Soul Sister Time

The reason I attended a 10-Day Silent Retreat was because I am hooked on periods of silence to restore my soul...It all began in the Baptist Church when our women’s class took 38-hour silent retreats.  I have been leading them, attending them and hoping to encourage others to discover them from that point on.  A weekend wasn’t enough for me.  I wanted to give more time to Silence.  That was the attraction to the 10-Day Silent Retreat.  I learned a lot more about silence. Even when my silence was day after day, I found out that I wasn’t necessarily being with God during all that time of not talking.  I did enjoy His creation, His church services, and His creativity and by the way, the three deer who walked right through the snow during my devotions were awesome; I even caught them on video.  We were instructed to be in Gran Silence where we are not supposed even to make eye contact with each other, but it doesn’t come naturally and people make eye-...

              The 10-Day silent retreat I attended was focused on centering prayer.  Centering Prayer is a discipline of praying without words.  Your full attention is focused on just being with God.  The recommended time period is twenty minutes two times a day.  I have only practiced it that way during two seasons of Lent.  My working, doing the dishes, paying the bills life does not seem to allow for that much time to be devoted to prayer.  On the silent retreat, however, I was praying like that for 3-4 hours a day.  It was intense.  The sessions were thirty minutes.  That may have been a welcome challenge for those who have made room in their lives for twenty minutes a day two times a week (at least it appeared that way to me), but for me it was difficult to keep my mind focused only on the presence of God using my sacred word to remind myself of the intention of my pray...

               This will be my last devotion about my pilgrimage though I could go on and on.  God packed so many spiritual lessons that perhaps I’ll need to write a book.  I want to end on the subject that confirmed my call to this pilgrimage and overwhelmed any hurts, hardships, or heaviness—that subject is JOY!                Our last day of walking the Camino started differently than the others.  We hiked to the church at the Mount of Joy to have our service (every other day we had services in historical churches where we stayed for the night).  The Mount of Joy is so named because that is what the pilgrims who have traveled more than 500 miles felt when they reached this place.  They were on the precipice of arriving at the Cathedral for which they were destined.  It is a bitter-sweet experience because it m...

c           On the pilgrimage, Camino de Santiago, I walked with literally hundreds of strangers.  There were people from almost every country and Americans from many different states.  What was most surprising to me was that very few of the pilgrims were Christians or really knew much about Jesus’ close disciple and the first disciple who was martyred—St.  James.  As you walk the way, you can’t help but connect with those who walk with you.  You have an instant commonality simply by walking the same path, taking in the same breath-taking views, and being challenged by the similar hindrances.  This camaraderie creates a sense of intimacy.  If you are brave like me, there is one question that is acceptable to ask a perfect stranger on the Camino.  The question is: Why did you come?           Every time I asked this question, I received insightful answ...

               When you are walking a pilgrimage of 70 miles, you learn so much about yourself, God and creation.  One of the best teachers is pain.  During my pilgrimage walking El Camino de Santiago, I was given a unique opportunity to walk and learn through my pain.                 My pain began before I left Texas in the middle of my move.  I did not have time to properly prepare for the journey, so I chose to wear my hiking boots to work as preparation.   I work at a church that has many stairway passages.  I decided it would be good to opt for the stairs every chance I could.  Yet, I had not learned my lesson from pain so I pounded away toe to toe up and down the stairs.  Soon walking my dog around the neighborhood resulted in excruciating pain in my left knee.  I was dumbfounded at this p...

The Joy of Weakness If there is anything I learned on the Pilgrimage it is the joy of weakness.  It is essential to our spiritual growth to grasp our utter weakness.  I looked over my photos from the Pilgrimage and this one of me laying down my burden at the foot of the Iron cross with the Priest (spiritual guide) looking on before we began our official start, best displays the wonder of my weakness inviting God’s strength.  The devotion I read that day stated:  God, getting closer to man, weakens him .  That seems to be a strange concept to understand from a loving God.  The scripture the devotion was referring to was the Rich Young Ruler who came to ask Jesus how he could inherit eternal life (Mark10:17-27).  He came to Jesus in search of greater strength.  Jesus wanted him to gain what he was seeking.  The way Jesus told him to find strength was by willingly becoming totally weak. Before I started my pilgrimage I had done w...

Pilgrimage                 For the past two Mondays I have been on a Pilgrimage in Spain.  I have wanted to walk the Camino de Santiago for many years.  After my friend Karen and I celebrated our 50 th birthdays by spending three days in a luxurious Spa, we decided to walk the Way of St. James (English Translation) to celebrate our 55 th birthdays.  Brian researched and bought me a guidebook.  Karen and I talked about how we would prepare for a 500 mile walk.  In between the plan for the pilgrimage and the actual walking the Way, everything changed.  Brian passed away and I began to work full-time (difficult to take off the 30-45 days that are necessary), I remarried (difficult to leave your new husband for that amount of time) and it became apparent that our pilgrimage, if it were to happen, needed to be adjusted.  Rather than walk 500 miles residing in hostels with gr...