How was the retreat?
How was the retreat?
Dromantine in summer bloom was captivatingly beautiful. I couldn’t stop walking the miles of woodland pathways and lanes around and about the central lake with its swans. We retreatants were housed in the newer wings off to the right of the historic mansion. The resident community seemed to live in this very stately home; but we wandered through it at will, losing ourselves regularly on our way to the big chapel at the far end, where we had midday Mass everyday. There is a truly hospitable welcome and another-worldly graciousness about the lofty rooms full of foreign artifacts from all the SMA mission countries.
We had lectures each day on one or other mystic; beginning with Teilhard de Chardin and followed by Dietrich Bonheoffer. The grandeur of the vision of both was matched by the incredible sadness surrounding the deaths of each. Then followed talks on Adrienne Von Speyr whom I confess, I found a little unconvincing. However, not so Dorothy Day and her lifelong passion for justice for the poor. Her personal life held sorrow, loss and disappointment but the vision displayed by her long years of struggle remains luminous still even apart from the Catholic Worker movement which she initiated.
Finally two more men featured, both impressive in their achievements and spiritual legacy; Jean Vanier and Pedro Arrupe SJ. Thus ended our brush with all these holy people who seemed to have become friends, through their human frailties as well as their great gifts.
On my first evening my feathers were ruffled by a small poster in Reception promoting the permanent diaconate –for men only of course. So quietly I took down this troublesome reminder of my exclusion, telling myself that it would surely also offend my 70 women companions on the retreat. I did not go so far as to destroy it but instead, concealed in under a green tablecloth nearby. Subsequently I tried to own up, but no-one seemed to have missed it. So I contented myself by confessing in my evaluation form. Dromantine seems and place of easy forgiveness and I would like to go back there again. By the way we forgot to check at the Border, on our return journey for any abandoned baggage (See last Blog)
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