Last night Tom and I left our home to go on a silent contemplative retreat at the Franciscan Renewal Center.  I was very excited to be able to go and focus on God instead of all the hustle and bustle of what reality offers.

We checked in at 5:30 p.m. and received a white envelope with our name tags in it.  A hospitality hostess showed us where everything was.  We proceeded to the social area to meet our fellow retreatants.  It was a very nice gathering of people from different parts of the country.  There were allot of fellow Franciscans too.

We went into dinner at about 6:00 p.m.  I was so nervous that I barely ate.  There was a Religious Concert honoring St. Francis in the Chapel at 7:00 p.m.  It was very beautiful and emotional.

At 8:45 p.m. we all adjourned to a conference room for our first session.  It started out very peaceful and definitely quiet.  I thought that this was going to be a wonderful experience.  Boy, did I guess wrong.  The evening was silent.  That was not a problem for me because I have done contemplative or center prayer for a while now.  I was used to being silent during the day.  My problem was that the chairs in the room were very uncomfortable and my feet could not touch the floor.  I have trouble with swelling in my feet, ankles and legs.  So a twenty minute session of prayer really does my legs in.  After about ten minutes, I had to get up and leave the room, right in the middle of the session.  I am sure that my leaving and the door squeaking disturbed all the other people in the room.  I went outside and sat on a small concrete wall and prayed.

The other thing that bothered me was that I am a very social creature.  Having all of these people around me and not being able to talk to them was disturbing to me.  Also, when my legs started acting up, I couldn't even tell my Tom, who was sitting right next to me, what the problem was.  I also felt like I had died, because I was around all of these people and I couldn't talk to any of them.  It was a very lonely feeling!

Today, we have to be silent all day long.

My comment is, Good Luck, JoAnne!

More to come..........