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.