IGNATIAN SPIRITUAL EXERCISES TRAINING (ISET)
2023-BLOCK FOUR – SESSION 32
THE ENCLOSED RETREAT – PART 1
Annemarie: [00:00:00] Hi everyone; just letting a few more people in.[00:01:00]
So good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are in the world. It’s really lovely to be back with you. I’ve missed you all so much. I’ve been in a beautiful part of the world in North Wales at a really lovely retreat center there, but it’s really lovely to be back with you. I’ve missed being with you all the last three Mondays.
Welcome into the space, and I’m going to invite Adri- Marie to lead us in our prayer tonight.
Adri-Marie: Ah, lovely to be with you all. I don’t know if you feel that sense that we’re starting to become at the end of this journey as we consider today about the enclosed retreat where sometimes we have midnight prayers.[00:02:00] I thought that to tap into that theme tonight for our prayer and consider the stars.
So, I don’t know, when last did you think about stars? Maybe you are in a place where you can see lots of stars. If you think about the people in the room, the northern and the southern hemisphere, we see different skies at night. Wonderful to think about it. Maybe you love going to the bush or the mountains where the stars are clearer. I don’t know if where you stay you can see a clear sky or if you have the privilege of load shedding where you’re forced to see the sky. We’re going to consider the stars tonight and I’m going to start by sharing one of my utmost favorite poems called Old Maps No Longer Work that speaks about being guided by the stars.
Now, this poet actually [00:03:00] writes this poem within the context of midlife, so you’ll excuse some of the language. Poems are meant to be enjoyed and savored and to see what it does with our own selves. After the poem, I’m just going to lead you into an enjoyment of different people talking about the stars In scripture, and we’re just literally going to sit with them for a moment and move on. You can maybe think already, what did David say about the stars?
So, we’re just going to be a little bit in wonderment about the night sky tonight, and maybe the spirit will share something special with us as we consider the stars tonight together.
I invite you to, if you’re comfortable maybe perhaps switch off your screens. I’ll keep mine on. [00:04:00] As I share the poem, perhaps you can also, with a gentle awareness, notice something about this journey of attachments, of discernment, something about everything changes when one does the exercises, and perhaps something about connecting with something that’s been going for a very long time when one does the exercises—all perhaps in this mini cosmos of this poem. I’m going to read it once. Just hold on to a phrase or a word that sticks with you, and then I’ll guide you in just an enjoyment, imaginative [00:05:00] prayer.
Old Maps No Longer Work (by Joyce Rupp)
I keep pulling it out –
the old map of my inner path
I squint closely at it,
trying to see some hidden road
that maybe I’ve missed,
but there’s nothing there now
except some well-travelled paths.
they have seen my footsteps often,
held my laughter, caught my tears.
I keep going over the old map
but now the roads lead nowhere,
a meaningless wilderness
where life is dull and futile.
“Toss away the old map,” she says
“You must be kidding!” I reply.
She looks at me with Sarah eyes
and repeats “toss it away.
It’s of no use where you’re going.”
“I have to have a map!” I cry,
“even if it takes me nowhere.
I can’t be without direction,”
“But you are without direction,”
she says, “So why not let go, be free?”
So, there I am – tossing away the old map,
sadly fearfully, putting it behind me.
“Whatever will I do?” wails my security
“Trust me” says my midlife soul.
No map, no specific directions,
no “this way ahead” or “take a left”.
How will l know where to go?
How will I find my way? No map!
But then my midlife soul whispers
“there was a time before maps [00:07:00]
when pilgrims travelled by the stars.”
It is time for the pilgrim in me
to travel in the dark,
to learn to read the stars
that shine in my soul.
I will walk deeper
into the dark of my night.
I will wait for the stars,
trust their guidance.
and let their light be enough for me.
I want to invite you for a moment to consider creation and with God, just a moment of creating the lights in the sky, [00:08:00] some to separate day and night.
And God said, let there be lights in the vault of the sky to separate the day from the night and let them serve as signs to mark sacred times and days and years. And let them be bolts, the lights in the vault of the sky to give light on the earth. And it was so. (Genesis 1:14-15)
Perhaps for a moment you’d like to imagine what it was like to also walk with Adam and Eve and God in the garden at night underneath the skies. [Pause] [00:09:00]
And in your imagination, I invite you to be transported a little bit later into time, perhaps joining David on a starry night on a veranda, where David might be saying and sharing his psalm in Psalm 8: 3-5—When I consider [00:10:00] God’s heavens, the work of God’s fingers, the moon and the stars which God has set in place. What is mankind that God is mindful of us? Human beings that God cares so deeply for us. God determines the number of stars and calls them each by name. [Pause]
We can be transported further in time; a time where a few wise [00:11:00] folk were looking at a star. And in Matthew 2:2 they were written down to say, Where is the one who has been born King of the Jews? We saw his star when it rose. And I’ve come to worship him. Perhaps just spend this starry moment under a starry sky with the visitors from the east. [Pause] [00:12:00]
Moving a few years along, I wonder if you want to join Jesus on the mountain at night doing what Jesus and mountains do, talking with the Father. Jesus on a mountain on a starry night and just be there. [Pause] [00:13:00] [00:14:00]
Loving Creator, we are so grateful for the beauty of your creation. In our darkest night, may we discern the following of your light, and may we also learn to be a light in other darkness. Amen.
Annemarie: Thank you so [00:15:00] much, Adri-Marie. So, we are going to be looking at the 30-day retreat—the enclosed retreat, and we are very fortunate to have two very special guests with us who are with Trevor. I’m going to ask Trevor if he can just introduce them to us because they’re going to maybe say a few words, I hope about their experience. Trevor, why don’t you introduce them.
Trevor: It’s lovely to introduce two alumni from our course last year. On my right—and you will notice the glow–I have Erin, and, on my left, I have James. They both come from Mexico city. They traveled out to South Africa and just around the corner from our home here, we have the Carmelite Center, and they have just [00:16:00] done their 30-day retreat here at the Carmelite Center in Benoni—all the way from Mexico City.
So, it’s Erin on my right; it’s James on my left. What was quite an interesting experience for me, and I guess for them, is I’m going to write an article on giving the exercises with a catheter. I wore a catheter for 16 days of the retreat and was in hospital doing Zoom diet. It was a bit crazy, so it was a little bit different, but they survived, and they’re going to mark me now listening to Annemarie. They said they’ll give me a mark out of 30 as to how their experience was.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor. It’s so good to have you with us, James and Erin. Thank you for joining us tonight. It’s really special, and [00:17:00] as I’m going along, please, if there’s something that you think, gosh, I’d like to chip in on that, your experience is so fresh it would be really lovely to hear. I will ask you one or two things, and you’re welcome to say pass. But just to ask if you have any thoughts on one or two things as we go through. So, we are very lucky tonight.
We are going to really now just hone in for the next two sessions on the enclosed retreat—the 30-day version or way of making the exercises, which you’ll remember is annotation what? Somebody?
Melanie: 20.
