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By the time you are thirsty, your kidney’s have sent an emergency signal to your brain. Now the brain tries to regain health for your body with urges to drink. It’s better to provide for the body ahead of time, of course. The same is true for a thirsty soul. Don’t let yourself get morbidly parched. It’s not healthy for you or anyone in your life. It’s terrible for your art and your creative muse, and your mission in the world. You have to be well to do right by others. You have to be well to do well. But most of all you have to properly BE.
Getting it wrong:
A retreat that’s more of a social gathering with activities…That’s a Protestant, Western, answer to a problem that misunderstands the question.
Catholic tradition with it’s long history of spiritual retreats and spiritual guides was too much spurned by Protestant protest against it in favor of being busy at work and productive, while too often letting the soul starve for want of divine tranquility and peace.
God is best found in stillness and when the boisterous yammering of our heart and mind are soothed by rest and unplugging in every way.
The real question is not how can I find a party so I can feel whole….but How do I find my whole way home?
Home is within.
You become quiet and you go inside. God is within. You won’t find a God of Sabbath rest “out there” or at a place.
3 Most Important Tips:
1. put it on the calendar. mark it off. It’s a vacation day.
Or as the British say it (better) “you need to go on holiday!”
HOLY DAY.
Holy means set apart. That’s exactly what retreat should be.
If you take take off from work for doctor’s apps, then think of it like that.
Block off 4-6 hours at minimum
8-10 is better and 24-48 is really when things get very beneficial.
AND Go away from home and people. A retreat center, a natural setting, a private room at a church or someone’s home.
2. Do all you can to minimize all distractions and obligations.
Plan ahead. Tell people you WILL be off the grid. Not able to be contacted. at all.
Leave your phone in your car. A few hours won’t kill you. If you think that it might, or that you can’t possibility be out-of-contact…or maybe that you are too important and busy to do this.
Then you have to be even more serious able doing it. Delusion has set in. You have become blind. You are starting to die a soul death. Get away RIGHT away!
(You may be afraid of what thoughts are going to come up when things get quiet. Be brave!)
3. Let the chatter die out.
If your mind is clamoring…and it will be if you have a lot to be responsible for….then you really can’t get to a place of rest.
• Jot everything down quickly and put it to the side. It will be there when you get back and you will be able to deal with it better.
A simple Worksheet that’s perfect for retreats:
• The SHARPENING Ritual
• The SHARPENING Ritual
(PRAYER-centered VERSION)
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“Fear of the unexplainable has not only impoverished our inner lives, but also diminished relations between people.” -Rilke
We like categories. We like labels. We like things defined.
A common statement among plenty of people (born after the 1960s?) is to claim: “I don’t like labels”. The closer thing is to say instead that, “I don’t like being confined to a box I can’t alter when I want to.”
We all instinctively use and adore labels…(If we didn’t, bringing it up wouldn’t cross our minds.)
“Not liking labels” is of course a label. It’s a classification.
It’s a way to distinguish an individual. It’s a category we hope people understand. We like the differentiation, but that same differentiation can be it’s own prison, and soon. It is not only a prison, but a blockade from human interactions and healthy bonds.
But, this is because Without categories, we have fear. Our world is much harder to navigate and make sense of without them. Without labels we venture headlong into the “unexplainable” again and again. This production of fear has a halting power.
I don’t know the remedy for it. There may be none. It may help, though, to just admit that we are often afraid. The funny thing is the being afraid draws us closer to each other…when it is not busy destroying us.
Managing a wine tasting room is a great job for a writer because, when it’s not too busy, you can become a kind of social scientist: observing people and trying to see why humans do what we do.
You can even allow your curiosity to navigate some of the deeper questions about the human experience.
One recent observation:
The “poison apple” of the smart phone has changed how we do things alone–eating, drinking, or traveling, in particular.
FACT: People rarely come to taste wine by themselves (at our place).
That may seem obvious. Wine tends to bring people together, right? Maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised that people only rarely come alone.
But it IS strange.
Think about it like this:
Shopping for food or clothes alone isn’t considered weird and people tasting wine are really just shopping for wine.
The only difference perhaps are presumptions, previous experiences, or maybe subterranean social exceptions.
• Feeling low…solo
When people visit the tasting room alone, I can usually sense their social discomfort. They might suddenly offer me a reason why they are alone this time or they might neurotically use their phone to look busy or connected.
