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Week 1 |
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At the moment I`m finished my first week of this retreat. And when I had reading this aticle "the courage to accept acceptance" for week 1 second time, after when I was prey for this, I felt that Lord Jesus by His Holy Spirit is coming to sit with me and open to me this subject to shed His light of understanding on this theme. And as i was hearing when his voice is spoken to me by this article so gentle and lovely as He is reveal His love to me. I just started the retreat tonight and have already felt its special grace. I am looking forward to receiving the graces I need each week from this retreat. Thank you, and may God bless you. Today is the first day of my retreat. I feel overwhelmed and can't seem to bring a focus to share my thoughts. My gratitude to Almighty God wavers like a palm tree blowing in the wind. I know I should be grateful at all times, but I am still working on acceptance. My faith will carry me through. (1 John 4:16) I made myself write this because I want to see the progress made during these days and weeks of this retreat. Hope is my banner. A friend of mine suggested that I do this retreat and I have been wrestling with the idea. Last night, I read week one and believe that this is exactly what I need to do. I, however, have a request for anyone who feels led - I need prayer that I will remember my childhood. My memories are sporadic shadows at best. I'm not sure if I can do the entire retreat when I do not have childhood memories to reflect on. I'm afraid, but I'm willing to look and feel. To feel accepted by God is a great desire that I have. I loved the statement in week one's lesson that said, "It is one thing to know I am accepted and quite another to realize it." I need to realize! Thanks! -- JB Last week started Week 1 after waiting over a year to be well enough to start. As I expected it was tough! The photo hurt as at that age I was in institutional care (1952) and babies were not thought to have emotional needs. 'A baby who is not welcome is ruined at the roots of her existence' is very painful to read, but true, my whole life has been sabotaged by this. My desire is help others in need, but I dont cope and have had many years of stress related illness. I cannot - or will not? - see how God can be thanked for this wholly destructive beginning. However I have put this issue on the table, and will see what God does with it as the weeks pass. The advice to not look for progress but trust the process was very helpful. I did move on to reflect on how I have managed to survive as well as I have - and could see aspects of my childhood which have cushioned me from the worst consequences of my difficulties. And recalled some early beginnings of faith which I had not remembered for a long while. I was surprised that by the end of the week a couple of positive ideas had emerged. Thank you. I have been using the reading on Acceptance and spending much time with it. I find each time that I read the piece I see something new especially in the light of my childhood, and begininng today in my teenage years. (I am 64.) This has answered so many question for me about who, and what I am. Praying Psalm 139 after reading the piece as lecito gave me feelings of comfort and peace. I am growing in comfort with me. It is a blessing to be able to look at my life as a young person and see God's presence there all the time even when I never really felt accepted. How did I know that God was preparing me to understand the "Theology of Subtraction", but God's gift has made me able to celebrate the "bottom". -- "R" of RI At the end of wk one I invited lots of friends to join me on line retreat. Only one said yes. I am not sure how in touch I am with Jesus as life is fast and busy. I listened to Audio for this week at the end of the day. I have forgotten what it said. With the grace of God, I realized this is not a competition and there is no test of how much I have absorbed. I will keep on trying and I am glad to connect to other retreatants through sharing. I feel so thankful for this week. I am reminded again of the people who have graced my life. Many I had forgotten about. Many more I have taken for granted. In looking at the pictures of my early life I see that many of my current interests were fostered there. I wonder (and hope) that I did the same with my children. In all staqes
of my life I have seen areas of growth ... often unplanned ... Then there are
pictures around which I am truly embarrassed. Particular periods of
my life which were certainly days of restlessness and darkness and
sin. Yet in all these there were people of grace who helped to gradually