Annemarie: Yes, exactly. Okay—Annotation 20. We want to really look at that. So, for the most part, you’ll probably find that most of these spiritual exercises that you will be giving will be in daily life—the 19th annotation option. That’s why we spent a lot of [00:18:00] time really working on that because the majority of people today probably will make the exercises in that way if they’re making the full exercises. But there are people who may have the opportunity to make the exercises in the 30-day format, and so we want to really talk about how that’s done—what some of the differences are, and some of the things to just pay attention to. So, we’re going to hone in on those specifics.
I think probably one of the most challenging aspects of the retreat if you compare it with the 19th annotation is simply that the time is constrained. You have 30 days or at best 34 days if you have a lead in and a lead out. In that time, you’re wanting to lead the person through that journey of the exercises, and you’re still trying to follow the dynamic, the grace building on grace, one grace flowing into the next, and trying [00:19:00] to stay with the pace of how that dynamic is unfolding in the person, in the inner experience that they are having.
But whereas in the 19th annotation, you can slow the process right down, and you can add on several months of the journey to get to where you’re going. You can’t say to the retreat center, “I’m sorry, we need an extra two weeks,” or whatever it is. It doesn’t work like that. It’s trickier in that respect.
I always remember one 30 day that I was directing on where one of the directors had somebody who really, really struggled with getting the grace of the first week. As we know, it’s really important to have that sense of being a forgiven, loved sinner before you move into the second week. There was a lot of discussion in the supervisions as to how long we could keep the person in that space with that material before we really had to move on. We [00:20:00] actually ended up keeping that person for an extra five days in the first week, which would be quite unusual in a 30-day process. It’s quite hard to hold your nerve and not lose it in that process.
I want to talk first of all about some possible ways of making the retreat in an enclosed setting. Probably the most common way is the way that most people would have that experience is by going to an established retreat center where there’s a team of directors who would be accompanying probably maybe four people each.
If it was their first time giving the retreat, they might only have three people, but maybe four people, and at the very, very most five each. They would be in a place that was set up for that. The infrastructure would be there, the meals, the daily liturgies that would follow the pattern of the retreat.
There would usually be several people guiding, so they would have supervision [00:21:00] together, maybe as peers, or if one was more experienced, they might supervise the others. It would usually be in a beautiful setting where people could go for long walks or look at the sea or the mountains or something that would just really help them to enter into that contemplative space.
A real gift of this kind of way of being is that the focus is there. It’s the only thing people are doing is being on this retreat and there’s a sense of community because there’s a number of people gathered together.
You might have maybe 15 or 20 or 30 people all making the exercises at the same time with a large team of directors. Now that happens less and less these days as less and less people have the financial resources or the leave time to be able to do that. But there’s something about that sense of community where there are quite a number of people who are on the journey together going through that dynamic. [00:22:00]
It’s quite expensive to do it that way because with the retreat directors staying in, the cost of the retreat goes up because you have to pay for the accommodation and the food for those people who are directing on the retreat, which makes it more expensive, and to some extent you’re constrained by the pace of the group as a whole.
So, if most of the people in the group are moving through the first week and they’re ready for their repose day, but you’ve got one or two that are really battling to get the grace, you then have the kind of struggle about, do we all have the repose day together? Or do we suggest that these two people don’t get a repose day until later, until they’re there? How do we manage that dynamic? And that can be quite tricky.
Another way to do it if one lives close to a suitable retreat venue is for a director to drive in and out each day to see one or two people. We have a living example of this on our screen, because I [00:23:00] think that must be what Trevor has been doing. He’s been taking Erin and James through this process. So, I’ll talk a little bit about some of the advantages and disadvantages that I’ve been aware of, but then I’d love to hear from them from their perspective of what it was like.
I think one of the things that’s really helpful is it’s less expensive generally to do it that way. You’re less restricted to certain dates. It’s not like you have to only go on the particular dates, which might be once in a year or once every second year, that are put out by a retreat center.
It’s easier to go at the pace of the person that’s making the retreat. The retreat director doesn’t have to pause every other commitment that they have during that period, but it can be also hard in that space to keep stepping in and out of the retreat space. So, if you’re driving in seeing people, you have to have some space around that, to pray your way into that retreat mode.
As I imagine [00:24:00] from my experience, it was always difficult to hold that balance, but I’m really keen to know from Trevor’s experience how that is for him. I think, if there’s only one person doing it, you can miss that sense of community, that sense of having somebody as a companion or several people as a companion on the journey.
So, I’m wondering if anyone wants to chip in there, particularly Trevor and Erin and James around what was particularly helpful about that way of doing this 30-day process.
Trevor: For me, it did mean a lot to be able to be at home. I wasn’t away from loved ones, so that was a plus for me.
Perhaps sometimes a negative would be that while I try to keep a regular time of meeting throughout, sometimes that became very, very difficult, [00:25:00] and then obviously dealing with the crisis of health. I think the advantage was that I was able to continue doing it. Whereas if I had been away from home, I would have had to leave the retreatants and someone else would have had to step in. So, for me, the benefits would be at home, five minutes away, being able to adjust to crises and at least manage them, whereas I don’t think I would have been able to manage them in another city. So that was just a quick response.
Annemarie: Thanks for that, Trevor. That’s really helpful. James, Erin, do either of you want to chip in around why you chose this way of doing it or what you found helpful or less helpful about the kind of mode of a 30 [00:26:00] day not as part of a retreat group per se but the two of you doing it independently with a director at a retreat center.
James: It was interesting for Erin and me, because we’re married and we come here and we’re doing the exercises together, but separately. And Trevor wouldn’t let us talk to each other about our experience, or we couldn’t even ask each other how we were doing, and there were large periods of silence.
It was a unique experience, but also beautiful to know that Erin is going through the exercises, and I am too. Erin is meeting with Trevor individually, and I am too each day and so in a way, we’re doing the exercise together, but separately. I thought it was really beautiful.
Annemarie: Thanks, James.
Erin: I think as a married [00:27:00] couple, it can be hard sometimes not to be able to share what’s going on inside of you, or what was going on inside of me with my spouse, but obviously we recognize the wisdom in that. We’re looking forward to unpacking it all together in the weeks and months that come.
Annemarie: That will be very special.
James: It was really cool because Trevor does his generous part but then meals and accommodations were taken care of by the Carmelite sisters, and they were just so wonderful and kind. I just thought that was a great way to work as a team, and even Trevor’s wife, Debbie, was helping Trevor help us. It’s just like one big team, and I thought that was really beautiful.
Annemarie: Brilliant. Thank you so much. Thanks, Erin. Thanks, James. We’ll come back to you in a little bit if that’s [00:28:00] okay, and just check in on one or two other things that you might have to share, but that’s really helpful.
