This Grotto

One takeaway from my retreat weekend is this: write more. Here's what this looks like for me. 1. As soon as this decision is made, stop writing completely. 2. Tell someone you're going to write more. 3. Think about writing a lot. 4. Tell someone else you're going to start writing more. 5. Google: "How to write" 6. Find several promising articles about writing, leave them open for days, but do not read them. 7. Decide a dedicated writing space is needed, think about that for a while. 8. Drag a wambly old desk out of the garage, wipe the dust off it, and put it in the dedicated space. 9. Drag out an old laptop and breathe life into it. It's too slow to actually erase programs from — if you waited to clean it up, you'd never get any writing done. 10. Write a dumb listicle about not writing, and go sit on the couch.

There is nowhere to kneel here, no kneelers at all, not even in the chapel. It's because this is a nursing home, for nuns. I joke about how I love coming to Mass here because it all happens from a seated position. Not everyone can stand, so no one does, until it's time for communion (and then, those of us who can, approach the altar, and communion is brought to the seats of those who can't). I've been reading about grace and how God loves the worst of us, and raging about how ridiculous the other retreatants are, walking slowly and dreamily as if to dedicate how very at prayer they are, how silly the woman who pulled her chair up to gaze at the nativity scene, filled with impossibly white holy family members and wrong-sized animals, and that breather. I ventured out of my room to the community room with my book about the unlovable whom God loves so much, found a cozy chair by the window, and settled in. Eventually The Breather came in, crossing the great room breathing

My spiritual director is here, on this retreat. Well, she's here, but not on my retreat- she's leading a group of women through a silent/directed retreat, women who are preparing to become spiritual directors. I'm on my own, not meeting with a director, despite the fact that mine is here, 4 doors down. As I was leaving Mass just now I wondered if she'd speak to me, ask me how my weekend is going; the chapel is the loophole for the silence, where you can be forgiven for greeting each other. I thought, if she asks me how my retreat is going, I'll say "it's going great, I'm making a mess of it." I've been reading a lot about grace- many of my books, as it turns out, are from protestant authors, leaning I think toward Lutherans- go figure. Anyway, they have all been, so far, about how God loves the ragamuffin, the tattooed, the addict, and does not need us to be perfect in order to be in God's presence. Man, I love that shit.  I read about t

I remember hearing a story on the radio about a guy who I think was named "Dr. Nick." He had become a para- or quadriplegic in his youth, I think, after diving into a swimming pool. His life was a series of survivals, because para- or quadriplegia isn't just a thing that happens and then you're done. There are complications, and you're susceptible to issues that come from not being able to use your body the way it's designed to be used. Think, on a very small scale, of bedsores that develop when a person lies in bed for too long. Anyway. The interviewer asked him if he was ever angry at his body, and his answer has not left me: he said he was so thankful to his body for hanging in with him all this time, despite his reckless treatment of it in his youth, and despite what it had had to endure since the accident. Makes me think of God, and all of us who have turned our back on God in anger. But God... God has hung in there with us. Even if, like a paralyzed p

In grad school, one of our professors (okay, many, or at least... several did). He said "God is love." I mean, I had heard this before. But, he went on to say that God isn't the bringer of love, or the result of love, not the giver of love, or the sharer of love... God, he said, blowing my mind, IS love. He said, imagine you are here, and your friend is in front of you. Imagine you love each other. God isn't behind you both, looking in at the center. The love you share doesn't conjure God, or reveal God. The love between you IS God. I realized that this phrase, so hackneyed and trite, was really revolutionary. Life-shattering. Life-changing. God IS the love between me and... whoever. This... has implications . If God is love, like... IS LOVE, then, whenever I am sharing love, I am sharing God, God's-self. When I am showing love, giving love, revealing love, I am sharing/showing/giving/revealing God. When I am loving, I am God-ing. I don't mean I am be

I am on retreat. I've settled into my room; toiletries in the bathroom, books stacked on the windowsill, I've turned the ugly (but comfy) la-z-boy chair toward the window and watched the sky darken- it's 4:45 and everything's in place. I ate big before getting here, and have given myself the gift of skipping dinner and prayer with the other retreatants who are here, although I feel a tiny twinge of guilt about that. The retreat center has been renovated and there are private bathrooms in each room, so I barely need to see anyone at all this weekend, if I don't want to (and I don't!). I'm plotting going out to fill my water bottle in the social room while prayer is going on. I called Dad this afternoon to tell him I was going away for the weekend, and he said "so, three days and you're not allowed to talk?" I told him "it's more like, three days and I'm allowed not to talk." I told him how much I love to go to meals and not b