Retreat Narratives

In late 1995, with the advice of a friend, I arranged for a retreat
with Sr. Cornelia Gust, a Benedictine Sister in Crookston MN. That
first retreat came in January of 1996, a partial week set up to
test the model. In response, I created a narrative tracing my way
through the retreat, adding a selection of verse centered on the
surroundings. I decided to repeat the experiment in the Summer
of 1996, again in the Spring and then the Fall of 1997. In each
case, I gathered the experience in what I called a Narrative along
with a series of poems that responded to the overall experience.
Together, I found them satisfying and worthwhile. About 30 years
later, I reviewed those narratives and the poems and decided to
put them together into this review. It happened that I moved in
1998 and tried another retreat in another venue and discovered
the experience not nearly as helpful. I offer these four narratives
and the associated verse as a testimony to what proved to be
a very helpful integration of the spiritual life that I had been
experiencing into a more recognized presence of mind and heart.
I hope that the sum of those four retreats so long ago allows my
readers to enter the dialogue inherent in the retreat experience.
Sr. Cornelia and most of the sisters with whom I spent those weeks
have died long since; these narratives give witness to the wealth
they provided me.