I think there’s something about that, that if you’re going to do it this way, you want to have a good relationship with the retreat center, because the people who are working and holding that space in the retreat center need to understand a little bit what the dynamic of the 30 day is. Otherwise, you’re coming in and out and their experience in the retreat center may not be one that is really holding the process and you’re not there to keep an eye on that. So, I think it’s quite important to choose a place that you have confidence in and to talk to the people who are running that retreat center if they’re not familiar with the exercises about the kind of journey that you’re going to be accompanying someone on.
What’s also really important is that you don’t get supervision in the way that you might in a retreat team, so you have to find your own supervision and that [00:29:00] supervision really needs to be very, very regular.
If you’re doing it for the first or second time, it needs to be every day. So, it’s finding a space in the day in addition to the time that you’re spending accompanying your people to have some kind of supervision, some kind of support in checking in with someone experienced in that journey. That’s all I really want to say about that method at the moment.
Online, I have given the 30-day retreat once—completely online. It was done during and in the height of COVID. As you can imagine, there weren’t too many other options with a religious sister who was about to make final vows and as part of her journey, and the requirements of that journey for vows, she needed to make for 30-day retreat.
I had already given her a retreat in person for eight days. So, we had a bit of a relationship, which made it possible. She was able to find herself a [00:30:00] quiet place to stay—a little house by the sea. The people she was staying with gave her a kind of separate space and they kept the silence for her. They brought her meals and left them outside the door, that sort of thing, and it worked okay. Sometimes it’s challenges with connectivity and also that sense of being part of a, a group that’s making the exercises, not as a group together, but as individuals alongside each other isn’t there.
That was a kind of a different experience. I would never ever give the 30-day retreat online again if I hadn’t really checked out the connectivity in the venue because it’s such a delicate process and so frustrating when you’re trying to direct a retreat like that.
You also get, as we’ve talked about before, the exercises being offered in two or three stages, which is a bit of a hybrid model. It picks up some of the 30-day enclosed retreat bit, [00:31:00] and it has some of the advantages of the other.
If you do it in two stages, it’s 15 days and 15 days with a break in the middle. They break it after the infancy narratives, after that first part of the second week, and then you live the journey of just praying passages around the life of Jesus as gospel contemplations in daily life as a kind of bridging space. Then you come back for the election part of the second week and the third and the fourth week in those 15 days, the second block, or people sometimes do it in three stages of 10 days each.
If you do it in three stages of 10 days each, the first 10 days is the PNF and the first week. Then the second 10 days is the second week and the third lot of 10 days is the third and the fourth weeks. Generally, people do that spread out over up to 18 months.
The [00:32:00] advantages of that are that you don’t need all that leave. You don’t need to find 30 days leave in one year. It might be easier to find 15 days or 10 days or whatever it is, and there’s time to savor and allow the movements of the retreat to bed down a bit and to just live into those a bit in daily life.
There are some disadvantages because you can’t guarantee the continuity of the director. So, in a retreat house where you might do stage one and come back six months later, that person might have moved on. They might have gone and been employed somewhere else, or they might just not be available anymore. So, you might have to start the middle of your retreat with a new director, which is possible, but not wonderful. There’s also something about the momentum of the dynamic that gets a bit interrupted. There isn’t that sense of just the unfolding because there’s that kind of artificial break in the process. I’m not a wild fan of the exercises in stages [00:33:00] myself, but for some people it’s the way that enables them to do it.
I want to just show you quickly the timeline if you’re going to do it in 30 days. So generally speaking, you would have 34 days if you were doing it in a retreat center. This is the ideal. Two of the days would be preparation days, and I’ll talk about what that involves.
Then you’d have a period of disposition days, Principal and Foundation, and first week, and that all together would be about 10 days. Then you have a repose day, and that’s the day on which the call of the king is used as a consideration, and it’s a bit of a kind of a coming up for air in the second week which is about 10 days.
Then you have a repose day, which is one day. And then you have your third and fourth weeks over about seven days. And that leaves an extra day in the mix for wherever you might need that day. So, you’ve got a kind of an extra day to play with.
Then coming [00:34:00] out of the exercise as a kind of debrief, which could be one day or two days—two days, if you want the 34-day thing. So that’s really how it’s divided up generally speaking, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. It might be that you move out of the first week after eight days or you add on an extra day because someone is struggling to receive the grace. That’s a kind of a general sense of how it might unfold.
Preparation days allow the retreatants to get a little bit climatized to the place. If they’re spatially challenged like me and it’s a big retreat center. it might take them a little bit of time to find their way around the space and to get a sense of what are the facilities, where can they go to walk, just to settle into the physical space.
It gives [00:35:00] each director a chance to meet with and connect with their retreatants to just build a little bit of rapport. It’s days in which the people on the retreat can connect with the other participants and have some talking time, getting to know you time before they go into the silence, and also just to slow down and to get into a reflective space because people come from very, very busy lives and people arrive very tired very often. It might be that they need some time to sleep a little bit in those preparation days. Sometimes it gives a little bit of space to do some teaching about prayer or to get them to reflect a little bit on their faith journey.
It’s a very important time because unlike when you do the 19th annotation retreat, there’s not a lot of time to spend in the disposition days. So, preparation days help the person to get into the space. Normally on a 30-day retreat, people would arrive midafternoon; they might have a relaxed evening supper, [00:36:00] and then they would have two full days before beginning the retreat proper—kind of day one of the 30 days on the evening of the second full day.
Different directors handle the preparation days in different ways, and I think it’s often a personality thing or a style thing. Some people who are directing leave things very unstructured and very relaxed, and maybe only have one or two structured activities, like a faith sharing. Others like to do quite a lot of teaching about Ignatian prayer to kind of bed down some of the basics with the group, and I think what you decide to do depends a bit on the needs of the group. So, if you’ve got a group that’s quite experienced in Ignatian prayer, you obviously don’t need to do any teaching. You would spend that time more getting them to maybe do some sharing, or to relax a bit to just connect with the others in the group.
There are also other things in the 30 days that are sort of different—so, [00:37:00] repose days and the tomb day. I think of repose days as “coming up for air” days. You just need to take a breath. So, it’s not a break day; you mustn’t call it a break day because people get this idea that you’re now going on holiday for a day and it’s not quite that. It’s a day when the demands of the silence and the prayer are relaxed a bit. Just give people a bit of a breather from the intensity of that experience.
There are two repose days, so they should come at the end of the first week and the end of the second week. This might not work out exactly the same for everyone because people move through the exercises at different paces, but generally for logistical reasons, if you are running a big 30-day retreat with lots of retreatants, one would keep the same day for everyone.
Often that day is the day when the retreat center goes, Gosh, thank goodness we can finally mow the lawn now because everyone’s going out for the [00:38:00] day and we can do a big cleanup and sort things out and that kind of thing. So, it’s quite good for the staff of the retreat center, for the directors, for the retreatants, for everyone to just be there on the same day.
That might mean having a little bit of discussion in the supervision group about, okay, we’ve got quite a lot of people that are not quite there yet. Let’s extend the first week by another day, and those people who are already there, let’s just allow them some repetition and some deepening. So, you try to work it so that you get people. able to take that break at the same time without compromising anyone’s retreat.
