Home from a Weekend Away

I took home from retreat this weekend no writing, no journal, no notes. The days simply called for my heart to be attentive, my eyes to be open, my ears to be ready, my steps to follow what I can only think was love's call under sunny winter skies. Things I wrote during the past months and posted here seem in retrospect to have been right on target.

“In a way that may balance my two days in a hospital in November, I will spend two days away, learning to listen as the mood quiets around me, and I will consider reading, thinking, easing my way into a space inside.

“The time away and the space may succeed in communicating a reassurance that I hadn’t known I needed.”

“Read from all those perspectives, the sayings that emerged in my prayer this Advent and Christmas season and that found their way onto pieces of paper that I kept safe in my prayer book constitute what seems a message that God wants – at this point in my life, still wants – what is good for me.”

“And something happened to Jesus at the Jordan… it was about being with John, AND it was about being with the other people who had gone there for the same reason, AND it was about being with the God who had brought them all together for an unforgettable experience… an experience until then, I would guess, not regularly available to Jesus either in the synagogue at Nazareth or even at the Temple in Jerusalem. It was a crucial experience for people who may have felt that some part of their lives wasn’t working, that their lives weren’t joyful enough or generous enough or honest enough and they didn’t know how to change that.”