Retreat in Daily Life

April, 2012

 

The idea of this retreat is to nurture our God-life in the midst of so many different lives we live, to practice stillness in the midst of a booming city, to listen in the midst of shouts, to be refreshed, to have a retreat in the midst of daily life.

"The little word ‘soul’ sounds so strange in the midst of the confusion and the screaming voices who want to be heard. The sound of it is so quiet and silent that it’s hardly heard in the stormy wheathers of our inner being. But at the same time it has a sound of great responsibility and seriousness: you, oh man, have a soul. Make sure you don’t loose it, that you wake up one day in the midst of the bustle of life – either in your professional or private life – only to find that you have become hollow on the inside, a plaything of events, a leaf subject to the winds desires only to be blown away; that you find you have no soul left. Take care of your soul!" (D. Bonhoeffer)

WHEN AND WHAT

The retreat looks like this: people join this retreat make a commitment to set aside a half-hour each day to be quiet with God. During this time you are invited to relax, to listen and to share with God ’as one friend to another’. After the week, there is the possibility of having an individual meeting with a pastor or a leader for extended personal prayer or for a pastoral conversation.

Do you sometimes feel that life goes fast? We live in different dimensions at the same time that all require time and attention: work life, social life, digital social life, family life, leisure time life, party life, news life, TV life, church life. We live in all these dimensions in the knowledge that we ultimately live in a God-life. At least, ideally we do. It’s this dimension of life that makes all the other dimensions worthwhile, beautiful and sacred. It’s no surprise however that our God-life easily becomes our last resort, instead of our starting ground. We easily breathe 21,600 times a day without realizing where that breath finds its origin. We scatter our attention over so many things at the same time without realizing how mindful God is of us.

The idea of this retreat that we don’t always have to move to another place to find God, but that we can learn to practice the God-life in the midst of our normal busy lives. It’s a practice of silence and reflection.