A few words from the Ranch

This experience is winding down, but at the same time getting richer and richer, as the community forms and the participants are no longer an amorphous group of people, but have become specific and precious individuals with whom I feel so fortunate to share this time.

After the morning presentation on various aspects of the Benedictine life (today it was Lectio Divina and balance), given by Sr. Donald, we have a short time for group discussion. During the break, we usually fit in a few private conversations. One priest participant and I discovered that we had both visited Pune, India, and compared notes of our experiences. After the usual observations about the poverty, filth and such, he thought for a while and said that after having been in India, he lost his taste for green tea. Don't you love that? I never in a million years would have expected him to say that. Some people talk about having their spiritual life opened up, or shaken, or deepened, but for him, who seems so at ease and grounded in his faith, it was green tea and he is now back to coffee. There has to be some profound spiritual insight in that. This is also the guy who today was wearing a tee shirt that had written on it in big letters, "Does "anal retentive" have a hyphen?"

This evening, I had conversation with a librarian who told me about her recent conversion experience. A nominal Episcopalian for many years, she had a series of encounters with the Divine that have brought her to an incredibly close and intimate relationship with God--a direct, clear call to her vocation. Hearing stories of such personal, and totally compelling events, is such a blessing, so I am grateful that we are not held to complete silence this week.

If we were held to complete silence, and some serious person were enforcing it, I would probably be in trouble, as after dinner tonight I couldn't help myself when it came to helping Josh take a picture of three participants in the dining room. I am afraid that I got a little bossy (very unlike me) and just grabbed his camera and started giving directions. But the picture is going to be good, and Josh even got to be in it.