’ll be leading is this October. It is NOT. It’s October 2014, meaning there’s plenty of time to save up money and vacation days to join me for this trip of a lifetime. So I’m establishing a new tab on the blog, “Italy Pilgrimage,” where I’ll post updates on the trip, suggested reading, photos, and more. Registrations are already coming in, so it’s starting to feel real. Here’s the original info on the pilgrimage, with a link to our Facebook page and online brochure.

Dear Fellow Adventurer,

For most of my adult life, I dreamed of going to Italy. I wanted to pray in St. Peter’s Basilica. I wanted to know the country of my grandfather’s birth. I wanted to eat the delicious food that had inspired so many family meals when I was growing up. Three years ago, when I stepped onto the streets of Rome for the first time, I cried from the sheer joy of being there, and I knew right then that I’d have to return some day soon. Italy had captured my heart!

I’d like to invite you to join me on the trip I’ve been longing to take ever since — the journey of a lifetime, a true feast for body and soul. Our October 2014 pilgrimage will begin in the beautiful spa town of Montecatini, and we will work our way down to the stunning coastal city of Sorrento. In between we’ll visit Florence and Siena, Assisi and Rome, Naples and Salerno, the Amalfi Coast and Capri.

There is nothing typical about this spiritual pilgrimage to Italy, which will focus not only one those sacred places that deepen our faith in obvious ways, but on the everyday moments that give us a chance to experience God in unexpected ways – in an olive grove tasting oil, on a narrow road winding through Assisi, in a cooking class in Giffoni, on a boat ride to the mystical Blue Grotto.

Come along on what promises to be a magnificent melding of relaxation and excitement, spirituality and spa elegance, simple local flavor and culinary inspiration. I’m already counting the days. I hope you are too!

In addition to the wonderful itinerary you’ll find outlined HERE, I’ll be offering three brief talks: one on spiritual friendship while in Assisi, the home of Francis and Clare; another on the connection between food and spirituality while in Rome, where a great meal or fabulous church is always just around the corner; and the third on the joy of discovering the Divine in the everyday while in Sorrento, amid the breathtaking beauty of God’s creation.

Here’s what the $4,999 price of your trip will include:antipasti

Roundtrip air from New York-Rome/Naples-New York

First Class and Superior First Class hotels

Welcome drink, Welcome Dinner and Farewell Dinner

10 Buffet Breakfasts, 11 dinners, and 3 lunches as noted, below

Beverages/Wine with Meals (limited)

Winery tour, Wine Tasting, and Lunch in Tuscany;

Agriturismo (Farm) tour, Wine Tasting and Lunch in Umbria

Cooking Lesson, “Oil” Tasting and Lunch in Campania

Papal Audience (if Pope Francis is in residence at that time);

Mass arrangements with local priests

All Admission and Sightseeing costs including, among others:

Acadamie Musee

Duomo in Florence

Basilica and Tomb of St. Francis

Basilica and Tomb of St. Clare

Cathedral of Siena

Basilica of St. Mary of the Angels

Portiuncula, Francis’ Church of the Little Portion

Vatican Museums

Sistine Chapel

Pompeii Ruins

Convento di San Francesco

Ferry from Naples to Isle of Capri

Blue Grotto boat ride (weather permitting)

Taxi shuttles to Grotto of St. Francis and Hermitage of the Carceri;

Private Guide fees in Florence, Siena, Assisi, Rome, Capri/Anacapri;

Private tour bus and bus parking fees

City Hotel Taxes

English speaking Italian Tour Manager

American Tour Escort

Tips for drivers, guides, porters, kitchen staff

Luggage Tags and Travel Documents Pouch

monastery hydrangeaIn other words, everything except travel insurance, items of a personal nature (souvenirs, postcards, stamps, laundry, etc), some lunches, local church offerings, and connecting air from your hometown to New York. That’s pretty dang inclusive. You won’t really have to think about anything except enjoying yourself, connecting with God, and eating one fabulous meal after another.

