Retreat
I can't remember becoming friends with Julie--just opening my college dorm room door and sensing that we were both equally surprised to find her standing outside it (many, many times). I don't even remember how we started praying together. College was a time of lots of prayer for me--I met my best friends through these daily prayer meetings our fellowship group used to have. Whoever showed up to this little basement room lined with hand-me-down couches at 5:00 each day would pray together and then go to dinner. We were all in the habit of prayer, I guess, and it seemed natural, when we were sitting around talking (even if it wasn't 5:00 in Bond basement), to pray for a few moments if something came up. I loved it. It feels puzzling to me now to talk with Christian friends about serious concerns and not pray--Oh, what? Then why did you just tell me that?
In that context of natural, spontaneous prayer, Julie and I got to know each other extremely well. She hadn't liked me at all when we'd met the previous year (for reasons she's still more than happy to enumerate), and I hadn't really thought twice about her until those knocks on the door--but in prayer we found we were well matched. Julie has few illusions about people, and I'm pretty much unshockable. So I didn't have to pray the kinds of things good girls are supposed to pray, and she could be as outrageous as she is wont to be. Somehow, that combination let each of us be utterly honest. The way we would have been when praying alone, but with the added security, energy, attentiveness, and clarity of having someone else there to comfort, urge, witness, and discern.
She's coming this weekend for a prayer retreat. We've done this before--spent a couple of days talking and praying and maybe going for walks. (And eating. We are not fast-ers.) I told someone about this once, who said, with audible bemusement, "How long do you pray?" It had never even occurred to me to wonder--and I'm not a person who can spend hours praying. But when we're together, prayer feels so easy and so exciting that we'd both be disappointed to miss it.
In that context of natural, spontaneous prayer, Julie and I got to know each other extremely well. She hadn't liked me at all when we'd met the previous year (for reasons she's still more than happy to enumerate), and I hadn't really thought twice about her until those knocks on the door--but in prayer we found we were well matched. Julie has few illusions about people, and I'm pretty much unshockable. So I didn't have to pray the kinds of things good girls are supposed to pray, and she could be as outrageous as she is wont to be. Somehow, that combination let each of us be utterly honest. The way we would have been when praying alone, but with the added security, energy, attentiveness, and clarity of having someone else there to comfort, urge, witness, and discern.
She's coming this weekend for a prayer retreat. We've done this before--spent a couple of days talking and praying and maybe going for walks. (And eating. We are not fast-ers.) I told someone about this once, who said, with audible bemusement, "How long do you pray?" It had never even occurred to me to wonder--and I'm not a person who can spend hours praying. But when we're together, prayer feels so easy and so exciting that we'd both be disappointed to miss it.
posted by Tara | 2:13 PM
2 Comments:
Hey there
My friend Carolyn used to tell me that one of her old pastors preferred the term 'advance' over 'retreat'; whatever we decide to call it, I'm looking forward to the weekend.
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