Someone asked a question about reflection on one of the retreats I facilitated recently.
I try to give people on a retreat a taste of what it is like to visit a monastery. My schedule and structure are as relaxed as they can be. A retreat is an opportunity to pause, to breathe deeply, to let go of constraints and demands and be open to the sacred in the everyday.
People often ask me questions about how to fit contemplative, monastic practices into our busy lives.
I tell people that part of becoming a lay oblate at a Benedictine monastery is finding ways to follow practices that monks follow. I describe how committing myself to pray in the morning and in the evening has opened me to become part of the network of people praying around the world, hour after hour, all day long. It is always time for morning prayer, and evening prayer, somewhere in the world.
Not only does the network circle the globe each day. It also reaches back, hundreds of years, through the lives of people pausing each day to pray, to remember, breathe, and to find sacred space around them wherever they are.
Taking time to reflect and pray has become a vital part of my days.
I have learned, since the retreat, that several people there connected well to what I said. They decided to plan time to pause into their days, and to set the same time so they could know they were pausing together, wherever they happen to be. They would be happy for you to join them in pausing on the staircase of your day to remember and reflect at 4:13 PM Pacific each day.
How will you pause today to appreciate the presence of the sacred?
Will you recognize the people around you, and around the world, breathing their openness and gratitude?
[Image by pierre bédat]
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