Springtime – Dawn – Morning

Theme: Delivered to Life

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1. Introduction: Spring – Morning

Please click the arrowhead in the center of the video to hear the Introduction

2. A Spring Time Story

Spend a little time now reflecting on,
or re-listening to the story.
Does it awaken any spiritual thought
or prayer in your heart?

3. Sister Kate on Springtime and Dawn

4. Praying with Scripture

For our scripture reading this session, we return to John 10 and the familiar story of the Woman at the Well. The story is fill with symbols of new life – the well and its cool water; the request for a refreshing drink; the sharing of life stories; the telling of truth, and the gift of forgiveness.

In this passage, we see the many moods of Jesus: he is at times in the story needy, a bit sarcastic, feisty, wise, and gentle. Engaging the woman through these many moods, he brings her to new life.

How is God bringing the spring time of new life to our spirits?

5. Reflection Nuggets: Dawn – Spring

6. Poetry:

Hope – Lisel Mueller
It hovers in dark corners
before the lights are turned on,
it shakes sleep from its eyes
and drops from mushroom gills,
it explodes in the starry heads
of dandelions turned sages,
it sticks to the wings of green angels
that sail from the tops of maples.
It sprouts in each occluded eye
of the many-eyed potato,
it lives in each earthworm segmentsurviving cruelty,
it is the motion that runs
from the eyes to the tail of a dog,
it is the mouth that inflates the lungs
of the child that has just been born.
It is the singular gift
we cannot destroy in ourselves,
the argument that refutes death,
the genius that invents the future,
all we know of God.
It is the serum which makes us swear
not to betray one another;
it is in this poem, trying to speak.

Spring – Mary Oliver

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.

There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her 
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against 
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming 
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her –
her white teeth,
her wordlessness, 
her perfect love.

Closing Music: Thank God for the Promise of Spring

Can’t beat a little “country” to put the final ribbon on our retreat! 🙂

Thank God for the Promise of Spring
The sky seems gray above me
And I can’t see the light of day
There’s a ray breaking through the shadows
And the smile can’t be far away
Thank God for the promise of springtime
Once again my heart will sing
There’s a brand new day a-dawning
Thank God for the promise of spring
Though the earth looks bleak and barren
And the seeds lay brown and dead
But the promise of life grows within them
And I know spring is just ahead
Thank God for the promise of springtime
Once again my heart will sing
There’s a brand new day a-dawning
Thank God for the promise of spring
Thank God for the promise of spring

Virtue/Gift to pray for: Joy

Dear God,
We pray for the gift of joy
in the promise of ever-renewing grace.  
Refresh our spirits with your warm gifts
of peace, hope, enthusiasm, and delight.
Give us springtime hearts.
No matter the season,
may our souls be rooted in Easter,
blossoming with love for You
and for all Creation.
We ask this in Mercy. Amen.

Winter Time – Night

Theme: Union with God

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1. Introduction: Winter – Night

Please click the arrowhead in the center of the video to hear the Introduction.

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2. A Winter Story

Spend a little time now reflecting on,
or re-listening to the story.
Does it awaken any spiritual thought
or prayer in your heart?

3. Sister Kate’s Thoughts on Night and Winter

4. Praying with Scripture

In our Gospel passage today, we join Jesus at the Temple in Jerusalem.  It is winter, and he is “walking about” in the open area.  Perhaps there is a small fire where he and others might warm themselves. What’s on Jesus’s mind as he paces this sacred ground? 

We know , from reading the Gospels, that it is also the “winter” of his life, the time when the Father is gathering all to completion. 

In this reading, we see that some hearts remain cold to his life-giving Word. It is painful for Jesus to realize this. But despite this heartache, remains ever confident in the Father’s love.

For this session, focus on John 10:22-30 – The Feast of the Dedication

Take some quiet time to reflect on this passage.
Allow yourself to be in the scene beside Jesus.

5. Reflection Nuggets: Winter – Night

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6. Poetry

Please enjoy these beautiful poems evoking the sentiments of winter, stillness, patience, deepening. You may want listen to this lovely music as you read the poems.

These Things – Renee Yann, RSM
You must tell yourself
these things will happen
before they happen:
the deep winter you will spend,
essentially, alone:
The falling into love
that will not catch you;
the death that rends you
into half of what you were:
the triumph, finally claimed,
bereft of meaning.
 
Otherwise,
when these things happen,
as they will,
you will be swallowed by them
as if you had not ever been
outside these things,
the way an ocean swallows
hail inside the storm.
 
You will be nearly cleaved:  
a raw, green peach 
whose freestone falls away in frost,
because these things are separating,
colder than the loneliness
of ice blue space,
and you are farther from yourself
within them than it is safe to ever be.
 
There is no climbing back
from these things.
You will bring their distance with you.
In the thinnest, splintered space
that separates the stone from peach flesh,
cold universes can insert themselves.
  
Instead, enter these things,
down the long cold slope inside them.
Inside even inverse passion,
there is cobalt fire,
though it masquerades in ice.
~ Renee Yann, RSM
 
Winter: Tonight: Sunset – David Budbill
Tonight at sunset walking on the snowy road,
my shoes crunching on the frozen gravel, first
 
through the woods, then out into the open fields
past a couple of trailers and some pickup trucks, I stop
 
and look at the sky. Suddenly: orange, red, pink, blue,
green, purple, yellow, gray, all at once and everywhere.

Closing Music: Seasons by Ben Tan

Virtue/Gift to pray for: Fidelity

Dear God,

We pray for the gift of fidelity. 
 Let us bravely live our winter times.
Give us a great trust in your Presence,
even in the dark moments of our lives.
Beyond that, let us find the soul-secrets
only darkness can reveal
– that You are ever faithful to us,
that in sorrow, loss and seeming emptiness,
still You and I are one.
We ask this in Mercy. Amen