Imbolc Waxing Wild Moon
The next 3 days + I will be on retreat at Blue Cloud Abbey in Marvin, South Dakota. The annual gathering of the Woolly Herd finds in eastern South Dakota at a Benedectine Abbey. As usual, what the retreat will be like hides behind the curtain of our relationships.
My part will consist in a reprise of the 25 random things about me exercise for everyone and discussion of an article on solitude in the cyber age (the Deresiewicz piece I mentioned here) and an Economist article, The Frat Boy Goes Home, about the departure of GW.
On a personal note I plan to focus on my non-existent meditative and contemplative life. Both meditation and contemplation have been, at various times, part of my spiritual practice, but have fallen away in the last few years, fallen away it seems in favor of a more tactile devotional form: gardening. I also have to consider, however, the Deresiewicz possibility, which is that my life has flattened out as I have gone more cyber, that I have pulled my root system up to a different layer of the soil.
What I do know for sure is that I want some more contemplation and meditation in my life. This retreat is an opportunity to get going again.