The alternative, of course, would be to interact with and absorb the environment they are truly in or look for ways to subvert social fear through some modicum of meaningful interaction: friendliness, conversation, inquisitiveness, for starters. So terrifying is the prospect of looking lonely at a winery, that many solo customers barely experience it at all.
• Confronting fear
This observation got me to thinking of ways I try to numb or avoid these fears or points of discomfort in myself and in my life. What am I missing that I shouldn’t be. The default is to use technology to connect, but at what cost?
When I interviewed Rolf Potts, famed travel-writer and best-selling author, he talked about his own wrestling with the seduction of “not being where he was” by engaging with technology. One of the most memorable things he said was this:
“When you travel alone you are forced to confront your own loneliness and boredom, and interact with your surroundings in ways you can’t [when you’re] with a companion.”
We miss our chances for new experiences with the advent of constant so-called “connectedness”, don’t we?
The habit forms quickly. Only thoughtfulness will heal this malady.
(Here’s the video. He covers that bit around min 2:40.)
Do you question how you use technology and confront what it might be stealing from you?
Encountering our loneliness more deeply could create epiphanic moments of self-discovery and new insights into what we fear and what makes us each unique.
Maybe it’s time to do something alone to test your social fears, deepen your healthy sense of self, and develop a new sense of social, and even spiritual, courage and strength.
Maybe leave your phone is the car for the 30 min you shop, eat out, or exercise. Good things could happen.
If you like what you’ve read, consider getting my in-depth but consice weekly correspondence, starting soon. Learn about it here.
This Sunday marks the start of the season of Advent 2015.
The predominant theme of Advent is WAITING in expectation.
It’s a timeless theme.
(Before mobile phones, if a bus broke down you had to find a pay phone and wait your turn to call for rescue. These folks don’t seem too upset by it.)
Waiting makes up a big portion of our lives, doesn’t it?
Whether it’s waiting in line or in traffic or waiting for an occasion or certain situation–we do a lot of waiting.
For me, a focus on waiting pulls me out of the present moment to a moment that exists in theory. It involves hope or anxiety. Or both.
The prisoners I minister to have a life centered on waiting for their freedom. They routinely tell me that keeping busy is the best way to conquer the burden and stress of waiting.
But a closer interaction with the experience of waiting can unearth and reveal deeper spiritual longings that can both call us into a richer walk of faith and engender the growth needed to more fully surrender to God.
If we just stay busy we can miss the gifts that come only through waiting.
Because waiting is such a huge part of the human experience, it’s no wonder that Christianity has long interacted with this theme as a entry point into bigger spiritual conversations and concepts. It is through this struggle we gain growth and maturity in our walk of faith.
Patience is rarely, if ever, attained by any other means than practice.
Waiting is that practice.
Waiting on the Lord is a vibrant theme in Scriptures too, right?
Most of the stories in the Bible include the aspect of waiting. Abraham and Sarah (and many others) wait for offspring, David waits on the Lord for deliverance, the prophets wait for God’s promises to be fulfilled, Paul and the other apostles do a lot of waiting in prison, and in the season of Advent we acutely encounter Mary’s waiting for the Savior, Jesus. She is the vehicle God has chosen to birth the Prince of Peace. It’s a nine month process–on the heels of thousands of years of waiting for the Messiah.
This delivery involves a lot of anticipation and waiting.
And so too does most anything else of worth. These many stories echo our own pain and struggle.
I appreciate Mary’s expression of gratitude during her wait (a.k.a. The Magnificat-see the video below to hear “Mary’s Song” sung my John Michael Talbot). We can use her example to help us along.
Gratitude produces joy that makes waiting easier.
Waiting aptly exposes our traits of impatience, also. It works to refine us.
Henri Nouwen once wrote, “Impatient people are always expecting the real thing to happen somewhere else and therefore want to go elsewhere. ”
Waiting is how God gets at the idols of our heart. Waiting addresses the things we think we need besides God to be content: money, comfort, expedience, success or control.
TODAY’S NUGGET:
It’s a powerful lesson we find in Advent. Meditate on the longings of your heart and cultivate the seeds of advent there. Expectantly wait for God to fulfill his promises with a heart of trust and gratitude.
![A shipwrecked world; Anthony of the Desert | Henri Nouwen [SSL 232]](https://lisadelay.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/Anthony-825x510.jpg)
