Not To Mention

The Jesuits offer a thirty-day silent directed retreat for either the masochists or those who are entering or considering a religious vocation. Decades ago that might have been a good discernment experience for me, but no longer: I’m all discerned out. For the rest of us, there are three-day, five-day, and eight-day retreats, silent directed. Three days hasn’t struck me as sufficient to warrant the long drives and sink down into it, but eight days a bit much, so I’ve been doing the five-day. My third and final one for summer 2013 begins this evening, and the full-day counting begins tomorrow, Tuesday: Tu, We, Th, Fr, Sa and check out Sunday morning. Home Monday I suppose, though we haven’t a plan.

What’s coming of all this? Some feelings, some sense of owning up to where I am in this +Time extension of my life. 

Five years ago, May 2008, I attended an eight-day session of Credo, which is for Episcopal clergy. The session I attended was for retired priests, and in fact I’m signed up for another one August 2014, a year from now, in the Miami area. By then I’ll be coming up on 79, which makes it challenging enough as it is, but Linda and I -- plan -- is that safe at this age or too much temptation for he whom Harry Golden called the evil eye? -- to make an event of it and drive on down to visit Key West for our first time.

As usual, I wandered. What’s coming of all this retreat nonsense? It is affirming something that my first Credo retreat (neither silent nor directed) pressed on the attendees, that as age advances it becomes time and timely to acknowledge it with a bit of letting go and letting be, not to mention letting God. That is to say, cutting back professionally, vocationally. So, I shall do. Sticking with the Sunday plan as it is for now and as long as the rector puts up with an obnoxious and overbearing Associate whose mind is on the downslide, I’ll pare the rest of my +Time priestweek. Wednesday only. Tentatively, morning? Noonish? Evening?

That’s my thinking at this point before beginning this finale to my summer of silence.

TW+

It is my intent to publish my +Time blog post every morning through this August retreat, just as I did through the June retreat and the July retreat. Whether that is possible will depend on (a) the discipline my Jesuit spiritual director exercises over me and (b) whether there’s WiFi at the retreat center. So if no +Time nonsense is posted Tuesday and following this week, it probably doesn’t signify and I’ll resume soon as possible :-) T+