Friday, January 03, 2014

What might you do with thirty days (or two million minutes?)

An amaryllis planted
as I began.
 Maybe the real question is what would God do with 30 days?  My friend Fran posted a link to this article about a British politician who, after making what was presumably the Spiritual Exericises of St. Iganiatius (a 30-day Jesuit retreat), decided not to stand for re-election.

My room when I first walked in.
Sunday it will be five years since I began the Spiritual Exercises, but today marks the fifth anniversary of the day I got in the car on what I remember being an unseasonably warm January afternoon and drove to Boston, where I spent the night before driving out to Gloucester.  The Boy wrote me regularly while I was in the silence, toward the end reminding how many more breaths I would take before I would be back home.

As I type this, it's been roughly two and half million minutes — some two hundred thousand breaths — since the silence broke on the retreat, on a bright and cold February morning.  And while I didn't go home having discerned a seismic shift in my life, God has done a great deal of breathing in me since.






6 comments:

  1. Oh Michelle... what a life changing experience it must have been. I'm glad that you saw that link, I knew that you would appreciate it!

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  2. Tis a good anniversary to take note of and makes me think of how few I keep note of.

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  3. I haven't made the 30 Day Retreat but I have made the 19th Annotation beginning in September 2011 and ending in early July 2012 with my very patient spiritual director who didn't want us to hurry. It was a very transformational experience. What an amazing adventure it must be to make the 30 Day Retreat!

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    1. Lynda, and I think, what an amazing adventure to linger over the Exercises in the midst of everyday life! It's an incredible experience no matter how you do it....

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  4. Christine6:35 PM

    Your photo of the room brings back wonderful -- and very peaceful -- memories of a beautiful place. I was only there for a weekend, not 30 days, but it felt like a place very close to God.

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    1. It's a very thin space, as the Irish would say -- and beautiful space, too. Did you hear they are closing to renovate at the end of the summer?

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