I’ll be posting more information with more specifics about various stops on our pilgrimage, along with suggested spiritual reading, travel tips, recipes and more here and on my Italy pilgrimage Facebook page. Click HERE and “like” that page and you’ll always be up to date, even if you’re not planning to get a passport just yet. You’ll also find the online brochure there. If you’d like a hard copy of the brochure, email me through this website and I’ll get it int the mail to you.

Ciao!

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I laughed, I cried, I clicked “like”

Every once in a while I think about canceling my Facebook account. Really. But I know that, if for no other reason, my work requires me to be here. I have a love-hate relationship with the social media monster that sucks up so much of my free time. But lately I have to admit that I’ve really been feeling the love for Facebook. Well, maybe not for Facebook but for the people and conversations and connections Facebook brings into my life on a daily basis.

On any given day, I might carry on multiple conversations with friends far and wide — some I’ll see in town, others I might see once in a blue moon, but most I will never see (or have never ever seen in real life). But inevitably I’ll find myself drawn into discussions that alternately leave me laughing or crying or a combination of the two. And what I realize is that this space, this void that so often gets a bad rap for being nothing more than digital navel-gazing and self-promotion and wasted hours, has become a very real community for me. As someone who works alone from home all day, every day, Facebook is my water cooler and my cafeteria and my happy hour. And not in a creepy pathetic way, but in a really uplifting and almost spiritual way. Yeah, Facebook is spiritual for me, but then again so is oatmeal.

When I can sign onto my computer at any given hour and connect with friends I haven’t visited in years or share a difficult moment with someone who’s going through a tough time or just post something silly that might make someone else smile, I’m making a spiritual connection. We all are, whether we admit it or not. Earlier this week, I posted an update thanking everyone for making me feel just a little less insane, and I meant it. If I read that a friend in Canada accidentally used her dog’s poultry-flavored enamel-boosting toothpaste instead of the mint-flavored people-version, well, suddenly driving the wrong kid to the wrong location doesn’t seem all that bad. Solidarity is a powerful thing, even when it’s virtual.

And two days ago when I felt an overwhelming sense of contentment despite a pile of deadlines and obligations staring me in the face, it actually had everything to do with the silly IM conversation I had with two friends that went from autocorrect-inspired miscommunication to a downright hilarious exchange. How can I not feel content knowing that I may be in my office all alone, but I am surrounded by friends and strangers who share so many of the same struggles and joys in their own lives. It’s a good thing.

Just this morning, despite all the good stuff I find there, I thought about going on a Facebook hiatus. It just seemed like a good thing to do, to break the dependence on this online world that commands so much of my attention. But then I came downstairs and saw messages and posts and stories and comments, and I knew I couldn’t do it. And why would I want to? This is the modern-day version of talking over the backyard fence, and I’m lucky to have some really great neighbors here in Facebookland.

This whole Facebook experience may have started as a way to get information about my books out into the world, but it has shifted to something much better, something significant, which may seem odd when taken on face value but becomes abundantly clear when you break down the comments and updates and private conversations that are occurring there. And I know I’m not alone because another FB friend — someone I have never met and know only peripherally through my husband — posted a similar status update about the “magic of FB” just yesterday. (As it turns out, the two of us are planning to meet some time soon because we have realized we are so similar it’s scary. And that’s a pretty great discovery to make out of the clear blue sky with a  perfect stranger.)

So thank you to all of you who make up that Facebook community. You really are a blessing in my life.

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Making others in our own image

My September Life Lines column, running in the current issue of Catholic New York:

Someone saw a photo of me with my son, Noah, on Facebook recently and told me that he could tell from the subtlest look on my face that I was annoyed with my teenager. I knew without question that I wasn’t mad when that photo was taken. In fact, I was in a great mood that day, but I guess the camera captured me at the exact wrong moment, when something made my expression look less than happy.

