After Retreat

It's been a very full few weeks.  After Christmas I led the annual 12-Step New Year's retreat at Holy Cross, then we had two days before we began our winter retreat.  Five days of silence in the house, except for praying morning and evening.  We plan out our meals, who is doing what, so we don't have to negotiate during the retreat.

This year we listened to a recording of one of Don Bisson's retreats, on Jung, Intuition, and Creativity.  Both Elizabeth and I are looking to ease the load of daily details in order to create ourselves and the community in new ways.  This means making space.  Sometimes it's a matter of not doing something I've been doing, but other times it's a matter of organization, how to do things in a more effective, ease-filled way.  I'm trying to look at email only once or twice a day, to give my afternoons more to the "details" that clutter my desk, to limit my urge to respond/react to external demands instantly.  It's so easy to feel effective by responding to minutiae!  Easy, but mistaken.

What do I want to make space for?  What I'm doing now.  I want - need - to write more, to create sermons, retreats, a memoir.  Yes, I said it.  I said it a few years ago and let myself get sidetracked, but now the memoir is in the center of my sights.  One way I can proclaim God's healing power is by telling my story.  And I miss writing.  So I'm saying it, again, and asking for your prayers.

Next week will be seven years since we began this crazy adventure.   That time was a burst of creative energy, a delightful blank canvas for us to dance with God.  Now, we are an organization of sorts.  We have ways of being and doing that can become routine, and shut down the creativity that we began with.  Our other Companions have gifts of creativity, and it's time to see how the community we are now will continue to develop.

Elizabeth and I each plan to take a three-month sabbatical, to learn what God is saying to each of us.  Plans are just beginning to take form, but I know mine will include writing.  In the meantime I'm looking for the pattern, and the discipline, to help me.  Please pray that I can slow down enough to hear God, and respond.

What do you need to make space for in this new year?  What might you let go of, or rearrange, to help open the door for God's whisper in your ear?