Silent Retreat

Before we went to the silent retreat, we stopped by Chris's house so he could spend some time with his mother for Mother's Day. Emily and I walked through the woods behind his yard to get to a pond and swim. On our way back, we were talking about the Appalachian trail. Every year before the final retreat, called "Disorientation", JVC:East does a fundraiser where the JVs get people to sponsor them for a three-day hike on the Trail. I had read Bill Bryson's A Walk in the Woods last summer, and was raving about it so much Emily read it last month, and now we both really want to hike all of it. We made some tentative plans to hike a good chunk of it next summer. I'm not sure how much time I could spare, but a whole month would be awesome.

When we were walking back, Emily turned to me and said "Aren't you glad to be alive?"

"Yes," I said.

"Just checking."

Then we went to Loyola House of Retreats, which is a mansion. Those Jesuits and their property. I was a little suspicious of having to talk to a spiritual director, but my director was awesome. He's an FJV who's now a scholastic Jesuit, and he majored in medieval studies and theology at St. Joe's.

Friday night I slept through dinner, and I felt like crying when I came down and there was nothing but apples left. I slept for a lot of the retreat, and felt like I wasn't getting as much out of it as I should. But my body really needed to catch up on sleep, and I needed to get that taken care of before anything else. I read from The Imitation of Christ and Marcus Aurelius' Meditations.

I wasn't really sure what I wanted from the retreat. I don't have any pressing questions for God or feelings of despair right now. I told Joseph I was just really happy right now, with Matthew and JVC. He said that was fine, that I could pray in thanksgiving to God for the joy he has given me this year. And I did have a revelation, unasked for but gratefully received-Jesus loves me and wants me to love him and other people, more than anything I can "do" and more than simply resisting sin, though those too come with loving him. And I love God, and I'm so glad and joyful for the gifts he's given me, and I'm ready to take on whatever he wants me to do.

Joseph gave me a book of poems by Denise Levertov to read, because he noticed that my face lit up when he mentioned Yeats during our group meeting, and there was a poem called "The Servant-Girl at Emmaus", and he was thinking about which one of his directees was most like a servant-girl at her placement, and I was the obvious answer. He wanted us all to write a letter to one of the people who touched our lives at work this year, so I wrote one to Hank, the man who's in hospice care right now, telling him how much I'm going to miss him and how much I admire him in facing death squarely so he can make sure he leaves with nothing unfinished. My letter made Joseph cry, and he said that I should use my talents as a writer to tell my resident's stories to others. Aww, make me like you more, Joseph. I love Jesuits. They're really "men for others".

We were supposed to be silent from 9 p.m. on Friday to after mass on Sunday night, except for talking to our spiritual directors. Everyone was good on Saturday, but by Sunday I heard a lot of people chatting. I could have stayed silent for another week at least. The Jesuits take a 30-day silent retreat before their final vows, going through Ignatius' Spiritual Exercises.

It was sad, since this is my last retreat because the Northwest's orientation starts before DisO. Things are really starting to wind down. All of my residents are starting to tell me that they'll really miss me next year, and I keep telling them I'm not gone yet. I talked to my replacement JV, and he sounds really great and a perfect fit for DMH. Who am I kidding, I'm feeling like I'm starting to disconnect from Baltimore too. There's only two and a half months left.