Note: The next few days, possibly a week, will be on this subject.  If you are not interested, please do check back, I will get back to lighter fare before you know it.  There are some people who have been waiting to hear about the retreat, so I want to share it before too much times goes by.

First of all I’d like to say this is just a summary of the concepts presented at the retreat and my reflections on those concepts.  Much of the retreat was a “tune up” of what I have been taught and believe and experience as a Catholic woman.  The silence simply allowed me to experience it yet more deeply.  Since non-Catholics or ex-Catholics may read this,  I would like to make clear that despite the deep human failures of the Catholic Church over centuries, I remain Catholic to my core.  I can no more say I am not Catholic than I can say I am not a woman.   Right now I am very not into the community aspect of my religion; this is something that has waxed and waned my whole life thus far, right now it’s just in the waning phase.  I think it has to do with my general dislike of large groups – there’s only so much togetherness I can take, and then I just want to be alone. 

It is very painful to those of us who still cherish our association with Catholicism, that the baby has been thrown out with the bathwater.  The rich heritage of the Christian mystics, for example, should no more be tossed aside than the rich heritage of mystics of other religions.  The strong tradition of higher learning that the Church has nurtured should not be underestimated in the development of our intellectual abilities as humans.  The evil that some in the Church have committed is no more a reflection on the Church community as a whole than Jeffrey Dahmer was a reflection of his gentle parents who begged for him to be committed to a mental institution long before he committed his heinous acts.  The ferocity with which the community of Catholics has risen up in anger at the pedophilia scandals reflects the essential goodness of the “Church” – which is not the Vatican, but IS its community of people:  it was my Grandma, it is my Mom, it is my blessed friend Terri, it is the people with whom I share the Eucharist not just in my local parish, but the people with whom I share the Eucharist all over the world on any given day.  

I am not here to debate the “goodness” or “badness” of the Catholic Church.  I mention this because it is the prism through which I view the concepts presented during the retreat.  There were others at the retreat who were not Catholic.  It was not a prerequisite of attendance.  Although I am still a “practicing” Catholic, (like medicine, there’s a reason we call it “practice”)  I chose not to attend Mass each day at the retreat,  although going to Mass at that retreat house has always been a source of great joy and inspiration for me.  I just wanted more silence, and more silence, and more silence and was unwilling to give up even an hour of my silence for Mass.  I had to force myself to go to the short presentations that were, of course, necessary guides to the reflections during the silence.  Ultimately Catholicism is a deeply personal religion, despite the strong community aspect the world sees, and it was this personal meditation that called to me during that week.  This is the story of those meditations.