Project Idea: Parish Level Monastic-like Retreats

 So, what a lot of people don't know about me is that I've been discerning entering religious life, specifically monastic contemplative life, for a while now.  However, due to my health it's quite unlikely that I will join a community.  Most communities will not accept women into the community that are not pretty much the picture of health.  That's not true for all, but for most it is.  I will try not to let the things I've encountered when trying to just get communities to talk to me (some *very* well known and large communities) come through too much, but if you've ever encountered trying to even just discern religious life while having an illness or disability and encountered things like:

• Being denied and when pressed for "why" (so you can have a reasonable, adult conversation about realistic outlook on their community life and the life you have with your illness/disability) you are told something like, "It's because you won't be able to play basketball with the other novices." 
• Being told that you can find everything that you would get in communal religious life living in the world (and wondering why they then think their communities are warranted)
• Being invited to be a part of a discernment retreat and wanting to talk to the novice mistress, and for days you are put off for the younger, healthier women while being told they'll "get to you" and then they never actually talk to you
• Being told by the vocations director of the diocese that "it'll be difficult but I won't stop you" and then the director proceeds to ignore you and not give you any help or resources
• Being told by your parents that the reason they didn't worry about you entering religious life over your sibling because you were disabled and they knew that religious communities wouldn't take you, so they didn't have anything to worry about 

Well, you're in good company here.  I do, however, want to say that it's not completely hopeless.  There are women religious communities out there that are unique and reaching out to women who are traditionally turned away.  You just have to search for them and I've found that vocations directors aren't really aware of them.  You'll have to do the legwork on finding them on your own.

Which is how I found the Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary (aka: the Visitandines).  It's a religious order founded by St. Francis de Sales and St. Frances de Chantal for women who were turned away from other religious communities at the time.  They accept people with gentle health, disabilities, widows, and late vocations (as long as dependents are obviously no longer in need of your care).  The thought behind the creation of the order was that just because someone is more frail than desired or they are older in life, it doesn't mean they can't live in community and be called to a life of contemplation and prayer.  The sisters help each other in community where their illness or disability needs assistance.  The funny thing is, the nearest cloister of theirs is a mere 2 hours away from me and the vocations director of my diocese had no clue to even point me in that direction.

All that is background to say, in my time discerning with the Visitandines I have found much joy and love in the life they lead.  Currently, I'm dealing with some health issues I'd like to get settled before I ask to potentially enter.  But, I acknowledge that it might be something that never happens for me.  Thinking through that prospect has led me to wonder how I could facilitate even a semblance of that life, if for just a short time, in my own parish life.  Which brought to mind that silent retreats are a thing that people hold at retreat centers, and that's something I could work with.

Now, the silent retreats I've been to all had some form of focus on the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius.  That's something I don't really desire to emulate.  Instead, I envision a silent retreat where men and women (together or sex segregated) get together for a time to live out a voluntary monastic life for a time.  The retreat would focus on a daily schedule around the Liturgy (mass and the divine office) and then the times between are spent like in a monastic community: cooking (if permitted), working (possibly doing some charity assistance), communal leisure (getting together to talk and craft or play games), and personal prayer and reading.  Since I find the schedule of the Visitandines gentle enough for pretty much anyone that would be what I'd want to build the schedule around.

Now, there are some underlying assumptions or rules around the retreat.  It obviously, by the nature of being a silent retreat, will mean that people move and work through the day in silence just like in monastic life.  Obviously talking can happen in cases of warning for danger or for clarification, but the silence is to be protected for self and others.  Since it is not an actual monastic community there is no leader of the community in the same sense, but the retreat organizer will function in a similar capacity when it comes to helping the individuals and making sure that the "work" of the community for the time is assigned to people. 

 

Time	Activity	Location
5:30	Rise	Personal Room
6:00	Mental Prayer	Chapel
7:00	Office of Readings	Chapel
7:30	Mass	Chapel
8:00	Breakfast (quiet)	Refectory
9:15	Morning Prayer	Chapel
9:45	Work	Assigned Locations
12:00	Dinner (with spiritual reading)	Refectory
12:45	Recreation	Community Room
1:45	Midday Prayer	Chapel
2:00	Work	Assigned Locations
3:00	Spiritual Reading	Personal Choice
3:30	Rosary	Chapel
4:00	Holy Hour	Chapel
5:00	Evening Prayer	Chapel
5:30	Mental Prayer	Chapel
6:00	Supper (with spiritual reading)	Refectory
7:15	Recreation	Community Room
8:15	Night Prayer (the time after which starts Profound Silence)	Chapel
10:00	Lights Out	Personal Room

 

And that's the baseline I've got in my head.  Then things could be changed around and fit to the goal of the community: focused spiritual reading, changing out a work time for spiritual direction, offering Confession during work time (I didn't build it in because even the Visitandines don't have a standing Confession time each day.), spiritual reading fitting to the time during meals, having a board for people to stop by and see if anyone (inside the community and outside the community) have asked for prayers, etc.