call me back. Week 1 A wondrous picture encounter: My God embraces me; human tragedy, Him and I, something anew; a tragic beauty. His grace transfiguring me like a newly created butterfly, rhythmic wonder in wings melodiously beating, as a heartbeat. Yet not without shadow; tragedy, His love knows no bounds, otherwise, flightless I would be. My God embraces me - May God bless you I have finished the first week although it could go on for a lifetime.. There were many broken threads but many threads that were strong, filled with love and laughter., As I have grown matured, gotten older (60) I have noticed that my parents, in fact all parents have done the best they could with what they had, So I pray for forgiveness and healing of those "broken threads" as I continue this journey of a lifetime. Lets us all pray for each other. God bless -- Jim (NY)It is Friday of week 1 and I have had some trouble getting started. I did the 34 week Exercises several years ago with a Jesuit mentor and was excited at the possibility of this retreat. Alas, as a high school theology teacher I need all the spiritual help I can get!! And right now even more than ever; I have just moved to a new school and while I’m very glad for the move, there is still much stress in the changes. I’m also a recovering alcoholic/addict; last night coming home from an AA meeting I was overwhelmed with an incredible sense of gratitude. Part of it came from the meeting, but I’m pretty sure a large part of it came from the Graces of this retreat. The essay on ‘Accepting Acceptance’ was just so powerful—and it fits the AA spirituality so perfectly. Anyhow, as my World Religions class is taking a test, I was moved to share. The Grace of God in my life the past several years has been, well, a lifesaver in so many ways. The picture of being held has subconsciously stuck with me as well. Last night I had this powerful sense that I’m alive today in no small part probably due to the prayers of my mother, who I know I caused much grief. I’m also alive—and fairly joyous today—because of my ‘willingness to accept’ many things I did not want to accept, starting 18+ years ago with the decision to embrace sobriety and then to follow that with a return to Christ, who in turn led me to the Catholic Church. (I was raised a Protestant preacher’s son.) What a great gift to have this opportunity to once again embrace these Exercises. Thank you. I have been following the retreat for three weeks now, but don't feel very connected to it. I realize part of the reason is that I'm not sharing and have finally gained the courage to post my own sharing. Thank you for everyone who has shared along their journey. I really appreciate the openness and love I feel just by reading other's comments. This retreat has been a blessing, I guess an answer to my prayers. I am grateful to have found it because it has given me such relief over the past few weeks. Whenever I get anxious or feel down during the day, I turn to this retreat and pray, read the sharing or read the prayers and literature and feel so much at peace. Thank you for being here. -- Kate I am caught up in the world and am afraid to take out time for this retreat. I think that means intellectually I suspect God exists but that does not seem relevant to me. Although extremely successful I can't really say I am ecstatically happy. A friend many years ago told me how powerful the actual one week retreat was. After the first week of this retreat, I see that from early on in my life I didn't feel accepted and right now I can't see how God was looking out for me in my life. -- Ed I am very optimistic about what I will learn from this retreat. I am enjoying the pro-life verses and prayers in this first week. The love that the Lord has always had for me and will always have for me is something that gets me through the ups and downs of my life. God's special love is also something that I hope I can show to my own children Week 1: This is hard in many ways. I'm trying this again for the second time. I was able to do parts of it the first time through. Inventorying one's life is a challenge. It's a challenge to strike the balance between not feeling sorry for one's self but still trying to allow the real emotions to come to the surface. God's love is a wonderful thing but difficult to comprehend in other ways. -- Patrick I really just got started on this today, Wednesday. I am a recovering alcoholic, and this is very similar to what I have done and continue to do in order to continue in recovery. I read the prayers and the writings, and find that I am not unique in how my life was. There indeed was shouting and arguing when I was growing up. And in my early adult life, I did make poor choices, and put God on a shelf. It was only in recovery that I learned to reconnect with Him. However, I know that I need more, and I see that that can happen in this "retreat." I have attempted the retreat about five years ago and just got plain lazy and stopped. Sometilmes in life as time goes by, one gets the feeling that this is the time to do what needs to be done. I feel that this is such a time. I do pray for perseverance and trust that I can trust the Lord at work in my life. I am going through a rough time and feel that I need an anchor that I can't find in everyday life. I find it difficult to share so this is a challenge. I do feel it is important for me to let others know what is going on. So, as the retreat continues I pray and ask for others to pray with me that I have the courage to share. I pray for all who are on the retreat. I know the journey is worth it. May God help me see the importance of lving the journey and not worry where it ends. Wow! What a way to start a Monday morning! I just pondered over "The Courage To Accept Acceptance". I was so touched by it that I read it twice, wrote in my journel using it, and printed a portion of it to share with friends and family. -- Sonia I am beginning this retreat -- again. Today seemed different from other times because I focused on myself as a little boy at a specific time in my life. I must