‘Twas the Night before Silence (Part 2)

I would LOVE to tell you everything that I experienced during my silent retreat last week, give you a MASSIVE word dump of my time, but I feel to slowly unpack both my experience and revelations as I spent three days and three nights silently conversing with the LORD.

Silently conversing.  Sounds like an oxymoron doesn’t it?  How can you be silent and in a conversation?  With God, it is nearly impossible to have one otherwise.  How can that be?  When God speaks to us through the Holy Spirit, it is not usually a burning bush experience where an audible voice calls our name out from a bush that spontaneously combusts into flames. (Exodus 3:1-4:17)  It is generally in those still ordinary moments of life when we quiet our souls to listen that we hear Him speak the loudest. (1 Kings 19:11-12)

At this point in time, I am fairly certain that when Jesus pulled away from the crowds to a solitary place, He was not verbally communicating with God. I believe that if onlookers were to encounter Him in these moments, they would simply see Jesus silently sitting on a rock appearing to be deep in contemplation.  If He were anything like me, He’d have a pen (or a laptop) in tow so He wouldn’t miss a word.

Have you ever heard of going on a silent retreat to a monastery?  Prior to about four years ago, I hadn’t either.  This was my third visit to the Abbey at Gethsemani, a Catholic monastery cared for by the monks.

A monk is a man who dedicates his life to religious devotion, often renouncing worldly pursuits like marriage and personal wealth to live a life of prayer, contemplation, and service, either alone as a hermit or within a monastery community. The term comes from the Greek word for "single" or "solitary," reflecting their commitment to a simple, focused spiritual life, and exists in many religions, including Christianity, Buddhism, and Hinduism. (Definition by Google AI)

Most people I encounter have never even heard of a silent retreat, so it may not come as a surprise that no one I know had ever attended one before me. The first time around I had a wonderful time.  My sister went with me and we shared a double room.  We ate in silence, attended all seven of the daily scheduled services for prayer, scripture reading and worship and hiked in the woods.  I even attended my first confession which you would likely find to be a humorous story….maybe I’ll share another time.

It started with us thinking we were waiting for a service called “reconcilliation” to start.  As everyone in the room slowly shifted seats and one by one they filed into a little room off to the left of us.  My sister whispered, “Let’s go,” I think this is confession.  I thought for a moment and my eyes filled with delight as I imagined having the opportunity to cross that sucker off my reverse bucket list.  I could say I’ve been to confession?!  I was staying.

I know I said maybe another time, but I can’t help myself.  Walking into a room that looked like an empty conference room, I saw two little spots partitioned by curtains and a pair of men’s shoes and the bottom of a robe to the left.  Assuming my position in the little curtained area to his left, I awkwardly began with, “Well, hello.  Hi.  Um…my name is Donna and I suppose I should start with the obvious….I am not Catholic and this is my first confession.    If it’s wrong of me to be in here or if you’d like me to leave, I will.  I’m not wanting to be disrespectful.”

With a little chuckle he said, “No.  That’s ok.  You don’t need to leave.  Continue…”

“So, is it ok if I just ask you a question?”

We had probably a 15-20 minute talk and I asked lots of questions about the Catholic faith, their take on confession and more.  I left silently amused that the line of people behind me who must have assumed that I’m a BIG FAT sinner with a LOT to get off my chest.  I was filled with gratitude for Jesus Christ who I am assured in scripture is the mediator between God and man and that I can take my confessions directly to God through Him the MOMENT I miss the mark, and I’m immediately back in right standing with God.  Praise the LORD!

It was a good time, but I didn’t feel like it had the intended effect of “silence” or “solitude.”  Let’s be real, what woman is going to be silent when they go to a monastery sharing a room with their sister, who they adore, leaving behind two husbands and eight children?  Not us.

The next time I attended alone.  God spoke to my heart about many things, but primarily He dealt with me about my blatantly self-righteous soul that questioned the Catholic faith and every tradition they hold that doesn’t agree with what I believe I understand from scripture. He told me that we view Christianity as a recipe but the Christian faith is more of a cookbook where Jesus Christ, crucified, risen and seated on the throne as the only way to right standing with God the Father is the main ingredient in every recipe.  He told me that there will be some recipes I will LOVE and some that I will find quite distasteful but whether or not they make the cut is essentially none of my business.  I am to quietly live out of my convictions without imposing them on others.

To read more about the cookbook, see Christian Faith is a Cookbook.

Heading into this retreat I thought about how I could best utilize my time.  I considered taking my laptop so I could work on some ministry stuff.  That was a definite no.  I considered taking my calendar, to do list etc to get my day planner set up for the coming year.  That was a definite no.  The time leading up to the retreat this time around almost left me feeling anxious…there was so much to do before Christmas and so little time!

I thought I’d be going to bed late and leaving for the retreat a little early to run a couple errands and still get there by 2pm, the earliest time to check in.  I’d take a little nap and enjoy some solitude before the 6pm dinner hour.  Best laid plans of mice and men, am I right?

I stayed up ALL night.  Didn’t even ATTEMPT to go to bed.

As I shared in the previous blog post, the night before the retreat water, dirty water was backing up in the basement bathroom that almost looked like it was bubbling up from underground, but how could that be?  It’s freezing outside so it’s not like melted snow is leeching in from the ground table.  There were no broken or leaky pipes.  The ground was not wet under the sink or in front of the toilet.  It didn’t make sense, until it did.

When the girls took a shower, flushed the toilet or ran the laundry, water would fill the bathroom floor from seemingly nowhere.  We discovered that it was a problem with the basement sewage pump.  Since it was clogged, the water had nowhere to go so it backed up from the floor drainpipe behind the bathroom, sewage and all.  Ick.

My daughter and I made that trip to the laundromat and I stayed up switching loads of laundry over in the dryer when I got home while wrapping Christmas presents, doing dishes, taking things back to people’s bedrooms and otherwise trying to get the house presentable for me to come back to a nice clean house. I ended up working straight through to a little after noon before heading out to mail packages to California, run a couple errands and finally head to Kentucky.

I got there in time to check in, drop off my stuff in my room, attend the 5:30 service and go to dinner.  I think that’s enough for now.  I’ll share more next week.  I’m not a fan of reading super long things, so I’ll stop for now and say… ”You’re welcome!”