Archive for April 28th, 2009

Disclaimer: With regard to other women on retreat,  any personal descriptions and other details are changed.

By lunch on Saturday, I have been to a meditation workshop in which we sit on chairs or lie on the floor and breathe deeply and visualize ourselves having a nice chat with God. This sounds rather new-agey but in fact the mediation works just as it was designed, and upon exiting I feel like I have learned something about the reason the master of the universe did some stuff I didn’t like. The reasons are not ones I would have expected, but then they do say the Lord moves in mysterious ways.

Now we are welcomed into the opportunity to go into small groups and share about women issues. I don’t know if I want to do this, so I lag behind, check my cell phone for messages, and see that I have missed a call from my mother. This seems like a good time to talk to her, she’s a woman too after all. I call her up. We have a nice chat. By the time I hang up, it is time to go to the second sharing workshop of the morning. On the way there I see some women making bracelets with spiritual words on them.

I ask if I can sit down and join them. I make a bracelet that says “compassion” and a pair that say “hope” and another one that says “forgiveness.” Of course by the time I am done it is too late to go to a sharing workshop. I am unconcerned, however. Part of me didn’t want to do anything at this retreat except sleep. But when I got here I found that sleeping for 24 hours isn’t really possible, even if you want to.

At any rate, I get to talk to the other women while making bracelets and get their opinions about letting kids play at houses where there are guns, in particular when there’s no gun safe involved. The leader of the group responds with a couple of good stories that seem to argue against sending your kids to such places.

“Guns, generally, seem to be used to shoot someone in the family,” one woman says. “Or yourself.”

“Whether that’s a good thing or not depends on who it was got shot,” another women adds in. They laugh uproariously. There’s humor coming out of pain, I suppose. I feel like this interlude was at least as helpful as going to a workshop.