Sticks and Snakes

Solo Retreat (Part 2)

Last fall I took my very first self-directed silent retreat, in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I'm still not sure why I did it (or why I plan on doing it again), but no matter how many times I rejected the idea, it just kept coming back. I had a busy summer and was in the middle of making some Life Choices (different than "life choices," it seems), and time away felt very necessary. I started to think of it as a romantic vacation--a get-away, really--with just me and God. Like, maybe our relationship had lost a little bit of its zest and we needed to spend some time reconnecting.

Turns out, a vacation with God isn't really romantic. It's not even a vactation, actually. But, whatever.

When planning a solo retreat, the first thing you have to do is find a location. The location of your retreat is determined, in large part,  by what you are looking to get out of the whole experience--what you need to have in place when you arrive in order for your retreat to be "successful." I identified a few "needs" right off the bat: The retreat had to be close enough to drive (even over the course of a couple days) but far enough away that I couldn't chicken out and just go home if it got tough; it needed to be secluded but safe; it needed to be in a beautiful, natural setting, with easy access to hiking trails; and, it needed to have a kitchen.

After poking around on retreatfinder.com, I was lucky enough to locate St. Martin Monastery in Rapid City, South Dakota.

 

The Banner Buffalo

The picture on the new Sticks and Snakes banner is one of my favorites. I took it in September at Custer State Park in the Black Hills of South Dakota. I love the Black Hills. I've been there three or four times, but had only been to Custer once before this recent trip. It is a truly special place--South Dakota's oldest and largest state park, covering an area of 71,000 acres. The park is also the home to a herd of 1,500 free roaming bison, like that big guy up there!

 

The Black Hills are a beautiful place to spend some time wandering, wondering what North America looked like a long time ago--before you came along, before your problems or preoccupations even knew the time of day. It's a great place for a retreat, and that's why I was there last fall. 

I take a lot of retreats. In fact, since I went to a Jesuit High School and then was part of a great college ministry, I can say for sure that I have been taking at least one retreat a year (and in recent years, a few more than that!) since I was fourteen. That's a little crazy to me. Since being ordained, I've also led a few retreats myself. In both cases--retreat-taking and retreat-leading--I've found that one thing is always the same: I kind of dread taking the retreat, then I'm really glad that I went. Now, enough time has passed that I can just count on the being glad part and push through the dread. It happens every time. 

 

So, last year I decided to take my retreat practice up a notch and plan my very first self-directed silent retreat. At that point, I had taken silent retreats before and had enjoyed them (hard to believe), but I had never been on one that I led myself. In other words, I had never taken a retreat by myself that I led myself, for myself. Does that make sense? No other retreatants. A totally solo experience.

 

From talking to colleagues and reading books and articles, I learned right away that you can't just set out for this type of retreat and expect it to be good. It takes planning and a certain amount of regimented scheduling (which is not always the case with other types of retreats), or else it can quickly fall off the rails.

 

So, I spent the bulk of my summer researching self-directed retreats and planning mine. The book that ended up helping me the most, practically speaking, was Ben Campbell and Paul H. Lang's wonderful Time Away: A Guide for Personal Retreat (Upper Room Books). I ended up relying heavily on their overview for a five-day retreat, which provides tools for prayerfully reviewing your entire life through a series of writing and meditation exercises. 

 

Then, in late September, I took off for a week alone--totally alone--in South Dakota. The retreat wasn't exactly what I planned for it to be (shouldn't I have expected that?). Challenges that I expected to have never materialized, and ones that I never would have thought to worry about slammed me over the head. 

 

In a future post, I'll tell you all about it. 

2013? Seriously?

It's a little intimidating to stare at a blank  blog page after, oh, more than two years since last posting. I have excuses and reasons for my long absense, of course, but I won't bother you with those. They aren't that good anyway.

 

Lots of things in my life are the just like they were in 2010. I still live in Omaha, in the same apartment. I'm still a priest at the same church. I still read a lot, and still have only about five good recipes in my cookbook. I still feel like I just moved here.

 

A recent gig as a guest writer for my friend Jara's blog, The Thirty Girl, made me realize how much I miss having a room of my own on the Internet. So, I thought I would revive this place and give it a bit of a makeover. What do you think of the new design? Maybe my next post will be about that beautiful bison up there.

 

Welcome back!