Instead of explaining all that, I laughed and lied, and said, “Yeah, I was probably telling Noah to smile for the photo under my breath.” And inside I felt sadness knowing that making myself complicit in this misconception was easier than disagreeing. If I had told the simple truth, I’d have been seen as defensive or in denial because that answer doesn’t fit the preconceived view of who I am. And all of that got me thinking about the ways we cast each other into narrow roles, tightly defined by ideas we assign to people that often have nothing to do with that person’s truth and everything to do with our own perception of the world around us.

Like an observer watching my own life play out on a stage, I have become acutely aware lately of the ways people often see me through a lens of their own design, a magnification that doesn’t really have all that much to do with who I really am. People think they know me, but I hardly know me. We are all such complicated and mysterious beings on a journey that never moves in a straight line, rarely meets people’s expectations, and always manages to surprise. So how could any of us think for one minute that we truly know anyone?

And then I started to wonder how often I might do the same thing, thinking I know a certain look, a sure thing. These days I’ve come to realize the only thing I know for sure in this life is that I don’t really know much at all – not about myself, not about my family members, not about my friends, and certainly not about people on the periphery of my life. What I think I know of them is really just something I’ve cobbled together from limited interactions, from the distant past or from just yesterday, from a particular habit or belief, or from a moment frozen in time that can’t begin to give me the big picture view.

We limit ourselves and we limit each other when we don’t consider the possibility that someone we think we know could, in fact, be very different from what we imagine, could have so many facets and interesting twists and turns to them, little interior alleyways we’ve never bothered to travel or even notice on the map. All we see is the one-way main street down the middle and we think we know the whole town.

In some ways, the same could be said about our relationship with God. The way we view God is often colored by the way we view ourselves and our world. We make God into our own image rather than understanding it works the other way around. And in doing so, we create a God who can’t possibly measure up to the magnificence that is ours for the asking.

What would happen if we went through this life with childlike wonder and curiosity, expecting the unexpected, believing the impossible, and taking every person we meet at face value? What if we started from a place of not knowing anything, of understanding that we probably can’t begin to imagine what’s going on inside another person’s heart, head and soul, no matter how well we think we know him.

We just might find a whole other side of the story, joys and hopes and sorrows and dreams that live deep within, where the camera lens can’t reach.

 

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The breeze at dawn…

A little Rumi to start your Sunday morning. Mine started VERY early, so I’m trying to take some comfort in these words.

Maybe the breeze at dawn was just trying to tell me a secret. Here you go. Oh, and the photo is one of my favorite Jersey Shore sunrises from this August. Big red sun. 

 

 

The breeze at dawn

has secrets to tell you.

Don’t go back to sleep.

You must ask

for what you really want.

Don’t go back to sleep.

People are going back and forth

across the doorsill

where the two worlds touch.

The door is round and open.

Don’t go back to sleep.  – Rumi

 

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God’s weird sense of silent humor

When I was packing for retreat, I seriously debated bringing my new salmon-colored Wildwood hoodie because I didn’t want to ruin it. I know. If I think my Jersey Shore hoodie is too nice for my Adirondack silent retreat I’ve got some fashion issues that need to be dealt with, but that’s a post for another day. Anyway, first day on retreat I put on my pretty new hoodie and headed to the dining hall for a cup of coffee, which I planned to sip lakeside in silence. Sounds perfect, right?

I didn’t get off the dining hall porch before spilling my steaming cup of coffee down the front of my new hoodie. Now, back home, that would have prompted some cursing and me calling myself an idiot a few times. But on silent retreat it just caused me to silently say, “Really?” and shake my head. I tried to sit by the lake and think about God and not about whether I had brought the travel stain stick with me. And I was pretty successful. Okay, moderately successful. Then I ate breakfast and got a second cup of coffee. AND DID THE EXACT SAME THING. Not kidding. Spilled it all over me. Got my pants that time too. Now it was getting ridiculous. And that’s when I realized that maybe the whole point was to remind me that I wasn’t wearing fabric threaded with gold; I was wearing a sweatshirt that some 16-year-old boardwalk worker emblazoned with a Wildwood patch. Maybe I needed to not hold on so tight to the stupid stuff.  And walk slower. Got it.

