Tonight I will give you an idea of my week of this special kind of retreat. I found this week even more powerful than last year's retreat. Last year was the first time I had done a guided imagery retreat and I wanted to see what it was like. It stayed with me and I am happy to have been able to make another one this year with the same guide and almost the same group of women. The week began at 3:00 on Monday, January 2, and ended the next Monday after lunch. It was a time of silence and intense prayer. We each had 3 Guided Imagery sessions of about an hour and a half with our guide every other day, and we also saw our guide for a half hour each afternoon. In between, we worked with our images, recorded feelings and were asked to dialog with some of our images and see what the central message was for each of us and, of course, we took time to pray over all of this. We had community prayer each evening at 5:15; after supper from 7:30 to about 8:45 we were again together for prayerful sharing. As I now have one of those "Roger Pens" that put the sound directly into my hearing aids, I was able to hear the sharing this year. That was a real grace. Each person held the pen while she was sharing. Some also drew and painted pictures and passed these around as a way of sharing their images. The days passed so rapidly that I did not seem to have time for artwork, but I had lovely hours of prayer both in my room looking at the ocean and in the little Chapel in Villa Maria del Mar across the street.
Most days we had a very stormy ocean and it was cold enough for me to see frost on my windows in the mornings. It did rain much of the week, but that seemed to help me pray. The other help which I think is unique is having a "morning paper" to read when we went to breakfast with the theme for the day and excellent quotes. I am sure I will be sharing some of those in this blog. I also am willing to share some of my images with all of you.
No comments:
Post a Comment