A Retreat For Holy Week
I would like to invite you to a special practice during holy week. The idea is simple: take one quote with you each day you go outside for a run, a walk, a hike, or a sit. Engage each quote as a preparation for the sacred time of remembering the suffering, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Wonder how the quote and the natural world are encountering you in this moment. As you engage both, you may wish to engage the practice of Lectio Divina or divine reading summarized below. Thanks to Belden C. Lane for inspiration.
Lectio Divina: Lectio Terrestris
Lectio: Read the text aloud. Give the earth its voice with the expectation of finding a teacher.
Meditatio: Read both again, pondering how it may apply to your life.
Oratio: Make a spontaneous response of prayer to these two texts. What desires arise?
Contemplatio: Move beyond words. Rest in God.
Sunday: Palm Sunday
Wilderness spirituality classically begins at such a place--with the awkward, disturbing awareness that we have miscalculated our abilities, we are wholly unqualified for dealing with mystery. We’re like the religious enthusiasts Rumi described, so eager to capture rather than marvel at wonder: “The madmen have seen the moon in the window; they are running to the roof with ladders.” No sooner do they raise their scaffolding to the sky, however, than they realize the absurdity of the presumption. -Belden C. Lane, Backpacking with the Saints, 48.
Monday
Fear is the cheapest room in the house. I would like to see you living in better conditions, -Hafiz “Your Mother and My Mother,” The Gift: Poems by Hafiz, the Great Sufi Master, trans. Daniel Ladinsky, 39.
Tuesday
The disciple of a Sufi master once came to his teacher, saying, “Master, I’ve done terrible things in my life. I know Allah can never forgive me. What can I do?” “Ah, my son,” answered the master, “Don’t you see? All of us are connected to God by a piece of rope, one that is the same length for every one of us. When we sin, alas, we cut the rope that connects us to the Holy One. But when we repent, God is eager to tie the pieces together again. Every time you tie a knot in a rope, of course, it gets shorter. Hence, those with more knots in their rope are that much closer to God. So trust, my son, in the forgiveness of Allah, the Merciful and Compassionate One. He loves to tie knots! -Belden C. Lane, Backpacking with the Saints, 137.
Wednesday
The path toward wholeness demands a stark simplicity, a letting go of things I once thought important. -Belden C. Lane, Backpacking with the Saints, 19.
Thursday
Since once again, Lord … I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world. -Teilhard de Chardin
Friday
The secret of life is to ‘die before you die’— and find that there is no death. -Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now, 38.
Saturday
Such is the human condition, I suppose: trapped in the middle space--the void of that liturgical eternity. Looking back on trampled hopes, we can’t imagine anything better ahead. There I sat, frozen in time, shouldering the collective longings of the past. -Belden C. Lane, Backpacking with the Saints, 66.
Sunday
Exposure to the harsh realities and fierce beauties of a world not aimed at my comfort has a way of cutting through the self- absorption of my life. The uncontrolled mystery of nature puts the ego in check and invites the soul back (in more than one way) to the ground of its being. It elicits the soul’s deepest desire, enforces a rigorous discipline, and demands a life marked by activism and resistance. It reminds me, in short, that spiritual practice— far from being anything ethereal— is a highly tactile, embodied, and visceral affair. -Belden C. Lane, Backpacking with the Saints, 4.
