Sacred Pauses: Learning to Live Mindfully

The Companions for the Silent Journey group is pleased to announce our Sacred Pauses Retreat with internationally known author, speaker and retreat director Macrina Wiederkehr, OSB, at the St. Francis Retreat Center in Colorado Springs October 22-24, 2010.

The retreat will be based on Wiederkehr’s book Seven Sacred Pauses. Sister Macrina will explain the monastic practice of “Keeping of the Hours.” Participants will learn how to deepen their spiritual walk and their awareness of God’s presence throughout the day. We are excited to help Sister Macrina make this valuable, time-honored (and time-honoring) spiritual practice available and useful to the layperson.

Macrina is a Benedictine of St. Scholastica Monastery in Ft. Smith, Arkansas. She is a prolific writer, having authored seven books that draw from her deep roots in the monastic tradition and contemplative living, as well as from her great love of poetry and reading. Macrina lists James Finley, Eckhart Tolle and Laurens van der Post among her favorite authors. This love of books is strongly evident in her writing; her flair for beautiful turns of phrase and thoughtful reflections on God, the Bible, and the natural world make her own prose and poetry a delight to read and ponder.

Although this will not be a completely silent retreat, participants can expect  significant periods of silence in which to practice mindfulness specific to certain hours of the day. The retreat will include one silent meal.

"There is a depth in everyone that they have not yet discovered," Macrina says. The retreat is an opportunity to discover or more fully explore that depth, "a chance to become aware (or more aware) of the constant call to be transformed. The Hours are a tool we can use to stand before," similar to the Stations of the Cross, "to learn from these sacred pauses the way of transformation throughout each day."

The practice of Keeping of the Hours as taught by Macrina will emphasize the spirit of this beautiful and deeply mystical tradition, but will not follow the actual liturgy of the hours, since for the average layperson, the times we live in are not always conducive to a strict liturgical keeping of the hours.

The retreat schedule will be as follows: Friday night session, Saturday morning session, Saturday afternoon session, Saturday evening session, Sunday morning session, with times for silent worship, meditation and centering prayer between sessions and perhaps a silent shared meal or two. The session titles will relate to specific times of the day and spiritual themes related to each time.

“I was taken by surprise at the beauty of the hours and the immeasurable wisdom of moving to the natural rhythm of the days and nights. The daily and nightly dance of the hours is a universal way of honoring the earth’s turning as well as the sacred mysteries that flow out of our Christian heritage.” —     Macrina Wiederkehr, Seven Sacred Pauses, copyright 2008, Sorin Books