https://www.quakerranter.org A Weekly Newsletter and Blog from Martin Kelley Mon, 20 Feb 2012 03:36:18 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 https://i0.wp.com/www.quakerranter.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/cropped-qr-512.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 https://www.quakerranter.org 32 32 16720591 https://www.quakerranter.org/call_off_the_search_parties/ https://www.quakerranter.org/call_off_the_search_parties/#comments Sat, 10 Mar 2007 20:46:51 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=251 The retreat at the Carmelite Monastery was nice. Here’s some pictures, the first of those “long-remembered”:/if_i_dont_make_it_back.php tall stone walls and the rest of the beautiful chapel:

It was a silent retreat–for us at least. There were three talks about “Teresa of Avila”:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Teresa_of_Avila given by Father Tim Byerley, who also works with the “Collegium Center”:http://www.collegiumcenter.org/about.php, a kind of religious education outreach project for young adult Catholics in South Jersey (I mentioned it “a few months ago”:https://www.quakerranter.org/teaching_quakerism_again.php as a model of young adult youth outreach that Friends might want to consider). Much of what Teresa has to say about prayer is universal and very applicable to Friends, though I have to admit I started spacing out by around the fourth mansion of the “Interior Castle”:http://www.ccel.org/ccel/teresa/castle2.toc.html (I’ve never been good with numbered religious steps!).
I’m in no danger of following my wife Julie’s journey from Friends to Catholicism, though as always I very much enjoyed being in the midst of a gathered group committed to a spirituality. The idea of religious life as self-abnegation is an important one for all Christians in an age where “me-ism”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ScWdek6_Ids&eurl has become the “secular state religion”:http://www.walmart.com/ and I hope to return to it in the near future.

]]> https://www.quakerranter.org/call_off_the_search_parties/feed/ 14023 251 https://www.quakerranter.org/if_i_dont_make_it_back/ https://www.quakerranter.org/if_i_dont_make_it_back/#comments Fri, 09 Mar 2007 19:31:21 +0000 http://www.quakerranter.org/?p=250 Tomorrow Julie and I are going on an all-day Lenten retreat at a Carmelite Monastery on Old York Road in Philadelphia. She’s given me creedal cheat sheets in case I feel led to read along, as I have to fake it on anything past the The Lord’s Prayer.
The monastery has forty-foot tall stone walls all around and is located a few blocks from where I grew up (picture courtesy the “monastery’s organist’s webpage”:http://home.att.net/~lucycarroll/page5.html) and it was a place of some intrigue. Whenever we would drive by I’d press my face against the car windows thinking maybe I’d catch a glimpse of a nun swinging herself over the wall in an escape attempt. Needless to say I wasn’t brought up Catholic or even Catholic-friendly and so didn’t realize how ridiculous this imagining of mine was. Still, I’ve probably never passed the monastery as an adult without taking a quick peek at those walls. In twelve hours I enter them myself!
Julie’s gone on the retreat a number of times (it’s usually women-only) and has always been released to my connubial arms at end’s day. Still, just in case something happens, y’all know where to look! The kids are going to be with Julie’s sister and their cousin and should have a good time.

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