Find Ways to Retreat
My Dear People,
Ernest Hemingway once said, "Never mistake motion for action."
Famous for the pithiness of his prose, Hemingway makes an ironic and
most potent distinction in those few words, a distinction that speaks
right to the heart of a pressing spiritual issue of our age, namely
busy-ness.
I remember that, while serving at Christ Church, Pensacola, and
celebrating the mid-week Eucharists, I managed, within the course of
just a few weeks, to give two homilies on the subject of "busyness." I
only realized it when a parishioner pointed it out to me after a
service. And, while not unkindly, she did so recognizing the irony: I
preached twice on the spiritual issue of our being too busy, but I was
so busy that I hadn't noticed that I had preached on the same subject
twice within just a handful of weeks.
Busyness, in Hemingway's dichotomy, is "motion," while "action" is
something different. If busyness is scattered, action is focused. If
busyness is harried, action is intentional, mindful.
Now of course sometimes, no matter how focused and intentional we mean
to be, things do get busy or full, that is, sometimes we simply have a
lot going on. However, the question is how much does the harried
anxiousness of "busyness" characterize our lives?
Brother Curtis Almquist, S.S.J.E., was recently in town leading a
retreat and he put it this way, "To live life only as an advance is not
sustainable." We cannot always be advancing. We must find those times
and those ways to cease the advance, for a time, and retreat.
Last week I wrote to you about the annual weekend retreat that your
vestry, wardens, and clergy take at "Skylark," in the Shenandoah
Valley. This summer I will be taking my eighth annual solo retreat at
Brother Curtis' monastery, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the monastery
of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, where, at some point, I
might add, I would love to take some of you.
Sometimes, for various reasons, it is harder to find time for a
retreat. That being said, as Curtis reminds us, we can't always live
life in advance. We need retreat time. And, while we are "doers" here
at St. Paul's, that is, while we believe in and are committed to faith in action,
nevertheless, again, to return to Hemingway's words, life without
retreat leads to motion, not action. And it's action we want, and, of
course, that God wants. Action grounded in a healthy, vibrant faith;
that is, action that is grounded in a living, vital relationship with
God, a relationship that, as with all relationships, requires dedicated
attention and cultivation and renewal.
Whether you can get away or not, whether you can spare an afternoon or
not, I will pray that each of us finds our ways to retreat. And that
we do so with regularity. Even if it is in our backyard. Even if it
is for ten minutes of quiet and a small prayer. We need it. I need
it, and you need it too.
Having shared a prayer with you, last week, from page 832 of our Prayer
Book, this week I'll close with another exquisite prayer from that same
page, A Prayer for Quiet Confidence:
O God of peace, who has taught us that in returning and rest we shall be saved, in quietness and in confidence shall be our strength: By the might of your Spirit lift us, we pray, to you presence, where we may be still and know that you are God; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.
Your brother in Christ,
Wallace+