You need to explain the concept of this repose day quite carefully and if there’s a group, you can do this in a group briefing on the morning of the repose day. What you want to tell them is, they shouldn’t share what’s been going on in the retreat with each other so people may already have developed a bit of a connection on the preparation days, but [00:39:00] you don’t want them discussing the retreat. That’s quite hard because that’s what people want to do because that’s all they’ve been busy with. They want to talk about often a little bit what’s happening in the retreat, and although people can share funny moments like—do you remember what happened at lunch when so and so sneezed and the glass fell over or whatever—they will share funny moments of common things that happened or the day the lights went out with the big storm or whatever it might be.
In terms of the content of the retreat and the graces and the process, you don’t want people comparing experiences. You might give one piece of material to one person and not give it to anyone else in the group, and then people start to second guess their experience. Why did so and so have this and why haven’t I had it yet? It just increases anxiety levels enormously. So, you don’t want people to be doing that because people move at different paces and directors direct differently. So, if you’ve got four or five directors in the mix, they won’t have received the identical material. So, [00:40:00] you don’t want them comparing notes on the process.
It’s generally a helpful thing for retreatants to have a change of scene and to actually leave the retreat center, but it needs to be a reflective environment. You don’t want them going off to some, hectic thriller movie or some rock concert that’s going on or whatever; that’s not going to be a good repose day.
It has to be something that’s kind of in the mode. So, you could take them to the sea if it’s nearby or for a walk in the botanical gardens or tea at a very nice herb garden or whatever. Something that’s peaceful and not too hectic. Trevor, do you want to chip in there—any of you? I don’t know what your repose days were like.
Trevor: I think I chose a person who really respected the mood of the retreat to take James and Erin out for a day to a quiet [00:41:00] space. So, it was good to know that they would have a relatively quiet time. It gave them a break from me as well, I think, which is important. And then on the second repose day we just went out for a quiet meal together and it wasn’t the whole day. It was about three or four hours.
Annemarie: Thank you—that kind of change of scene. Sometimes directors go with their people on the repose days, particularly if it’s a kind of big group outing but sometimes, they don’t. What I find is that directors who are introverts, of which there are many of us, may desperately need a day off without talking to their retreatants. So, it depends on a mix of different factors.
The retreatants should be encouraged to pray in the morning, and then to maybe go after the day to wherever they’re going to be back by the midafternoon by four o’clock so that they [00:42:00] can step back in. In that early morning period on the first repose day, they’re praying The Call of the King or they’re considering The Call of the King and then when they come back, they are entering into that again.
The second repose day comes after the election and before the entry into Jerusalem usually, and then you get a tomb day. The tomb day is not a repose day, but it’s another kind of a pause or a different space and a more unstructured day. There’s no meeting with the director generally on the tomb day and no structured prayer. There’s a kind of sense of stay waiting by the tomb. Usually, the retreat giver will have given those instructions the day before. And often at the retreat centers where there’s a daily Eucharist, there won’t be a Eucharist on that day. So, there’s a kind of a quiet space.
At the end of the [00:43:00] retreat, there are two relaxed days of debrief, so, like the deep-sea divers who have to surface slowly, or they get the bends. You don’t want people surfacing from such an intense experience and immediately being plunged into the noise and the demands of everyday life.
I had one person on a 30-day retreat once who I later discovered was picked up by her family and taken to the car races for the day. She said it was the worst thing ever, that she’d come out of this incredible experience of silence, and she was excited to go out with her family and her grandchild and whatever, but it was absolutely a nightmare for her because it was just too much of a contrast. So, warn people about that, to just come out of things when they go home in a bit of a gentle way.
I love this quote by Saint Ignatius. I’m going to just read it to you. He says,
Upon moving from a warm to a cold room, a person can easily catch a sudden chill unless he [00:44:00] takes care to preserve his [or her, I presume] heat. In the same way, a person finishing the exercises and returning to their daily life and dealings can all too easily lose in quite a short time the fervor and life that they have received.
This is especially true in as much as whatever good they have received has not yet been solidified into a habit but is still a kind of impulse which can easily slacken or die out. If this happens, the fruit and labor of the exercises vanishes.
So, that transition space is really important to manage well. Some of the people will have different reactions to the retreat ending. Some might be relieved that it’s over. Others find it very hard to move out of the silence and that intensity of that space. They might be worried about how to sustain those graces that they’ve received.
Usually, the end of the 30-day retreat is the end of the person’s contract with the giver of the exercises. So, it’s often the case that person is [00:45:00] not going to continue with ongoing direction with the person who’s taken them through the exercises, and there can be a real sense of loss in that. So, there needs to be time for kind of transition and goodbyes and with the other retreatants too, because in the silence, it’s amazing what the depth of connection is that develops among people who are praying together. You have to think with them about how they’re going to navigate the transition back and all of that stuff. All of those things are particularly important to pay attention to in the intensity of the 30-day retreat.
Let’s think about the pattern of the day for the retreatants. You always have to have a clear structure for the day. It might be breakfast, meeting the director, lunch, a daily liturgy and common supper, prayer together, and the four periods of prayer—sometimes five periods of prayer in between. Remember that the day [00:46:00] follows the dynamic of the Ignatian day, and you can see it much more clearly in the enclosed retreat than you would see it in the 19th annotation mode.
So, you remember that you start by praying one mystery of the life of Jesus at midnight. We have midnight meditations. It doesn’t have to be midnight exactly, but in the middle of the night you pray the next mystery early in the morning. You do a repetition late morning, a resume in the afternoon, and an application of senses in the evening. The day moves from that content and that engagement of all the faculties to a greater and greater simplicity and receptivity, and you can really feel that in the 30 days.
The rhythm of the day for the retreat directors depends a little bit on the person, but you have to factor in a number of things—time for your own prayer, and time to see each retreatant. It really depends. It might be quite short—some of the interviews, but sometimes you might need up [00:47:00] to 45 minutes If you’re explaining a key meditation or something, you might need a longer session. You want to leave a little bit of a gap between each one so you can write down notes about what you’ve given, especially when you’re seeing four or five people and giving material around the same place in the exercises; you can get quite confused as to who you gave what to. You will want to make a note of that.
You want time for supervision, time for planning the daily liturgy, time to exercise, and maybe to escape from the center for an hour or two and just grab an ice cream or do whatever you need to do to keep your own sanity and balance.
Supervision on the retreat—whether for inexperienced or experienced directors, you have to have supervision as you would in daily life, and it would normally happen in a peer model if directors are experienced or in a facilitated group model. Sometimes it’s individual supervision. This happens pretty much every day, apart from [00:48:00] the repose days. So, you have to factor it into the timetable.
That’s one of the reasons why it’s important not to take too many people on. This is a marathon, not a sprint. It really is a marathon. It’s long, and the supervision daily is important because a lot happens in one day on a 30- day retreat because you’ve got at least four periods of prayer, sometimes five. Because of the intensity of the retreat, there’s a greater likelihood of a transference developing because you’re seeing the people every day.
