So when you experience a shift, a rebirth, your life suddenly becomes all rainbows and unicorns, right? Wrong. After my shift, my rebirth, I wanted to pack up and get in my car and go home because I had had this experience. It felt like a culmination. Instead, I stayed through the rest of the … Continue reading My Silent Retreat: The First Day of the Rest of My Life
centering prayer retreat
My Silent Retreat: The Shift
I ended my last post saying I would write about the shift that I've felt coming for a while. I'll pick back up on the third day of the retreat when I was so very tense and then had some release. Typically, the third day of a silent retreat is hard for me. I had … Continue reading My Silent Retreat: The Shift
My Silent Retreat: Reframing
I returned home from my eight-day silent retreat at the Benedictine Sisters Retreat Center (at Sacred Heart Monastery) in Cullman, Alabama on Friday. It was a powerful experience, lots of shifting energy, some opening and some closing. The first evening was one of talking until after dinner, when silence began. The retreat group, about 20 … Continue reading My Silent Retreat: Reframing
Into the silence again
So it's time for me to take another silent retreat. Silent retreats do my soul so much good. I leave tomorrow for an eight-day centering prayer retreat and will be in silence about five and a half days of it. Three hours each day of centering prayer/meditation. No internet or online access. No phone calls. No … Continue reading Into the silence again
The rhythm of a silent retreat day
Our days of silent retreat had a rhythm, and for me, that contributed to the depth of the experience. The schedule held the day in a scaffold that allowed me to be present to the sunrise and deepening day and sunset and night and meals and centering and sleep - all within that cycle. I … Continue reading The rhythm of a silent retreat day
Returning from the silence
I've been trying to find the words to describe my retreat last week. When people ask how it went, I've been answering, "wonderful," but that doesn't really tell much, does it? The experience of being in silence for almost six days, sitting in three hours a day of centering prayer sessions with a group, having … Continue reading Returning from the silence
Choosing silence
As a part of my healing from breast cancer and its treatments, I'm taking a silent retreat this Monday through next Monday. It's a centering prayer retreat, and about six days of it will be silent. I'll be there with other centering prayer practitioners, and we will meditate together, eat meals together, stay in dorms … Continue reading Choosing silence
eddies and currents 