Author Thomas Green called a prayer retreat a vacation with the Lord. My experience of retreat did not bear that out. Certainly not during those years when I was pastoring. Those retreats were not vacations, but more like intense wrestling with God and myself. Now that I have retired from the pastorate (but not from […]
There were three retreats in the whole 21 months program. The learning is very experiential. They began with a short retreat with input, followed by a longer silent retreat with spiritual direction, and now this is the longest of the three, eight days of directed silent retreat, with half day to begin in prayer and […]
I had mixed feelings when Sr Fran reminded us that our Spiritual Direction Formation Program (SDFP) was about to end on 30 September 2023. I felt a sense of relief that our input sessions of a year and nine months were about to be completed. I have enjoyed this learning journey together with my fellow […]
First there was the 50th anniversary of the Jesus Movement (celebrated on 17 Sep 2021), a revival that began around 1970 and spread mainly in USA, Western Europe, and Central America, before it cooled in the late 1980s. I recall that in the late 1970’s I read an exciting book about this revival titled Jesus Movement(1974) by Edward […]
This beautiful image with a magnet for the refrigerator was given by Teresa Hogan, a friend from the faith sharing group I am in. She bought it from the famous Myeongdong Cathedral in Seoul, Korea. When I beheld the 4cm square print of a painting (see above), it straightaway struck me as a beautiful image […]
It has been a year and I am in semester three of my spiritual direction formation program. I have observed that formation always took priority over information. This is good. This is the way it should be. We learn to listen to God, to listen to one another, and listen to movements in our soul. […]