Summer is for Renewal in More Ways Than One

You may be making your summer plans by now or at least thinking about them. There’s a lot to consider for summer. Gardening, yard work, outdoor house repairs, picnics, family reunions. Yep, there’s a heap of living to be done when the warm, slash hot, season is upon us. I, for one, can’t wait. And, oh, yes, there is the time for vacation perhaps. Maybe camping, visiting friends and family out of state, taking to the beach or the mountains, or the woods. Life seems to get brighter in the summer just like the long, lazy days it gives us. 

Summer is renewal season for us. It is time to recharge batteries of the body and the soul. In fact, if we concentrate on recharging the body, it seems the soul gets more inspired and more peaceful. If we recharge the soul, the body gets involved; health improves with outdoor activities. Taking time to recharge is a responsibility we must take personally and seriously.

Which brings me to the subject of ‘places of retreat.’ Let’s first define ‘retreat.’ A retreat is a time away in a place designed to generate a peacefulness while one does some soul-searching. Retreats are either spiritual or secular, but I want to focus on the spiritual. Spiritual retreats are offered in all denominations of faith and many, while known to be rooted in a particular religion or faith, also host persons or groups of other faiths. 

The famous travel writer, Pico Iyer, makes an annual retreat at a Benedictine monastery in California where he finds a serenity so alien to his constant traveling and living in foreign places. I once heard him interviewed on NPR where he stated that retreat centers are abundantly available throughout the U.S. even to the point that he was sure every listener to the program, nation wide, lived only 30 minutes from the nearest retreat center. Iyer found his retreat center at a point of desperation after a fire destroyed his home and belongings and a friend recommended a time of retreat at the monastery. After he arrived, Iyer realized that he needed to sit still charting an inner landscape to establish peace in his life. He has been going to the monastery annually for over 25 years now to get in touch with stillness a word he says describes people like him. “(I)t (the time at the monastery) reminds me why sometimes people like me have to take conscious measures to step into the stillness and silence and be reminded of how it washes us clean, really.” I am a retired executive director of the Jesuit Retreat Center in Parma, Ohio where I now help with programs but especially engage in individual direction. I have been privileged to walk with people who seek a closer relationship with Christ and a deeper understanding of God’s will for them.  The Jesuit Order maintains 29 such retreat centers in the U.S. and each one is a manifestation of the beauty of creation in its environment and the attraction of God’s immense love through the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius Loyola, founder of the Jesuits. Each center provides a cadre of trained directors for personal direction. Each offers programs for groups of all kinds and all faiths. 

People tell us that something comes over them as they drive into our driveway lined with trees and flourishing fauna. We are known as the retreat center in the woods. They feel their burdens lessening as they near the front door. Iyer has written that such an entrance is silent with “almost the presence of transparent walls that the monks had worked very hard to make available to us in the world” at his retreat center. This sounds like Celtic spirituality’s concept of ‘thin places,’ the junctures or forks in the road where we are led, mysteriously, into God’s arms. It literally means the threshold of a doorway, the thin veil where we can catch a glimpse of God and all we have to do is step over.

Reflection

The Jesuit Retreat Center in Parma, Ohio is concluding this summer its celebrations for its 125^thanniversary of existence. It has been a glorious gift to the Church, not just in Cleveland, Ohio, but all over the world with thousands of seekers, young and old, Catholic or not, broken or whole, who have made that trip into our driveway and found it to be a road that led to the immense joy of seeking God.  

• Would you like a place of ‘stillness’ or a place of personal renewal like this? Perhaps a weekend? Or a longer time like a week? Check out on google for places near you where you can register.
• Do you know of someone who might benefit from a retreat? You can offer a gift by calling a center near that person and making arrangements to cover the cost.
• Retreat centers are open all year so you might consider what season works best for you.
• Pray for guidance and take the challenge: God may be waiting for you at some retreat center.
• Call the center near you and speak with the coordinator of retreats and programs. It may be the best renewal you will ever experience.

“Spirituality is the story of our passionate affair with what is deepest inside us and with the candle that is always flickering inside us and sometimes almost seems to go out and sometimes blazes. And religion is the community, the framework, the tradition, all the other people into which we bring what we find in solitude.”  Pico Iyer

Please google retreat centers in the U.S. or Jesuit retreat centers in the U.S. to see where you can easily register. 

Happy, blessed summer of renewal!!!