You might also need a “nuts and bolts” session at the end of supervision for directors to check in around logistical issues—like there’s a problem with the food or somebody’s bed has collapsed or whatever—things that might need to be attended to in the retreat.
In terms of a couple of things to just be aware of around dynamics—I’m talking now in the group model where you’ve got a number of directors directing a number of [00:49:00] people. You can get a situation in which a director and directee really, really don’t gel. There’s a kind of instant dislike of each other or lack of ability to connect, and that’s a problem if you’re going to be taking someone through the 30-day retreat. You have to be able to get on with them or have enough rapport with them for you and them to cope with that 30-day process in a fruitful way.
So, if that should happen, the person who’s coordinating the retreat might need to make a swap within the first day or two of the retreat. Thankfully, it’s pretty rare because it can be quite difficult to make a swap, sometimes impossible. It is easier to make a swap on the preparation days if people figure out that actually the director that you thought was going to take this person through the exercises is not a good match for them.
That can be quite a good reason to delay matching until the preparation [00:50:00] days are almost over. It’s not that common that it happens, but it can happen.
Particular demands of the 30 days on a director—I think often directing any retreat has a big impact on one’s own prayer life. It can lead you into consolation in your own prayer. Other times the director’s prayer can become very dry and sometimes issues surface in your own prayer that are triggered by what’s happening in the retreatants. It’s quite important to be aware of that and take it to supervision. Don’t pray the same material that you’re giving your retreatants, particularly on an enclosed retreat, because it can get muddled with what they’re praying, what your response is to the text and what they’re praying with so, it’s not so helpful to do that.
Tiredness—it’s really important for the directors to come to the retreat well rested. It’s very demanding and if you are holding a liturgy and four people or five people and having [00:51:00] supervision, etc., it’s a lot and you don’t get a day off. You literally don’t have a day off apart from a half day on a repose day for 34 days, so it’s a big thing to undertake. You need to have regular meals, good sleep, take care of yourself. Just be aware of tiredness levels.
There can also be struggles with dynamics in the team occasionally. When the directors start to get a bit tired and fractious after a while, sometimes attacks of the bad spirit trying to derail things, and one of the best ways to derail a 30-day retreat is to get directors struggling with each other. So, it’s quite important to keep the openness and to bring up and talk through any issues as they come up, any concerns, and to have a social now and again, to get out together and go out for a meal—somewhere far from the retreat center where you can just chill and laugh and de-stress from the intensity of that process.
Liturgy—usually [00:52:00] in a Catholic retreat center, there would be on a 30-day retreat, a daily Eucharist, so that would be a standard thing that would be part of the rhythm of the day, usually towards the end of the day, and people are all encouraged to participate and to come because it’s a time in the day where there’s a sense of community, and a sense of connection.
It may be that the people that you’re giving the 30-day retreats to are not comfortable with the Catholic context or not Catholic themselves or are from a particular denominational background where they have different ways of worship, and you would want to accommodate that. So, you’d want to look at what’s going to be the most helpful thing to do in terms of getting a little daily kind of service of some kind together. You don’t want something that’s got a lot of preaching and a lot of readings and too many songs stuck in. You want to keep it really [00:53:00] simple and really predictable so that they know what they’re coming to, that there’s maybe an opening piece of music, something for Lectio that’s in the mood of where they are in the retreat. Maybe a retreat giver says just a few words for five minutes or so, and maybe there’s a time of silent prayer together. Something simple. You don’t want something that’s going to take a lot of energy from retreatants. They’re in their own movement.
If there is preaching at the service, it should be short; I’m talking very short, like five to seven minutes short—very short. It’s really just a reflection of a word or two. If there’s music, it can be singing. If you choose songs, they need to be well known so that people don’t struggle to sing them. You might have some hymns or something that you can play as a post communion time. If you’re going to use hymns, you make sure the hymn books need to come with you, that sort of thing.[00:54:00]
There’s a tradition in many Catholic retreat houses where the full exercises are given, which is something called adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. This is where the consecrated bread, which is believed to have become Christ’s presence is exposed on the altar during a time of silent prayer at night, in the last part of the day. This is often at a time where people would be praying the application of the senses and that can be very meaningful, particularly for some Catholics. It can be very uncomfortable for people of other Christian denominations, so another way of doing something similar might be to have a time of silent prayer in common with simply a lit candle and a Bible as a focus or maybe an icon of Jesus that you use the same set up every night—that there’s just something that is a focal point for people to connect with and to be together around. So, you have to think about the group that you have.
There [00:55:00] can be the possibility of having a reconciliation service as part of a 30-day retreat. So, we talked about confession when we did that part at the end of the first week, and sometimes it’s possible to have. a service where you have some readings, and a piece of music and people come together and then people go individually if they would like to make their confession to whoever is hearing confessions in that space. It’s not essential, it’s something that sometimes happens and is useful.
So, I think the 30-day experience is a very powerful immersion experience. It allows for the dynamic and the pedagogy of the exercises to be experienced in a very intense way. It’s very demanding for the director. Don’t expect to come out and be ready to go back to work. So, don’t think, Oh, I’m going to direct a 30-day retreat. I’ll take 34 days of leave or however many you need to get to 34 [00:56:00] days and I’ll go straight back to work afterwards. It’s very tiring, and you need space to come out from that slowly. It’s demanding because you need to not only be accompanying, but you’re discerning the timing of things, when you can move people on. trying to look at the timing frame that you’ve got to work within.
Sometimes the unexpected happens. Trevor’s just given us a really powerful example of, having to direct a retreatant for 16 days with a catheter. It’s huge to have to adapt to circumstances that happen. I’ve had a retreatant have a heart attack in the middle of the retreat and I’ve had to take them to hospital and negotiate seeing them in the hospital and driving there and back every day, trying to find their next of ki—and that’s when we added next of kin to the retreat form because we didn’t have their next of kin’s number at that point. So, those kind of things. [00:57:00]
We had someone who got a message from the doctor that their cancer had come back in the middle of the retreat. We had a power outage once that lasted five days because the power lines were struck by lightning, and so the retreat was done in this beautiful little retreat center in Pretoria North with no lights and no power, so we had to have candles and all sorts of things.
I once gave the 30 days with a co-director from the UK, who was struggling with early-stage dementia that hadn’t been diagnosed yet. He wasn’t aware of it, and it suddenly accelerated as he started directing the retreat and we were in the middle of a heat wave. So, trying to manage the unexpected is often a big part of the 30 days, but it can be such a life giving, powerful experience. Ignatius said that in a year when one has given the 30 days, one doesn’t need to make one’s own eight-day retreat because the experience of accompanying someone [00:58:00] through an experience of that degree of depth and intensity is in itself like making a retreat at a very profound level.
So, yeah, we just want to maybe pause there, and I wonder if there’s anything at this point that’s been sparked for either Erin or James or Trevor before we break for our questions and reflection.
