During my active pastoral career I typically took a three or four day silent retreat once a year for some personal spiritual perspective and renewal. When I “retired” and began doing interim pastorates, that schedule was no longer practical. Since caring for my wife, Candy, on her journey with Alzheimer’s disease I have not taken such a retreat. While I find caring for her a satisfying joy, I am aware that the attention it demands has been increasing. In addition, in his 90s her father (she is his only child) has had some serious falls and a stroke. So I have become his defacto caregiver as well. As he has weakened, I have assumed more daily responsibilities for him. I was discussing with my therapist how tiring paying attention around the clock has become. She suggested I seek some way to take a break for some respite. That brought me back to my annual silent retreats. So after a decade, I took such at retreat June 10-12, 2021.
Though I kept a hot pen journal during the retreat, I thought identifying the scriptures that emerged to inform each day’s meditation. I did not go looking for special biblical input but concentrated on the readings from the Revised Common Lectionary on which I would be having daily lectio divina as usual. Also I would keep my regular rotation of praying through five Psalms each day. As I soaked in these passages and in the extended silence, I listened for nudges of the Spirit to bring to the surface what would refresh me.
On Thursday, June 10 these lines from lectio divina brought to me the theme of not looking on outward things, but inviting God to look into my heart with me. It became something of a day of Ignatian examen, not entirely confession and repentance but also delight and joy (as in Psalm 51:12). I did pray through Psalms 10, 40, 70, 100, and 130 that day, but my lectio divina led me to Psalm 139 with its awareness that God knows me through and through, concluding with the invitation from verses 23-24. “Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my thoughts. See if there is any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.”
1 Samuel 16:7
“The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the
outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.”
2 Corinthians 5:12
“You may be able to answer those who
boast in outward appearance and not in the heart.”
Mark 4:27
“The seed would sprout and grow, he
does not know how.”
On Friday June 11,
Psalm 131:2 stood out as I prayed through 11, 41, 71, 101, 131. “I have calmed
and quieted my soul, like a weaned child with its mother; my soul is like the
weaned child that is with me.” This is a longtime favorite for my
centering prayer (often with Van Gogh’s drawing of Sien with Child on Her Lap as my icon/spiritual window), letting
myself curled up on God’s lap as a small child with its mother. These
reflections led me to the hymn Be Still,
My Soul and this line from the second verse, “All now mysterious shall be
clear at last.”
On Saturday, June
12 the refrain from Psalm 42:5, 11; 43:5 (12, 41, 72, 102, 132) seemed to draw
all of the retreat to both a conclusion and a commission for returning to my
caregiving mission. “Why are you cast down, O my soul, and why are you
disquieted within me? Hope in God; for I shall again praise him, my help and my
God.”