The End of Summer

I think that summer is over. This revelation is a bit of a dissapointment, especially  because I had a lot of great plans for summer-related posts here at Sticks and Snakes. Too bad. I loved summer in Omaha, which was a huge surpise because I usually hate the heat. This year I ate up the high temperatures and I even got a tan. I felt like my body was soaking up every ounce of vitamin D that it lost in the last cruel winter, sweating out all of that snow-related depression. But now there is a crisp chill in the air and the leaves are turning colors. The last time I tried to sit outside in the sun and read I was bitten by all these tiny, weird bugs. The jig is up.

In Nebraska, you feel the seasons on y0ur skin instead of marking them on the calander, an existential shift that I am still adjusting to. In the Bay Area, it pretty much felt like early spring all the time. You could always count on wearing a scarf in San Francisco, but you could also keep the same wardrobe all year 'round. Out here, though, the seasons are real, which is actually a great (though sometimes mournful) way to mark time. Not ready for summer to be over? Too bad says the smell of the wind. Suck it up.

Like most things, I like the changing seasons because of the synapse-snapping memories that come alive in scents and sounds. This season--the very particular Midwestern version of this season--reminds me of the first time I arrived in Omaha, as an intern in the fall of 2005. So much has happened since then, and yet the  air smells the same. This is the time of year when I like buying coffee at gas stations early in the morning because that is what you do on cross-country road trips. Maybe I just really need to go on a road trip.

Happy Oma-versary

Twelve months, four seasons, fire and ice: I have been living in Omaha, Nebraska for almost exactly one year. I used to marvel in disbelief when I heard older people say things like, “Hasn’t this year just flown by?” Or, “It seems like Christmas was just yesterday!” Are you kidding me? Time doesn’t fly, it creeps, it slogs. When I was in school (for a rough total of twenty-one years), days and weeks and months passed slowly because they were always marked by deadlines. Seminary felt like a lifetime spent in limbo (have you seen Inception yet?), where I managed to grow into an old woman while maintaining my youthful appearance. There was nothing fast about it. But now that school is behind me and I no longer mark time by papers that are due or tests that are taken, I understand what all those people meant when they remarked on the quick passage of years. I really do feel like I just moved here.

 

This has been a big year for me: spiritually, psychically, emotionally, a lot has happened. Almost all of it has been remarkably positive. I was ordained a priest and celebrated a whole year of “firsts” (first Eucharist, baptism, wedding, funeral, etc.) in one of the healthiest, most vibrant communities of faith imaginable. I couldn’t have dreamed up a better parish with which to begin my ordained ministry. After years of living in a cinder-block cell, I finally had the opportunity to make a home for myself, something I have been fantasizing about and craving for a long time. I even learned how to cook. Of course there were the tough times, too, most notably a winter that tested my emotional resolve with face-smacking temperatures, and an uncomfortable growth spurt incurred by sad events. Like I said, it was a big year.

 

This year I learned how important place is to me, and after one cycle through the loop of bold Midwestern seasons, Nebraska remains a bit of an enigma. By “Nebraska” I mean the place writ large, not the people (whom I mostly find delightful) or my day-to-day life in Omaha (which is very pleasant), but the identity of this particular stretch of prairie, its location in the makeup of America’s psychic character. What is Nebraska? What does it mean? And why do I care?

I guess I care because I keep ending up here. As a person who believes in a God who calls, I feel strongly compelled to at least seek to understand why I have landed in Nebraska. What does this place have to teach me, I wonder? Why do I keep coming back?

 

While I sometimes feel at loose ends when it comes to my ability to connect to the ground beneath my feet, I do manage to feel strongly connected to the sky above. I have written a lot about my love of Nebraska weather, or, if not love exactly, appreciation. The weather here resonates with me. The sky feels significant in a very real way. This spring and summer has redeemed a little bit of last winter, mostly because the long stretches of cold and snow forced me to focus on survival rather than catharsis, and thunderstorms and bold sunsets are nothing if not cathartic.

 

Here’s a little secret about me. It’s not really a secret, just a thing that nobody else knows because nobody else is there to see it. When I am awoken by a thunderstorm at one or two or three o’clock in the morning, I get out of bed, make a cup of tea, open all the blinds in the apartment but leave the lights off, and watch the sky like it’s a blockbuster movie. Sometimes I sit on the back porch where the humidity makes my hands slick and the lightening gives me static goosebumbs. I don’t care that I lose sleep; I don’t care that I feel and look a little crazy. Something in my spirit is closely hewn to all that electricity and pressure and water, and I wouldn’t have known that had I never lived in Nebraska.