Later I decided to do some yoga outside. I changed into flip flops and yoga pants (still wearing my hoodie, of course) and headed into the woods to search for an empty dock on the lake. But every dock was full, so I finally decided to clear away some branches and put my mat down on pine needles right at the water’s edge. Beautiful. I did sun salutations. I did crescent moon. I did tree, standing there silently amid the pines as if I was one of them. It was very cool and I was feeling pretty dang at one with nature and God. Until I put my hand in a patch of poison ivy. Not to worry. I’ve never had it before, probably immune, I thought. So I sat to meditate. Attacked by ants. Okay, fine. Still breathing, still one with nature. I got up to roll up my mat and brush away the ants, bent over, and a giant cicada-like bug fell out of my curls, where apparently it had decided to nest. At this point, I was not so silent, but I was laughing.

God has a way of taking us down a few notches when we’re getting caught up in the stuff that really doesn’t matter (hoodie) or stuff that seems spiritual on the surface (yoga in the woods) but is really more about style than substance. As I walked away with my stained hoodie tied around my waist and my ant-covered yoga mat under my arm, I had to admit that the little annoyances that seemed at first to be pulling me away from my serenity were actually pushing me toward peace, toward letting go, toward lightness.

For most of the first day of my retreat, I had convinced myself that I didn’t really feel like kayaking — even though I really, really wanted to kayak. Weather wasn’t great. I really needed more time just sitting in a chair thinking and praying. Not sure I could lift and launch a kayak alone and couldn’t ask anyone for help. I had a lot of reasons. But the real reason was that I was scared. I was afraid I’d look stupid trying to figure out how to get myself and my kayak in the lake. (I’ve only kayaked once before and that was at Girl Scout camp with lots of helpers around.) I was afraid I’d tip the kayak over, maybe even far out in the empty lake with no one around to help me. I was just plain afraid.

But after the yoga escapade in the woods, I suddenly didn’t care about any of it. I walked to my car, tossed my mat in the trunk, and went back and dragged a kayak from the rack. And once I was in the middle of the lake, all alone save for a couple of beautiful loons paddling along not far from me, I realized I needed all those stupid things to happen to push me out of my comfort zone, to remind me that this wasn’t about the clothes I was wearing or the setting of my yoga session. It was about getting right with God and letting go of my fears. And maybe, just maybe, I needed to focus more on the interior stains and scars and bugs that aren’t so easily washed or brushed away.

But, just for the record, the coffee stains came out.

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Convergence, coincidence, and cosmic connections

If you go on silent retreat, or spend any serious amount of time in deep and quiet prayer, you’re likely to find that some new synapses are firing. Suddenly it’s as if you’ve discovered a previously dormant channel in your brain.

When we open ourselves up to the movement of the Spirit, we really do become more receptive to things going on around us, energy moving through the universe. I know, it sounds too weird, but it’s true. Trust me. I experienced it this weekend and even now, days later.

Before I left for retreat, I was laying the groundwork, asking people to send me prayer requests, asking for prayers for myself. At one point, when I was talking with a priest I know about some issues I needed to grapple with on retreat, he made a comment about being like a butterfly, and I responded: “I’m so not a butterfly; I’m more of a dragonfly.” And that was that, a comment made in jest without much thought.

Then I went downstairs to find some things to bring for my personal sacred space. I was digging through a box, looking for a religious icon, but instead I found a notecard from a dear — and very holy — woman who died more than a year ago. It had a beautiful watercolor dragonfly painted on the front of it. I had kept it not only because of the artwork but because I wanted to keep a reminder of Maureen close by, but I had forgotten about it after our basement flooded and I packed it up in a box. So I knew the dragonfly (and Maureen) had to come with me on retreat.

When I got to the retreat center, I put my bags in my room and decided to spend some time sitting quietly and getting in the right mindset before dinner. I sat down in an Adirondack chair and within 30 seconds a giant dragonfly landed in the grass right in front of me. A few minutes later, another one zoomed by. As I went to my car later that evening to get something, a dragonfly buzzed right in front of me in the parking lot. And I smiled every time.