Trevor: Just for me to affirm the immeasurable gift of consolation of having a bit of a front row seat, of grace at work through ups and downs in a person’s life. I just find that absolutely overwhelmingly—a grace gift, yeah.
Annemarie: Thanks, Trevor.
Erin: Yeah, I guess several years back I did the [00:59:00] exercises in the nine-month format, and I think I can see definitely the rhythm of the Ignatian day much better in the 30-day format. That was a big difference that I saw.
Annemarie: Thanks, Erin.
James: And I would agree with Erin but doing the retreat in 30-day format, there’s so much intensity to the times of prayer and the integration of the whole experience. It felt completely different really than doing the retreat in daily life, and I appreciated the retreat in daily life, but doing it in 30 days, I feel like I have a deeper understanding of the exercises and received a lot of gifts going through it this way.
Annemarie: Thank you, James.
James: I hope Trevor can have a long break like you’re talking about Annemarie.
Annemarie: He’s earned his long break.
James: Yes, he has.
Annemarie: Thank you. Thank you to each of you for sharing [01:00:00] that, and when we come back, if you have anything more you want to add, please do. Russell’s put the questions up for us and I’m going to give us 10 minutes now to go away and reflect until quarter past the hour, and then we’ll come back and go into our groups. See you in a bit.
Welcome back everyone. So, we have some time to chat and maybe just before, so I don’t forget, just to let you know I’m back and busy marking away very much. That’s my top priority at the moment. Tomorrow and the next day, that’s all I’m doing. You should have your assignments back quite soon. So, sorry about the delay from my being overseas, but you will get them back soon now.
So just to open our screen and see what’s been stirred for [01:01:00] you. If there are any people here who’ve made the 30 days who would like to share a little bit about their experience, it would be great to hear that or anyone who’s had a chance to accompany someone on a 30 day. So, we’ll just hear what comes.
Anne, can I invite you? Are you there?
Anne: Yes, I’m here. .
Annemarie: I’m going to pick on you, . I know you’ve made a 30-day, and I wondered if there was [01:02:00] anything that you might like to share about that experience.
Anne: Okay, so I directed on a 30 day—thrown in at the deep end by your very dear self. I was just sharing with the group what an incredible experience it was—that in the silence, how God speaks, when there are no other distractions. So, I wasn’t actually making the retreat, but this presence of God is so palpable. So, there’s that.
And I think that as Trevor said, front row seats to the miraculous things that happen and the gentle yet strong way that God works with people.
Hectic, yes and if you’ve got to travel any distance, it’s 34 days by the time you get home, and I really found it difficult to reintegrate into my usual life when I got back. Being separated, my family knew that they could reach me, and we were in [01:03:00] contact a couple of times, but other than that, I wasn’t really aware of what was happening at home. So, it was quite difficult to reintegrate. I just wanted to be back at the retreat center, and I would imagine it’s similar for those who are making the retreat.
The one thing that I did want to mention was I had quite an elderly person making the retreat and so the midnight prayer, she didn’t think she could manage that. She used to go at about 10 or half past 10, but in fact, then she said she was woken up to go at midnight. So, she decided to just go, and it was dark, and she had her torch and off she went into the chapel, switched a couple of lights on and sat there. and really found such value in those midnight prayers.
The other thing was, through the [01:04:00] Jesuit Institute, we had notes that we could follow, and we had a really good supervisor who had taken lots and lots of people through the exercises, so he was pretty sharp.
We had one on one supervision. He chose to do it that way, but it was really, really good. I loved it. I would say if you get the opportunity, go for it; it’s an incredible experience. I don’t regret it at all.
Annemarie: Thanks so much for sharing that, Anne. I get such a sense of the quality of how powerful that experience was.
Anne: Yeah, it really was. So, thank you.
Annemarie: Thank you, Anne. Monica.
Monica: I can share about my experience. I just shared with [01:05:00] my small group so I’m going to repeat myself, but I did have the privilege to do the 30-day, about five years ago, and my husband and I were living in Europe at the time and so I went to Loyola, Spain to do it. It was quite amazing to be in the place where Ignatius was born.
It was through the Jesuits of Scotland though. They do this every summer, and will direct people in English, and then there’s also a group that does it in Spanish, too. So, it was very similar to how you’re describing it, Annemarie with the schedule. There was about maybe 20 of us and we were all as a group. The repose days were scheduled. That was given to us ahead of time of how it was going to be, [01:06:00] because each repose day, we would all go together to some site or cathedral or famous place or something that was significant to Ignatius and that’s what we did together on those repose days.
It was a beautiful place to do it. There was a big garden at the retreat center. There were forests and lots of walking paths and lots of different spaces to pray. It was quite intense though, even as someone taking it. I’m more of a contemplative and so we were to structure our day to pray for five hours. Ignatian prayer so active and so my director said, why don’t you just do four and then have an hour where you just do your normal like centering contemplative prayer. That helped me a [01:07:00] lot. The intensity and having a retreat setting like that is also just incredibly amazing and life changing too.
Afterwards I thought, I wonder what it would be like to do the 19th. I hadn’t even heard of the 19th. I didn’t know that was possible. I had only heard you could do the spiritual exercises for 30 days. So afterwards I thought I wonder what it would be like to do the 19th to integrate it in your daily life as you go along rather than having it in such an intense experience.
So, I wonder now as I’m practicing directing someone like am I doing this right or how do I do this because I’ve only had the 30-day experience. Yeah, very different, but I’m really grateful for having it.
Annemarie: Sounds like an amazing experience and I know that place. It’s absolutely gorgeous and so green and lush [01:08:00] and really, really special so I can imagine that must have added to the power of the experience and the sense of Ignatius having walked in those places. Thank you for sharing your experience with us, Monica. Rhonda.
Rhonda: Hey, we were just in our group talking a little bit about the importance we were feeling of having gone through a 30-day event. I’m just wondering if that’s what you would recommend, that you would have had that experience on your own? For where I feel like I am, I feel like this is like jumping in the deep end versus maybe starting with a three day and then an eight day and so, I just wondered how you’ve seen directors manage not having that experience and leading.
Annemarie: My own sense is that it’s quite important really to have [01:09:00] the experience of leading an eight day, as well as understanding the dynamics of the exercises, because it gives you a sense of how an enclosed retreat works and getting a kind of feel of it.
So, I think that, going straight into directing on a 30-day silent retreat would be a bit jumping in the deep end. I wouldn’t recommend it myself. Start with a three day, build up to an eight day, and if you find that that’s a way of working that’s really powerful for you and you want to try the 30-day, then see how that evolves.
I think there’s also something about having had the experience of making the retreat as a 30-day that helps one in giving it as a 30-day, but that’s not a hard and fast rule. Many people who’ve never made a 30-day themselves have given really excellent 30-day retreats. But it does help to have had that experience, I think of being on the receiving end as well. But it [01:10:00] may not be possible to do that. Aim for trying an eight day a couple of times, maybe, and go from there, I would say. But I wonder—Trevor, have you got any thoughts about that?