have been about three, and I was playing on the floor of my grandmother's kitchen while she cooked. I had made a corral of kitchen chairs, and I was a cow that broke through the fence and asked for my grandmother to see that I got back in the pasture. It is a very clear memory; I was the focus of her attention or at least I expected to be. So today I thought often how that little boy might react to the occurrences of my life now. Today for much of the day I was three again; things were simple, and everything seemed really uncomplicated. I remember being held by my grandmother who was amply built and very very soft. I hope God is like that, and that I am held in the arms of a very very soft Creator. What a wonderful thought! Sometimes I still get out of the pasture, and I beg to be put back in. Peace I read about this retreat in the Catholic Voice yesterday- I was intrigued and curious. It has been years since I read the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. I am starting a new life journey-after several years of having my mother live in assisted living –we have moved her in with us. She is 82 years old and she stopped participating in activities and going down for meals and has been hospitalized twice in the last 6 months. I feel that this retreat will help me in this journey. I also read the sharing of week 1 and readily identified with NB from the Netherlands. My parents are also survivors of WWII and my mother never seemed to have a lot of time for me emotionally. Like NB there was a lot of emotional neglect and physical abandonment. However, I am called to be present and caregiving for my mother more and more over the past 16 years. I feel blessed that I can take this duty on but I cannot do it alone- I hope I perservere with this endeavor.God Bless you. -- A.P. I hope to complete this retreat in synch with the liturgical year, but I knew I needed to give myself extra time for the beginning. I've tried Week 1 before but found it too difficult to visualize images and so given up. This time, by God's grace and by allowing myself a few weeks for starts and stops, I've managed to keep going despite desolations and loneliness . Also, supplementing the site's materials with personal snapshots and other outside objects helped me finally progress through Week 1. The greatest gift in this world that we have been given may be our whole selves. Usually a lot of us don't appreciate parts of ourselves, or don't give ourselves as much credit as we would give to a friend in a similar situation. We know ourselves "too well", we think. But, God knows us better. God gave us our whole selves, as part of His gift of Himself. This is the first week of the retreat, and I hope I will perservere. The last time I started to make a retreat like this, I became overwhelmed. I saw my failings and missteps, my weaknesses and what I thought was bad luck, and I began to despair. This time I am different, because I know I am blessed in my weaknesses. I am loved anyway. We all are loved anyway. Let us perservere together in this journey. I was turned off the Catholic Church by my upbringing where I felt forced into attending church and in following the sacraments. I still see lots of superstitions in my mother’s faith, which I react against. Also I can now see how it has helped her over the difficult times, which my family has experienced. I focused a lot on the negative aspects of the church and considered myself a lapsed Catholic. I was really turned off religion and disliked the religious sessions in the sixth form college I attended. In retrospect, that was my main outlet for expressing my feelings of isolation within the college. Over the years I’ve become more interested in spirituality and have done a lot of voluntary work on behalf of a charity which was initially established by Quakers and which still has a lot of Quaker involvement. I’ve also developed an interest in Yoga and have studied the philosophy behind Yoga alongside my practice. I love it when I find common spiritual ground between Yoga and the messages and reading material placed on the retreat site e.g. “creating a union with God”, “returning to God”. I believe that God is one and is accessible through a variety of paths. I’d like to thank you for creating this retreat and for all those who’ve shared their experiences on the site. I hope it continues to nourish you along the way. At the end of week 1 of the retreat, I look back on a week that has slowly begun to change my perspective and feelings about my lifestory. I cried tears of relief when I read the article "the courage to accept acceptance". It seemed written for me and about me. Both my parents
suffered grievously during WW 2 and as a result of their traumatic
experience, they were often unable to be caring parents. The next image
is of myself sitting in that sandbox, all alone. I needed to go to
the bathroom and was getting very worried about my mother. "A
little while" seemed a very long time to me. Perhaps she had
forgotten me. Worry became panic. I got out of the sandbox and ran
to where I thought the new house was. But I lost the way. Then my
mother found me. Many more incidents similar to this one happened where I felt abandonned and hurt. When my teenage years came, things went seriously wrong for me. I can almost literally copy the tagline of the film about Christiane F.; At 12 it was cannabis, at 13 it was LSD and amphetamines, then she ran away from home. At 15, I kicked the habit. It was mostly because my family began to take notice of me and expressed their concern. That was all I ever wanted. For the next