Finally, when I was sitting in my favorite prayer spot on Saturday afternoon, having a really deep heart-to-heart silent conversation with God, I reached a point of peace, an interior place where I posed a question, accepted that I had to let it go, and then asked God to please take care of it. And within five seconds a dragonfly landed on the dock right next to my chair. It was the only one I saw that day, but it showed up at the exact right time. Dragonflies, my new favorite thing. Their ability to reflect the light around them, move in all directions, and fly with a lightness that almost makes them seem like they are being carried along by the wind seems perfectly suited to where I am right now. (That’s a backyard dragonfly in the photo below, by the way, not a retreat dragonfly.)

Dragonflies weren’t the only odd convergence for me. Despite a four-page list of prayer requests I received from friends on Facebook, certain people kept jumping to the front of my mind, and not the obvious people. One or two people I have not seen or spoken to in years (decades) were powerfully present, so much so that they felt physically present. And that to me was a wonderful reminder of how we can be connected to another human being when we are willing to open ourselves up to a different kind of relationship, a meeting that doesn’t occur in the traditional way but perhaps in an even more powerful and lasting way. And those people who showed up on my retreat are lingering in my prayers. I’m carrying them with me.

The cosmic connections didn’t end when I returned home. Just yesterday, I opened my mail and found a note from my retreat director along with a prayer card. I assumed that, based on our time of spiritual direction, he figured the words would lift me up and maybe give me something to chew on as I face my spiritual issues. The front of the card was nice enough, but then I turned it over and read the prayer and said, “That sounds like me!” And I read it again and I knew it was mine. So I went down to my computer files just to be sure I wasn’t imagining it or looking for a weird connection where there was none. Nope. It was mine for sure. I had written the prayer for a client last year. It doesn’t have my name on it, so no one but me would ever know it was mine. And yet somehow Walt chose that particular prayer card to send to me. Kind of powerful when your own words are used to show you the way out of your struggle.

Sit in silence, open yourself up to receive, and you’ll be amazed by what comes your way.

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Never forget. Remembering like it was yesterday.

Yesterday a friend asked people if we could remember where we were at that horrible moment 12 years ago today. I was putting laundry away in the top drawer of my bedroom dresser when the phone rang. My father-in-law called to tell me to turn on the television. It feels like it was just yesterday, and it feels like a lifetime ago, but that morning is etched on my heart, as it is for most of us. Here’s the Life Lines column I wrote 12 years ago, in the days following 9/11. So much has changed since that horrible morning, and yet, for me, this column still resonates with things that feel very much in tune with our world today. Here’s wishing all of you, all of us a future of peace — peace in our hearts, peace in our homes, peace on our planet.

By Mary DeTurris Poust

Noah plopped down on the floor next to me the other day and asked me to read one of his favorite books, “There’s an Alligator Under My Bed,” by Mercer Mayer. As we turned the pages and followed the little boy on his quest to capture the elusive alligator that kept him up at night, I had an eerie feeling that the story was an allegory for what I’d been feeling since that terrible morning a few days before.

The night after the World Trade Center attack, I lay awake in my bed staring at the ceiling, filled with a sense of dread that I could not quite put my finger on. I was scared, but not by the images of horror that had flashed before my eyes for hours that day. Instead my fears seemed frivolous, not at all unlike the little boy’s alligator: Had I left the dryer on in the basement? Was the window over the kitchen sink still open? Were the kids’ pajamas warm enough? I felt a childlike fear of the dark, of things no one else can see, things we parents usually try to hush with a goodnight kiss and a night-light.

When morning finally arrived, I realized that my sleeplessness wasn’t really about what might go wrong within my four walls. It was about what had gone wrong in our world. Long after I had wiped away the tears of sadness that fell as I watched the World Trade Center collapse over and over again on television’s seemingly endless loop of horror, I fought back tears of a different kind — as I rocked Olivia to sleep for her nap, as I kissed Noah good-bye at preschool, as I hugged my husband, Dennis, at the end of a long day. Those were tears borne of fear, tears for tomorrow, tears for a world we don’t yet know. And I didn’t like how they felt.