Demons, Pigs, and Jesus--Oh My!

The following is last Sunday's sermon (Proper 7C), based on the story of the Healing of the Gerasene Demoniac, found in the gospel of Luke. Enjoy!

photo/source

Sermon Updates

The following are two recent sermons. The first was preached on the Seventh Sunday After Easter (May 16?), just after I had seen a stage production of John Steinbeck's "Of Mice and Men." 

 

I preached the second one last weekend (June 6), Proper 5. You can read both sermons after the jump, or listen to the audio of the first one (the second one should be up soon) here. 

Good Summer Book

I've been reading a lot lately. Who am I kidding? I always read a lot. The difference is that recently I've been passing over longer tomes in favor of quick reads, which are perfect for summer. A recent favorite is Meghan Daum's Life Would Be Perfect If I Lived In That House (Random House), a collection of essays about the author's lifelong search for the perfect dwelling place. 

 

I was initially attracted to the book because of Daum's short-lived relocation from New York City to Lincoln, Nebraska. I like reading about Nebraska transplants, mainly because native Nebraskans just can't understand my obsession with the weather and the sky out here. It's nice to read other people's reflections and know that I'm not crazy. 

image/source 

The Nebraska sections of the book are short and not entirely crucial to the story. What matters the most in this great collection is how external factors like where one lives--and how one's style is reflected in his or her surroundings--can overshadow the significance of how one lives. That is, your life will never be perfect just because you live in that house. Shelter magazines, design blogs...I am among that guilty group of people who get a thrill of aesthetic excitement (and oftentimes jealousy) from simply looking at pictures of how other people live in their well appointed abodes. My insistence on real hardwood floors significantly narrowed my options when searching for apartments, and those floors were only the tip of the iceberg.

Life Would Be Perfect is a funny,well-written, poignant exploration of what makes a home. I highly recommend it for your summer reading list. 

The End/Beginning of an Era

Some of you probably already know how much I love my car. It's a reliable fifteen year-old Ford and it has driven me halfway across the country five times, which is like driving all the way across the country two and one quarter times. We've seen a lot together and have been to some great places. In difficult pastoral situations, my car is my sanctuary. Sometimes when I am in the hospital, practically bursting blood vessels in my face in an effort to keep from crying, my mantra is, "I just need to get to the car...I just need to get to the car..." And then when I get inside and close the doors, I cry as much as I want. 

Well, the Washington tabs finally expired, so I bit the bullet and had the car registered here in Nebraska.

While it may sound silly, the transition has been a bit of an emotional ordeal for me. I liked the Washington plates. They were pretty, with a nice image of Mount Rainier emerging amid bold colors. I liked the old-school raised numbers, which made me imagine actual prisoners pounding on the plates with a level of skill instead of just a computer somewhere spitting them out. Most of all, I liked that they were from Washington, which is where I am from, and where my family still is. It was sad to pry those dented plates from their dirty spots on the front and back of my Ford.

  

But change happens, and now my car looks like it actually belongs here instead of shouting, "Hey! I'm just passing through." This makes sense, of course, because I'm not just passing through. I have a life for myself here in Nebraska and I guess it's about time that my car reflects that.

I am, however, thinking of framing one of the old Washington plates and giving it a prime spot on my office wall... 

Meandering

Today is beautiful in Omaha, Nebraska. It's a warm and sunny 85 degrees outside with a slight breeze and unusually low humidity: perfect. Today is also one of those rare Saturdays when I have nothing to do, an anomaly that I've been looking forward to all week. I woke up early this morning, checked the forecast, and knew that I had to get out of the house for a while to enjoy the beautiful early summer (or is it late spring? I can't tell) sunshine. 

 

At first, I thought of going to Lincoln (about an hour away) but realized that I wouldn't really know what to do o once I got there. For a long time I toyed with the idea of driving to Yankton, South Dakota, a town that appeals to me only because it is mentioned over and over again on the HBO series Deadwood. Finally, I decided to stick close to town and explore one of my favorite spots near Omaha, the Boyer Chute National Wildlife Refuge and the sleepy towns surrounding it. 

 

I did a lot of slow driving, a lot of walking, and some much needed sitting in the sun. I even took some pictures. All in all, a very relaxing morning.