by Melissa Borgmann-Kiemde, Vis Companion
“Be Still and Know that I am God.” – Psalm 46:11
How do you make retreat space?
The Visitation Sisters are making their separate, but concurrent retreats this week. As they find themselves, quiet, still, at Pacem in Terris or Clare’s Well – or wherever the Spirit has called them – they are claiming this intentional time and space to listen to Love speak. What a radical action, eh? It makes me wonder and crave deeply images from their respective sites. What are our beloved sisters seeing? Hearing? Opening their hearts and minds to?
Are they immersed in the woods? Holed up in a cabin or simple room where nothing, save a bed, chair, blanket, maybe a candle adorns their space? Do they take any sacred objects to help focus their listening, their prayer? What texts might they be mediating with? I wonder how many have spiritual directors that they connect with? Do they have companionship at meal time? I wonder.
I crave such an experience this day. In the midst of my blessed busy life raising Maggie, navigating married matters with my beloved partner, François, I find myself achy with desire for this simple quiet space of retreat. I hold the sisters in my heart, and know I am held there, with them in prayer.
Meditation: How do we create retreat space?
What sacred objects or texts help settle us, and rest in the Divine’s Love, this present moment?
Feel free to share your responses about how you make retreat time below in the comments section.
God Bless!
just a few words about my retreat…i was blessed to be able to have a sunny, quiet corner room at the villa maria retreat and spirituality center in frontenac minnesota. this place is owned by the ursuline sisters and is staffed by a small live-in community composed of one dominican sister and two lay women. also there is a staff of local people who are employed in every capacity from executive director to volunteer receptionists.
my room was very simply furnished and sort of ‘cell-like’ as in the cell space of a monk….just a twin bed, desk, chair and a small chest of drawers and tiny closet….i added a stool which i borrowed from the library down the hall to create a prayer corner….i had brought a bread basket cloth with the words give us this day our daily bread embroidered at the edges…i had a votive candle and a picture of my 3 1/2 year old great nephew, a tiny glass dish for burnt matches, and my profession cross….this became my altar.
as far as books i brought a brand new spiral notebook with two pockets, college-ruled sheets and for prayer a book entitled Everyday With Thomas
Merton and also Kathleen Deignan’s Thomas Merton: A Book of Hours. Light Reading was Sara Mile’s Take This Bread. I also took a personal journal to use for reflection of the past several months of life and recording precious moments of this retreat, little fine point pen drawings, or hopes and dreams and miscellaneous mental minutia one creates when alone with her self for 8 days.
The spirituality center has converted a gym into an inner heart chartres patterned labyrinth and a rather whimsical indoor pation complete with cushioned bamboo chairs and huge beach umbrellas….this was my sacred space…i spent hours there everyday….reading merton, walking/praying the labyrinth several times day and night….it was a pilgrimage place for my soul.
other stuff this sister took on retreat was comfy clothes, sturdy shoes and my swiss army knife! and god companioned me all the way. peace. sr. suzanne
[...] from her eight day retreat, Sr. Suzanne Homeyer, VHM, responds to a recent blog about creating contemplative space, with particulars about her prayerful space at Villa [...]