Despite the fact that I have spent almost two years writing a book on how to help children deal with grief, the events of the past weeks left me in the unusual position of struggling for words. On the day of the attack, when Noah, asked if “bad people” might knock down our house, I reassured him that they would not. When he made a logical leap – at least for a 4-year-old – and worried that they might knock down his grandmother’s apartment building in New York City, I told him he was safe, that no one was going to hurt him or the people he loved. All the while I found myself wondering if I was telling him a lie.

But that kind of thinking leads to hopelessness, and when we lose hope, we leave a void just waiting to be filled by fear and despair and alligators of every kind. Through stories on television and in newspapers, I had seen unbelievable hopefulness in the face of utter destruction. How could I not believe in the power of the human spirit and the ultimate goodness of humanity and a better world for our children?

That night, as a soft rain fell, our house seemed wrapped in a comforting quiet that was interrupted only by the reassuring hum of the dishwasher. With Noah and Olivia asleep in their rooms, I lay down and looked up. For the first time in days I didn’t notice the enveloping darkness but saw instead the tiny glowing stars that dot our bedroom ceiling, a “gift” left behind by the previous owners. As I finally closed my eyes to sleep, I whispered a prayer of hope, a prayer for a world where the only thing our children have to fear are the imaginary monsters hiding under their beds.

Copyright 2001, Mary DeTurris Poust

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Sacred spaces, liminal places

When I first arrived at Pyramid Life Center, I carted my sleep bag and backpack up to my room in the main lodge, and, I have to admit, felt a flutter of disappointment when I realized my little room did not have a view of the lake. The last time I was at Pyramid I had a corner room with a lake view from both windows. I even slept with my head at the foot of the bed so the lake would be the last thing I saw at night and the first thing I saw in the morning. So I had to fight the urge to let disappointment be the first feeling I felt on my weekend retreat, especially since I wasn’t planning on spending that much time in my room and this might actually encourage me to spend more time sitting right next to the lake rather than looking at it from afar.

Even so, my room had to have a sacred space, no matter how little time I planned to spend there. So I set up the few things I brought with me and planned to add one thing during the weekend. Sacred spaces are so important to me. The photo above is actually the group sacred space from our meeting room and chapel. Like any good sacred space, it was filled with various things — from powerful images to containers of herbs — meant to connect us in some way with God and with other holy men and women who have walked before us on this journey.

In my own space, which you can see here, I brought a small crucifix, my battery candle, a dragonfly notecard (post for another day), a copy of an icon I loved from Abbey of the Genesee, where I’ve also done a silent retreat, and a broken seashell. Because broken seashells are essential to any sacred space I have. (You can read why over HERE.) The pine cone I found near the Adirondack chair in my favorite praying spot, so it seemed like a necessary addition.

The common theme through all of that for me was brokenness, which seems to be the refrain in my life lately. Broken figure of Christ at the center of the group’s sacred space, reminding us that we need to be broken for one another as Jesus was broken for us. The broken seashell at the center of my own space, reminding me to try to see the beauty in my own brokenness and in the brokenness of the people around me. Even my room, which might be considered “broken” by those who like comfort and luxury, made me think deeper about why I was in this place and whether the superficial stuff should matter so much.

But despite all the intentionally designed sacred spaces on my retreat weekend, the most sacred space of all needed no adornments or seashells or icons. It was the silence — totally barren and empty and naked — and yet life-giving and beautiful and draped in the wonder of God. Sometimes we spin our wheels trying to create something that will get us where we need to be, when all we really need to do is stop and strip away everything and sit naked before God and wait. Sacred spaces, liminal places…where heaven and earth meet, and it doesn’t matter one bit whether you have a room with a view.

