A Month in the Desert

I'm on my way to spend a month in a monastery and I can hardly wait. This is despite the fact that I tried it before some years ago and didn't exactly thrive. Back then I went to a monastery near Charleston to experience the Liturgy of the Hours on a four day self directed retreat. It was hard to be alone and silent all day, and I found myself repeatedly in the gift shop, looking for a little small talk and some welcomed diversion. This time I'm heading out to Our Lady of Guadalupe Benedictine Monastery for their 50th School for Spiritual Direction. In the tiny town of Pecos, New Mexico situated at 7,000 feet lies a community of monks, sisters, and lay people who will welcome seventeen students from around the world to come and form a community focused on discerning the movement of the Holy Spirit in everyday life.

Now I'm always up for a good adventure. As a woman in midlife (if I live to 96!), a wife and a mother to two teenaged kids, I'm not exactly footloose and fancy-free. But I've done a few things that have whet my appetite for adventure and am open to things that sound challenging and interesting. I've lived in a town of less than 4,000 people and a city of more 18,000,000. I met the man I would marry in the Big Apple only to discover that our parents were raised just three miles from each other in the suburbs of Detroit. In recent years I've taught in steel mills and baby food factories, been whipped by the wind on a hill in Stonehenge with a group of middle schoolers, chewed spearmint lifesavers in a dark cave with the girl scouts, had the wits scared out of me on a mountaineering trip to Oregon with Outward Bound, and had my foibles and misadventures related in weekly newspaper articles as I prepared for my first adventure race with a group of 40-something men at a local lake.

About this time last year I accompanied my neighbors on a trip to their former homeland of Vietnam to help celebrate the marriages of their sons. It was the opportunity of a lifetime and an experience that helped me to see once again how connected we are to each other, no matter how different the languages, political systems, and cultures in which we live. As I traveled through the towns and wrote back home to family and friends describing the events and people, I discovered that I loved relating my experiences as they were happening and hearing people's impressions and responses as I went along.

In the same spirit of curiosity, receptivity, and zest for adventure I am planning to set out once again, this time on a spiritual adventure in a monastic setting. As great a leap of faith as this seems, perhaps the bigger risk is in promising to blog about my experiences (especially since I'm not entirely sure what blogging is :-))  I have no idea what is in store on this trip, just the confidence in the two women who approached me separately last year and asked if I had ever considered becoming a Spiritual Director or Companion...one who would accompany others in the spiritual life. As I discerned this call and applied at a school being formed by a nun in the next town over, my friends each asked if I would consider their schools..and it happened that they were the very same one all the way out in New Mexico. I immediately was intrigued by the idea but thought it impossible to leave my family for a month. So I asked God in prayer for signs that this invitation might be from Him. After two very unlikely things came to pass, I got the nod from my husband and kids. They were all for my going, especially if it meant leaving them behind to the comforts of sleeping in and relaxing at home!

And so I'm setting out this Sunday for the great unknown with an attitude of faith and trust. I hope to find cell phone coverage and upload my impressions via my new Ipad (yet another hurdle to overcome!) Won't you join me in spirit and take part in the interesting conversation that's bound to ensue?