Trevor: I’ve had the privilege of giving without doing. So, I have two reflections. I would love to do it, but whether that will ever happen, I don’t know. I think what I have found really helpful in giving it without doing it has been the value of fairly intense supervision which has been really, really helpful. And I think that I just feel the exercises are getting deeper into me in a kind of organic, natural way which I think will also maybe have some benefit in offering them in daily life as well, just with a stronger sense of structure, [01:11:00] dynamic, etc. Yeah.
Annemarie: Does that help Rhonda?
Rhonda: Yes, and so I’m wondering then, Trevor, did you do the 19th annotation with people for a long time before you jumped in? it seems like you’d have to have a little track record for yourself.
Trevor: Oh, thank you. Rhonda. Mine was the other way around. I had been giving the retreat in daily life from about 1992, and I did my first 30 day in 2022. So, that was my route.
Rhonda: Thanks. That helps.
Annemarie: Gavin, do you want to chip in anything? I know you’ve had that [01:12:00] experience of making the 30 days. Is there anything you want to add to the experience generally of our conversation?
Gavin: Yeah, I was fortunate that you were the other half of the UK team, and I didn’t realize until you spoke today how lucky I was with my UK director to be second in that heatwave because he expressed to me how difficult it was to meet with retreatants three and four after the two of us had been before. I can remember how exhausted you were on the repose day, and you were seated on a chair, and I walked past you and if you could have been left alone and been able to have a snooze, it would have been great for you because that’s how intense it was giving it. I realize now after listening to you [01:13:00] tonight, what a gift you gave us with those liturgical get togethers when we met—short, meaningful reflections, occasionally some singing, the mass, also being sensitive to those who weren’t Catholics, and I could talk that through with my UK director. Looking back, I said to my group I was allowed to have too much input from my director; he gave me a copy of his own handwritten exercises after each exercise, and for someone like me, that’s not a good idea. I’ve come to believe that less is more now—giving people more space and encouraging more silence.
Just one story that I shared with a group about the UK director. I set behind him every single breakfast and eventually I could hold my curiosity no longer and I said to him, [01:14:00] what are you doing every morning—you sit in the same chair, you sit behind the same tree—so, what’s going on? He said, well, I sit here, and I say to myself every morning, “be at rest once more, oh my soul, for the Lord has been good to you.” That simple experience from him has had such a profound impact on my life.
There are many other gifts I’ve been through in the journaling. I think as each year goes by and doing the course and meeting people, when I go back to the journals now, I realize actually just how rich it was at the time. Yeah, it was intense.
Don’t do what I did. I went straight after retreat into a family experience, getting in a car with the whole family and driving down to Cape Town and not giving myself another day to recover because I was [01:15:00] tired. And there were times in the car with five of us when I thought I would actually go crazy.
Annemarie: Thanks for that, Gavin. Thank you so much for sharing your experience. Anyone else got a question, a thought, a wondering, an experience they would like to share?
Trevor: I wonder if I could ask you, Annemarie a question, and it’s a really a genuine one, and that is as folk leave the 30-day experience and in the different times I’ve given it, there’s often a wondering in them of how do I share this with others? What is appropriate sharing? What is [01:16:00] inappropriate sharing? How much, how little? People are going to ask me, loved ones are going to ask me, what happened on the retreat? And I feel that I need to be able to offer some guidance in that area. I wondered about your own thoughts around that. I also have some thoughts, but I am also wondering about your thoughts.
Annemarie: I think that because it’s such an intense experience, and you come out of it not having seen people for a whole month—your whole network knows you’re on retreat. They know you’re out of offices and they can’t reach you by phone, etc., that you have to be even more careful than, with the 19th annotation or whatever, because there hasn’t been time to integrate and to live into the experience. I think that sharing [01:17:00] it too much, too quickly can do something that’s not helpful for the process of reintegration.
You don’t want to dampen people’s excitement about you’re coming out of the retreat on the one hand, but I think it’s about maybe not sharing the detail or the most precious of the meditations or the contemplations because certain experiences are very tender; they’re very fresh; they’re very raw; they’re very precious and I think that to share them too quickly, or if at all, you can’t make that judgment too fast.
So, I think it’s about maybe sharing the fruits of it—I come out of this with a greater sense of X, Y, and Z, or a greater sense of clarity about my life or a deeper sense of knowing God in a different way that could even give a glimpse of what that might be, but not giving anything of the heart of the detail of those experiences.
Then I would say, do [01:18:00] it in kind of circles. So, to maybe have the first sharing of that with someone who will really maybe get it—maybe one’s spiritual director when one goes home, and maybe not all at once either, maybe over a period of two or three, four sessions of beginning to unpack it.
It depends on the relationship one has with one’s spouse or immediate family—how much one would feel is appropriate to share. I know that I was quite careful about what I shared out of my own 30-day retreat for a while. But I think it’s almost like saying as the months go by, it’s easier to begin to share more and to know what’s going to be helpful to share or not. But, in that immediate week or two coming out of the retreat, I think it’s saying to people less is more and just really share the fruits rather than [01:19:00] the essence of the experiences. That would be my thought, Trevor, but I’d be interested to know what your thoughts were.
Trevor: I think the only thing I would add to what you’ve said and would really agree with less on detail and more on maybe fruit. The only other thing I’ve suggested is that sometimes some kind of premeditation may be helpful in the sense that I begin to anticipate who I’m going to be meeting, and I do a little bit of reflection and become a little bit clearer as to what I’m going to say when I’m in that situation. So, I’ve encouraged some quote unquote premeditation on perhaps maybe one or two rich themes of the retreat for me. Yeah.
Annemarie: I think that’s really helpful, and I think that’s part of what the debrief days can do is [01:20:00] allowing people the space to think that through in quite a careful way. Thanks Trevor.
Tracy, do you wanna say anything? I’m putting you on the spot and you don’t have to—just wondered.
Tracy: I’ll share with you what I was just thinking as you guys were talking because it was just resonating with my end of retreat experience, because I did not have debrief days with my retreat center and I found it very overwhelming, but gratefully I had a friend who hosted me after the retreat in her mountain home and I got to have like several days in the mountains with a safe person that I could debrief with. I even remember like there was some kind of excitement because this person knew about the exercises very well and wanted to hear how it went.
The only words I could find was God loves you so much. [01:21:00] I was just so overwhelmed by the experience and I feel two gifts—well, lots of gifts but more than I could name—but one gift was my director knew I was coming from an academic setting that was studying Ignatian spirituality so he like disguised the whole experience for me, and I had no idea what I was doing half of the time. I was so scared I wasn’t doing it right and almost every day in direction he would say don’t worry if you’re doing it right, and it wasn’t until this class that I was like, wow, all the dynamics were there, and I think he was just a very gifted giver of the exercises.