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Lessons from Brother Sun

So much happens on silent retreat, even though nothing at all seems to be happening. No talking, no reading, no writing, no casual eye contact. Doesn’t sound like much could be happening, does it? But, let me tell you, there is so much energy and movement and chatter going on under the surface, it’s hard to contain it. At one point on the first day, as I let go of everything that was going on in my head and heart, my interior was actually shaking, almost like I was shivering, but I wasn’t cold. Just a flood of feelings and emotions and questions that came rising up to the surface after being pushed down day after day by the normal events of life.

It’s really too much to put in a single blog post. I don’t have it in me to write that, and, trust me, you won’t have it in you to read it. So, instead, every day this week I’ll try to share one short reflection on my retreat with a photo or two. But before I do that today, let me just urge you to try a silent retreat. Some day. It is a powerful, powerful experience, especially if you can do it in a place of such incredible beauty, as I was blessed to do this weekend.

The photo above was my favorite “resting” spot during retreat. To get to it, I had to hike up a small hill, past the chapel, and then down a hill to a little dock that was isolated from everything else. I would sit in this chair and stare at the changing colors of the sky, the swirling clouds moving so close overhead they felt like they were within reach, the shimmering water that reflected the light so dramatically that sometimes it looked like it was raining when it wasn’t and sometimes it looked like a swarm of small birds was hovering just over the surface when they weren’t. But more than anything else, what was I found here was such incredible peace, for hours at a time, so peaceful sometimes I found it difficult to leave when I knew I had to head to the dining hall for a meal.

One of the things that really struck me on this weekend experience of nature at its finest was how different it was from my recent vacation to the equally beautiful Jersey Shore. There I woke every morning and ran down to the beach to watch the sunrise, and I took photo after photo of the most spectacular scenes. Every day was different, everyday left me in awe and sometimes in tears. And I wanted to share it and post it and record it.

But here the sunrise was so subtle that you’d easily miss it if you weren’t paying very close attention. Unlike at the ocean, the sun itself was hidden from view, so there was no Aha! moment. It was more of a slow burn. Like I didn’t realize it was coming, almost thought maybe it was too cloudy for a visible sunrise, and then suddenly I’d notice the clouds getting a pinkish hue to them. Slowly, slowly the pink deepened and spread and it was obvious that behind that mountain a sunrise was occurring, but all I could see was the reflection of it. And for the briefest moment I thought, “I wish I’d brought my camera,” and then I remembered what this weekend was all about. I wasn’t there to capture the sunrise. I was there to let the sunrise capture me.

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Into great silence, Adirondack-style

I am so honored and humbled by the many, many prayer requests that have come pouring in from friends on Facebook. I asked people to send me their special intentions so I can carry them with me on silent retreat this weekend, and I now have three full pages — and I’ll be adding to the list right up until I leave at 3 p.m. in case you want to email me or leave an intention in the comment section before then. What a beautiful thing, to have people trust me with their worries and needs. I promise I’ll honor all of them. Although I’m not supposed to read on this silent retreat, I will make an exception for my prayer list so I don’t forget or miss anyone.

This will be the second time I attend the Merton in the Mountains silent contemplative retreat at Pyramid Life Center in Paradox, N.Y. It’s a beautiful place. The photo above is from when I was there five years ago. I will enter the silence tonight and be back to reality on Sunday afternoon. Not nearly long enough to really, truly get acclimated to the quiet, but I’m hoping even this little taste of silence will be enough to help me get a little more centered, reacquainted with regular deep prayer, and less inclined to distraction when I get home. That’s a tall order for a weekend retreat, but based on past experience, it is possible.

On top of that, this peace-focused retreat will coincide with Pope Francis’ call for a day of prayer and fasting for peace in Syria, the Middle East, and throughout the world on Saturday, so I’m sure we will be joining our silent prayers with the prayers of millions around the world. No more war.

I’ll be back next week to talk about this retreat experience. Until then, just know that I will be praying for all of my NSS readers and Facebook friends. If you could say a quick prayer for me at some point this weekend, I would really appreciate it. Peace and blessings!

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