People will probably find the idea of "recreation" time odd for how I've experienced it in all the communities I've stayed with (5 at this point).  For some, the novices all go outside and play sport, but that seemed to be for the active communities I stayed with.  Pretty much all of the contemplative communities held recreation the same way: everyone gathers into the same room, sits around to chat about their thoughts and their day, read out any letters sent to the community from those wishing to send cards or ask for prayers, and does a craft to assist the community.  Some of the crafts were for things needed in the community (blankets, towels, sewing habits, etc.) and also they would spend time planning out and making gifts for their benefactors for during the Christmas season.  On Sundays even the crafting would be forbidden since it was work and instead they would spend time playing card games or Scrabble.  It's not some grand affair to get exercise.  If someone needs to move through the day it can be done during the times when you are free to go where you please and your work is done.

And that's it.  The idea in my head.  Now I just have to find the motivation and courage to try to figure out how to implement it.  I really would like to have it at my parish, but then I'd have to figure out where people are going to sleep.  I'd have to make sure there's an introductory time for anyone new to this type of thing to explain how to chant the Office and what the expectations are.  Then I'd have to get Father on board, even though female monastic communities are perfectly self-sufficient; we'd still need him for Mass and any Sacraments scheduled.  At least I've got this part of it written down, which is further than I was a couple hours ago. 

God Has a Sense of Humor

 ...and sometimes he speaks to me that way.

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There have been times I’ve seen people ask online if God has a sense of humor, and my emphatic answer to that questions is: Yes!

There have been multiple times through my life when God has shown his hand in it that made me laugh, but one particular instance sticks in my mind because it was such a “loud” message to me from it. It took place one night in the midst of an adoration hour I signed up for during a 4-day silent retreat. 

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Before I begin, there’s a secondary background story that I have to tell. It’s short, so stick with me.

Shortly before I went on my retreat, I was chatting with a co-worker about something that startled him one evening. He had been in his kitchen with the lights off since he was just grabbing a glass of water. While at his sink he hear a noise come from his back patio area and he looked over to the glass doors that led out there to see what was going on. He said his heart jumped into his throat as he saw a face peering through the glass with hands on either side. After the initial panic of thinking a person was sneaking around outside his house and looking in the back door, his brain caught on to the fact that the “person” was super low to the ground and was in fact a raccoon just looking into his kitchen.

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See, I promised it would be short.

As I was saying, this encounter with the Lord speaking to me through humor happened while I was attending a 4-day silent retreat. There was one night when we were all supposed to sign up for an hour at Eucharistic adoration. I got to the sign-up sheet late enough that all the early hours and all the “late” hours (aka: they just had to wake up a couple hours earlier than they wanted) were taken. So, I got the 2-3AM time slot.

When I arrived, all the lights except for one on the altar in the retreat house chapel were off. The floor plan of the chapel was pretty standard. Small room. Two columns of pews. Altar up front. Emergency exit door (with a top window looking out towards the woods) on the right-hand wall.

I sat down on the third pew from the front on the right-hand side of the chapel and settled in. I was making my way through the Office of Readings for the day until it happened. My brain started remembering that coworker’s story and spinning off all kinds of stories of what I would see if I just looked over at that exit door window. (A deer, a person, just glowing eyes, etc. the whole gamut.) I knew I was getting distracted and refocused myself. I finished up the Office of Readings and was attempting to sit in silent adoration when the stories of that door’s window started up again. I must’ve been struggling for a good 20 minutes to actually focus on adoring our Lord who was right in front of me, before he apparently had enough.

Roughly 20 minutes into my hour I heard it: banging on the entrance door right outside the main chapel doors. To say I was calm as could be would be a lie. At first I brushed off the banging as some form of severe temptation to distraction and to get me to leave adoring our Lord. I mean, I had never had such a hard time focusing in adoration as I was that night. Nothing was going like normal. Except the banging kept going on and on.

Eventually I got up and walked to the back to just peek out at the retreat house entrance, and…

As I looked out, the banging happened on the door and in the right side window was the face of a woman pressed to it with her hands cupped on either side peering in. I wasn’t even scared at that point. I just sent a, “Really, Lord?! 😂” to him and walked out to see what the woman needed. In reality it was two ladies who had arrived on a red-eye for the retreat that started the next day and had arranged to stay early with the retreat house coordinators. They had failed to inform me that the two women would be arriving, but their names were listed on the sign-in sheet for the next retreat and there was a note about their arrival on the page. So I let them in out of the cold and pointed them to where they were supposed to go, and went back into the chapel.

I settled back into my pew and told the Lord, “Message received. I’ll focus now.” I’ve always fondly looked back on that because I guess the Lord decided if I was going to panic over a window and the potential for people looking in the door (something that shouldn’t have been even a possibility where the retreat house was), then he was just going to make it happen and show me that it wasn’t as awful as I was allowing it to be in my mind. I’ve actually had a couple times in life since then when I’ll be thinking about the worst case scenarios for things to the point of not even wanting to start something, but then I remember that when I really was confronted with “the worst” I handled it just fine.

Just Me

 

Hissing pebbles, pressed straight down
Sweeping motion, edge of gown
Expanding inhale, breath allowed
Silence singing, no more crowd

Gentle crying, face and sky
Dancing breeze, invites a sigh
Yielding tension, muscles loose
Finding cover, ‘neath boughs profuse

Faithful ponderings, permitted free
Thoughts unspoken, ‘neath sheltering tree
Pressure lifted, allowed to be
Soaring freedom, just me

Just me.