A Retreat to Recharge

It was just luck that six months ago I had scheduled a retreat at St.Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. 

After two weeks of the flu, I needed some time to re-energize and get back on track before I took up again all the things I had to do.

So I looked forward to some time with the Trappist monks, to put my ordinary concerns aside, to get away from it all including the Internet and reconnect with my inner self.    I wasn't  disappointed.

"What was it like?" a friend asked when I got back yesterday.

"Like honey," I said.

It was slow.  Time expanded in a miraculous way.  I had plenty of time to read "St. Augustine Confessions (Oxford World's Classics)" , a book I always meant to read but never got around to.  Time too to take long walks and long naps.

It was sweet,  the atmosphere one of concentrated holiness and peace.  The meals delicious and taken in silence while we listened to tapes of John Shea, a gifted spiritual writer on the Gospel of St.Luke.

It was beautiful.  The monks, no matter the age, all work to make the community self-supporting.  At St. Joseph's they are most famous for their Trappist Preserves.

No matter what they wear as they work and some wear blue jeans,

when they gather for song and prayers, seven times a day, they put on their monk's robes.

And when they sing ancient psalms and antiphons,  they are as one, joining with monks around the world and in ages past in a timeless singing of praise and thanksgiving.    To hear them them is to be lifted up in a sublime experience of beauty.

It's said that monasteries are powerhouses of prayer and spiritual energy.  All I know is there is no better place to recharge.