I think the other gift for me is that—this is now my fourth year of writing papers about my experience in different formats, and I think this ongoing processing is what’s creating so much fruit from this experience. [01:22:00] I keep thinking this is unnatural to be in school for most people and I wonder what benefit there would be to create spaces for people and maybe that’s what the eight-day retreat is. But, just to have that ongoing reflection, because the fruit has not stopped for me. As I reflect, there’s more and there’s more and I can see that as the base of where the fruit came from.
Annemarie: Thank you for that Tracy—that kind of gift of that ongoing unpacking and savoring of that experience.
I heard recently of an organization that’s doing a thing called living into the exercises for people who’ve made the exercises, but who want to meet on a monthly basis for a conversation, a facilitated sharing space with a couple of other people who’ve also just made the [01:23:00] exercises for over the course of a year. The experience of doing that and just your comment there Tracy made me wonder if that’s something that might be a real gift for those who may be not going into the academic space and not getting that opportunity to write those papers. So maybe it’s worth thinking about. Melanie?
Melanie: Yes, when Tracy talked, she just mentioned in her last sharing about the eight-day retreat. It’s been so long since that was taught at the beginning and I was absorbing so much then, would you refresh my memory on [01:24:00] what the eight-day retreat is and how that ties into following up with a 30-day retreat is what I think I heard Tracy say or if there is a connection.
Annemarie: So, we didn’t ever really talk too much about the eight day. For a long time in the history of people making the exercises, and this comes out of the Jesuit world, there was a way of approaching this; they kind of had the idea that the eight-day retreat was a kind of quick recap of the exercises. So, you made the full exercises in 30 days and then every year you did a fast forward version of the 30 days in eight days.
In some parts of the world, like some parts of Europe, some parts of Africa and I think mostly countries like Spain, maybe India, places like Zambia, there are a number of places where that is still [01:25:00] the mode that the eight-day retreat is given in. If people come, they expect to do something Principal and Foundation-ish on day one and on day two and three to do something first week-ish and go through the process like that. What’s emerged in the way that things have unfolded and developed is a kind of growing recognition that that’s not really generally very helpful as a way of doing a kind of deepening experience of the exercises.
It’s more that when you make an eight-day retreat; it’s almost as though if you’re coming from an Ignatian perspective, your director can be listening to, are you coming this particular year in a first week space? And maybe the whole retreat is going to be a first week kind of retreat. Or maybe there’s issues around your call that have been reawakened, and there’s a decision that needs to be made and the retreat is basically—you might start with a little bit of grounding in God’s love, but it’s going to be focused on a call retreat. So, I think that’s what you’re maybe [01:26:00] thinking of, Tracy, when you talk about eight-day retreat stuff. I’m not sure, but yeah?
Tracy: Oh, I was just going to say, yeah, and I just came off an eight-day retreat and that was going to be my comment. There was just one theme from my exercises that was just repeated over and over throughout the retreat, but it was organic. It wasn’t planned.
Annemarie: Thanks Tracy. So often I think also the time of the exercises is a time of sowing seeds, that kind of germinate over the years and come later and it may be that something that was there tentatively in the exercises, over the course of five years or 10 years or however long it is somehow becomes bigger and it takes the whole of an eight-day retreat in a given year. But I think an eight-day retreat in the way we understand it now, certainly in the places that I tend to work in the context that I work in is really about being with [01:27:00] the person where they’re at and allowing the movement to unfold. There may be something of the dynamic of the exercises in that, but it’s not a tick box thing of, we’re going to do first week, then we move to second week, third week, fourth week, and we’ve got to get it all done in eight days because I think the human spirit can’t manage that amount of shift in that short of space of time.
Gavin: Annemarie, can I just add to what you’re saying? I was allowed an eight-day as part of my calling in pastoral ministry and generally when I went on an eight day, it was refreshing and reviving with someone journeying with me where I was at that particular moment. One eight-day experience doing the whole exercises after the 30 days was too much. It was simply exhausting. [01:28:00] I came out of the eighth day feeling I need about two weeks now just to regroup. So, I can only underline what you said.
Annemarie: Thanks, Gavin. Trevor, do you have anything you want to say in relation to any of this? Okay, so we’ve got time for maybe one or possibly two more. Next week we’re going to talk more about the kind of nuts and bolts of how these retreats get set up and what are the kind of things that you have to pay attention to and what you need to bring and pack and all those kind of things. I think what’s really important is, you would need to be, if you were doing it for the first time, [01:29:00] in an environment where you have very close supervision each day as Trevor was saying. Diana.
Diana: Yeah, maybe this might be answered next week, but for those of us like myself who are from a Protestant background and not connected to a Jesuit center and I’m in part of North America where it’s fairly secular. Yeah. How would you go about even starting to consider offering the exercises in a 30-day format? How would we go about setting up supervision for ourselves? I don’t know if there’s a group that emerges out of this class for North Americans who offer the exercises, because that was an idea that was floated around, so those are my wonderings.
Trevor, I think, knows your context better than I do, so I’m going to ask if [01:30:00] you want to take lead on this response and then I’ll chip in.
Trevor: Diana, tell me if I’m missing the mark in my response, but I’m wondering about the possibilities of peer group supervision and particularly if it is online to maybe source a facilitator of a group of people who are doing this together who could perhaps facilitate that process as a group. That’s all I am seeing at the moment.
Annemarie: I think the first time you want to give a 30-day retreat, you want to have [01:31:00] someone who’s done it before, so I think you can kind of morph into a peer group once there’s a little bit of experience in the group. You want somebody who’s done it before.
So it might be, if a group gets set up, there are people— not a lot—but there are some people who’ve had the experience, even from here, for example, that might be willing to supervise online. As Trevor said, maybe facilitate a group and maybe in fact. be the supervisor to that group initially until it can kind of get going on its own.
So, I think there are possibilities, and I think it’ll be really exciting to get something going in spaces that are not Jesuit Catholic retreat centers, which is where it’s mainly happened. All you really need is a comfortable environment where people can have a room that’s comfortable for those days, silence, good food, so it’s doable. The key [01:32:00] thing is finding someone who’d be willing to take that on in terms of journeying with a group of directors for that period of time.
Okay, I think let’s pause. We’ll pick up on 30 day retreats again next week, and I’m going to hand over to Trevor to lead us in a time of prayer. Thanks, Trevor.
Trevor: Since Adri-Marie got us thinking about stars, I thought I would build on her opening devotion, and I just want to read to you some words from Paul.
Do all things without murmuring and arguing, so that you may be blameless and innocent [01:33:00] children of God, without blemish, in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation in which you shine like stars in the world. (Philippians 2:14-18)
And so, as we end, I want to invite you and to invite myself to wonder about ourselves being a star that shines with God’s living light and love, for us to maybe ponder some of the situations that we’ll be going into today, some of the experiences, the encounters, the [01:34:00] events—what may it mean for you and for me to shine with God’s living and loving light?
And so, Lord, we ask that your spirit may irradiate our lives with your loving and living presence, that we may indeed, within the context of our own generation, shine like a star in the name of Christ our Lord. Amen.
Annemarie: Amen. So, we’ll [01:35:00] see you all next week. Have a good week. Take care.