New Year Blessings to you! This month marks one year of my journey at the Transforming Center in Wheaton, IL (well, the retreats are in St. Charles, but all the same…). When I left for the first retreat last year, I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I just knew that the Lord said “go,” and though it looked ridiculous from a time and financial perspective, I went. And that first retreat infused me with something I had not had for some time – anticipatory hope. 2017 was a rough year. In all honesty, 2018 was even harder. And that first retreat in January last year was like CPR. Every retreat thereafter was a continual infusion of oxygen in a year that felt like it sucked all the air out of my lungs. The retreats didn’t address a single circumstance going on in my life, but they did restore my soul’s resiliency to navigate turbulent waters.
One of the things I have frequently done over the years is to spend some time at the beginning of a new year writing out goals for the upcoming year, and evaluating the previous years’ goals. This can be a little depressing for me at times. I tend to set far more goals than my current stage in life will allow me to accomplish, and being a perfectionistic 1 on the Enneagram makes for a bit of a tussle with discouragement in realizing all that wasn’t done. Well, the past couple of years have left me in a space where I didn’t even have it in me to write any goals. I’ve just been walking through the Transforming Community, one quarter at a time, taking each new spiritual practice and theme as they come, and working on learning about and incorporating them into my life’s rhythms. The practices in the retreats this year have been retreat and the invitation to transformation, silence and solitude, prayer, and engaging the Scriptures. At the end of this month will be my 5th retreat on honoring the body as a spiritual discipline. Each retreat has offered a couple of different spiritual disciplines and practices which are Biblically-based and have their roots in ancient Christian tradition, many of which have been largely lost to us in modern times. These practices lead to transformation in that they allow space for us to open ourselves to God’s transformative work in our lives. Don’t you often feel like life is so busy that it’s difficult to even attend to our own souls?
As I look at 2019, I plan to continue incorporating the practices highlighted in the upcoming retreats, and then will come the challenge, to ensure that some of these life-giving practices remain part of my life’s rhythms, even when I’m not spending 3 days in retreat practicing them each quarter. I feel so fortunate and blessed to work in an environment where we can incorporate these practices corporately and establish habits together, and as part of our work and worship to the Lord throughout the day. That is a gift that I don’t take for granted.
One of the practices (which my Transforming Community hasn’t actually gotten to yet, but I’ve spent time learning about) is the Examen. You’ll notice, of course, the connection to the word “examination.” It is a time of reflection and listening to the Lord about how things are with you and your soul. He knows better than we do. The Examen is often practiced at the end of each day, ask the Lord to point out the areas where you are growing and transforming, and the areas where you need forgiveness for failing to hit the mark. What I love about this practice is the emphasis on what Ruth Haley Barton (and others) refer to as “gentle noticing.” Not taking note of failure and feeling condemned or judged, but just noticing, so that you can sit with that with God and learn from it and grow, and be loved.
My friend, and our Spiritual Care Coordinator at Women of Hope, Nancy, provided us with a template for a year-end Examen, which I’d like to share with you. You can access it here. I am spending these first couple weeks of January walking through the questions, reflecting on 2018 and it has been rich. I encourage you to do the same.
I also found this illustration of many contemplative practices. I like the way it is outlined (as a tree, first of all, speaking to growth) with the practices on various branches. I’m not saying I personally endorse all of these practices, and to be quite honest, I don’t even know what all of them mean! But it does give some food for thought in other ways to live out and integrate our spirituality in daily life and practice, and ways to create space for meeting with and encountering God in our busy world. You can explore as you wish.
Wishing you newness of life in 2019,
Kim
