In the evening, I skip the inspirational speaker and take a nap, but then my friend wakes me up around ten and we go and have cake. After that, there is a night meditation and we decide to go. I think I’m probably too tired, but then, I’m up, so we trundle off to the meditation hut, a yurt outside the lodge. The yurt is built of wood and covered in cloth, and tonight, on a windy evening, the cloth is blowing around over the structure, which makes me think that this would not be the place to be during a tornado.

The leader sits at the center with a group of candles and we listen to the wind. She has collected a rolling backpack full of medium rocks, about the size of a woman’s hand. She has some pens. She tells us we are going to take a rock, write something we are going to give up on the rock, and walk down to the lake and throw it in.

I pick up a rock. I’m not sure I can think of anything I want to give up. I’ve hardly got any thing as it is. But of course they’re not talking about sacrifice, they’re talking about things you don’t want, that you want God to take care of for you.

I think about what I could give up. My fears, but then that’s ridiculous. I’ve tried to give God my fears before and I think they’re too tied up in my vital organs, like if you took them away my blood circulation wouldn’t be complete or something. I think of other problems, with family, with the house, things that are broken – but we only go on retreat once a year, so I think I need something somewhat general.

I write “doubt” on my rock. When we go around the circle and share, I tell the group that I want to let go of my doubts, because although I generally know what indeed to know, sometimes I have doubts that are crippling, distracting me from what I know needs to be done, said.

In the dark, we walk down to the water, talking quietly about what we are throwing away. I am able to walk in the dark, though I don’t know why. There is a slight moonlight illuminating the rocky shoreline. I take my friend’s hand, as she is not so confident about stepping down to the shore.

“Can we just throw from here?” someone asks.

But what if it doesn’t go into the water, I think. Then you are stuck with your issue for the rest of the year. I pick my way down to the water. I stand on a small boulder at the edge. I am not afraid, though the other women are standing back farther from the edge. Now they are tossing their rocks into the lake, with a plunk, plunk they go in with a large splash. I toss my rock high up into the air over the open water, and hear the splunk and see the splash when it goes in. Doubts have been consigned to the depths. If it works, this year I should be walking in greater faith.