34 years I struggled to repair the devastation of my youth. This week I realized that God was this "precious secret". The greatest grace I felt I received is when I suddenly realized that nothing bad happened to that 3 year old in the sandbox all alone. It easily could have, but it didn't. Even when I didn't then, I feel now that God was watching over me and protecting me. Knowing that I wasn't alone enabled me to truely forgive my mother and gave me a feeling of peace. When I began this retreat, I was somewhat reluctant to review my lifestory (been there, done that). But now that I found this treasure which healed a deep wound inside me, I am eager to dig up more treasures. Thank you all who contributed to this retreat. M.B., Netherland I have just completed Week 1 of the Retreat and am filled with enthusiasm. Many of my memories from my childhood and young adulthood which emerged were painful but I also experienced much joy in remembering the good times too. In all, I could see that God was there gently guiding me and supporting me. I have come to realise that this God of great love has never abandoned me and has on so many occasions sent people into my life in most unexpected ways who have loved me and cared for me when I needed it the most. My prayer life has focused so much more highly in my daily living than ever before because, thanks to this on-line retreat, I now have direction. Thank you for this wonderful opportunity. I just wanted to say a BIG thank you for the opportunity to do this retreat. I've been thinking of doing a retreat for some time now, and to be able to do one that is online and one that is so flexible is just fantastic. I've only just started on Week One and to be honest some of the reflection is upsetting, but with perseverance hopefully I'll get through the other side feeling closer to our God. I'm already looking forward to the weeks ahead! -- Becky I do believe that God calls to me when I am ready for the next step. I get little bits of information and little inklings of how to stretch and take action when I am at my most stagnent point. Here I go once again, God prods and I reluctantly respond. Thank you for enticing me to movement. Please help me to be honest in my efforts and grateful for the experience. I know that I will feel more fully connected. Thank you to Creighton U. for giving me this opportunity... thank you to the Paulist Center in Boston for sharing the information that you exist. -- Kathy A few years ago I 'stumbled' across this Retreat. What a blessing! So many 'awakenings' and gifts. At that time it was possible to do the Retreat in an assigned group, on-line. That was special. Four other ladies and I prayed, and shared the 34-weeks together. Three of us are still in touch several times a year. Our friendship . . . a gift from the Lord. That year of Retreat helped so much in understanding spiritual awareness and desire. One key blessing: just remembering to focus daily on the love of God, and daily to offer with thanksgiving, my days to him as I get out of bed each morning. "All that I am, all that I do, all that I say . . . I give to You." That daily commitment has helped me stay focused. The other big reminder . . ."Grace". It's all Grace! No one had expressed it quite like that to me before. Imagine, living all these years and never really zeroing in on the magnitude of that word! God's gift! During the Retreat I came to recognize and cherish Grace. The depth and scope of that word, and His love. . . . 'Grace!' "Yes, it is all Grace! And I thank You, Lord!" It's been six or seven years and now I'm beginning this Retreat again. I'm in my seventies, and I'm still being formed. How exciting and wonderful is that! Awesome God! Today is the beginning of the third week. Genesis 1:1 "Thank You, Father!" "Thank you!" too . . . to all who have made this Retreat possible.. In my busy life, I am so grateful to take this time each day to reflect on God's acceptance. When I think of my childhood, I think of a troubled family. I think of a father who had a violent temper and who took out his own frustrations as a provider for a large family on his wife and children. Fear, then, is an emotion that wells up when I think of my past. As a young girl, I remember promising my mother that one day I would take care of her. I, like a child in an alcoholic family, took the position of a parent taking care of a child. Guilt, too, is a very real feeling as I look back on the things I did to try to survive. The happy times I remember were times spent with other families -my refuge in trying to escape the problems in my own family. When I first read the topic for the first week --remembering our childhoods, I was very tempted just to skip over the first week, but if I shut it out, I would then not realize that God was always with me. And even though I didn't know it then, my responsibility as an adult is to accept this acceptance of God and realize that all of my life I've only accepted the love of God when things were going well. I need to acknowledge that God has been with me in the worst of times as well.God is and was always with me. Yes, he loves me as I was then and as I am now.
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