REFLECTIONS ON ‘RETREAT IN DAILY LIFE’

Date July 2006

I would like to share with you my experiences when I attended the week-long ‘Retreat in Daily Life’ given by the l’Arche Community recently.

I was a bit anxious when I signed up for the Retreat, but this was quickly alleviated when I attended the opening service held at l’Arche on the Sunday evening.

We were pre-assigned in five small groups where me met our carefully chosen prayer guide, with whom we met individually for a half hour each day at a time convenient to both of us. I was asked to set aside some time each day for a time of reflection and each day my prayer guide gave me some wonderful suggestions how to bring God more into my life, and they really worked. I have always wanted to really feel God’s presence and through reading and thinking about a passage in the bible I felt the most exciting experience of how God is with us all the time.

The retreat ended on Saturday mid-morning with a service of thanksgiving for such a wonderful experience, followed by a group lunch in the garden. It was all so well organised, with such wonderful prayer guides coming from outside the community, with an overall supervisor.

Quietly, I am a very spiritual person, but this was the most marvellous retreat I have ever experienced and it was God who led me to it. As you may know, I am a Lay Minister of Communion and it is such a privilege to be able to bring the presence of God through Holy Communion to those who through a disability are unable to attend their own church.

The theme of the retreat was ‘The Potter’ and I would like to leave you with the words of this song so relevant to me.

Lois Brown