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| 1680 - 373rd Avenue NE, Stanchfield, MN 55080
| 763-689-3540 (located 8 miles northwest of Cambridge, MN) |
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October 2004 Newsletter TABLE OF CONTENTS: Retreats at
ARC October 2004 VOL. XXIIll NO. 4 ARC Retreats... Time Apart, Rest, and Spiritual Renewal Centering Our Lives Through Prayer How do we begin the way to deep peace and interior silence in our lives? Join us for an exploration of centering prayer, as well as an experience of several basic practices in meditation. Led by Michelle Hargrave, Pastor Hope United Methodist Church, Duluth Being Mindful in a Noisy World Is there time for contemplative spiritual practices in a life fully engaged in the demands of our world? We will explore this question through two modern-day peace activists. Our resources will be The Miracle of Mindfulness by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, and Noisy Contemplation by Bill Callahan, Roman Catholic co-founder of the Quixote Center. Read them ahead of time, or pick them up in the ARC booknook. Led by Dave Tidball ARC Community Member Bringing Spirituality Down to Earth The contemplative tradition speaks of seeing "all things in God" and "God in all things." In a time of ecological sensitivity, when we seek to recover a "sense of place" in our world, how do we learn to see "all things in nature in God" and "God in nature in all things"? The retreat will be resourced by the writings of Sallie McFague, Annie Dillard, Teilhard de Chardin, Mary Oliver and Tim Winton. Led by Nancy Victorin-Vangerud, previous ARC Director Bethlehem, House of Bread: Waiting in Hope and
Expectation How do we learn to wait in hope and expectation this Advent? How can we learn to journey in our hearts to Bethlehem, the 'House of Bread'? Join us for candellight, simple meals, periods of silence, centering prayer and baking an Italian holiday fruit-bread, panettone. Bring an apron, kerchief, 2 lb coffee can, and mixing bowl with cover. Led by Jerome Belanger, ARC Bread Baker, and Nancy Victorin-Vangerud, previous ARC Director New Year's Retreat: Small Circles of Light Led by the ARC Community ARC Retreats in 2005! Meditation and the Twelve Steps If you meditate, every session is practice. If you choose abstinence in a 12-step program, every day is practice. Twelve-step programs have used spiritually-based living principles for decades to help people rebuild shattered lives. Meditation has been used for everything from relaxation to spiritual enlightenment. The marriage of these two concepts can help... *release past emotional pain *reframe and resolve today's problems *revive your wellbeing and internal peace. Bring a journal, your pain, your sense of humor and your willingness for another look at life's ebb and flow! Led by Dr. Pat Casello, whose workbook, Go Out of Your Mind Meditations-A Step by Step Approach, is included. See www.patcasello.com, for more info. Partial proceeds are donated to ARC. Contemplating End of Life Is death such an undesirable part of our existence that we are better off acting as if it were not real? Or is it possible to befriend our dying gradually and live open to it, trusting that we have nothing to fear? Many spiritual traditions regard the contemplation of one's death as a valuable aspect of spiritual practice. Far from being morbid, such practice can help us focus on the essentials of life and deepen the values guiding our actions and choices. There will be time for personal and group reflection on beliefs, fears, and hopes regarding death - our own as well as the deaths of those dearest to us. Time will also be devoted to our preparation for death, including approaches for identifying and working with "unfinished business." An opportunity to work on health care directives and ethical wills will also be offered. Led by Rev. Katie Herman, Palliative Care Chaplain, Abbott Northwestern Hospital RETREATS COSTS (Rates are slightly higher for profit-making organizations.) +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
COMMUNITY NEWS New Opportunities of Service --- ARC Retreat Community Weekend volunteers for retreat assistance with cooking, laundry Short-term volunteers needed for 2005, 1-3 months, individuals or couples, in residence, room and board provided Resident Community Members for 2005, 1 year commitment, fulltime, room, board, small stipend and medical insurance, if needed. Application and reference form on our website, www.arcretreat.org. Part-time Office Assistant (waged), beginning January 2005, good skills needed in communication, office management and computer. For information on any of these opportunities, please contact Nancy Victorin-Vangerud, arcretreat@hotmail.com, or 763-689-3540. Praying with a Modern Consciousness --by Dave Tidball, ARC Community Member "I just don't know how to pray anymore," she said. My ears perked up. "I know what you mean," came another voice at the table. Another expressed a certain nostalgic longing for the formulaic prayers she had been taught in her childhood. Our noon-time meal conversation moved on, but my mind stopped, as it so often does, and began once again to ponder this topic. The woman with the initial question I have known for years. We are both active in a progressive suburban protestant congregation. She has been very involved in the worship life of the church and in the women's group that was on retreat at ARC that weekend. She has helped to write and lead public prayer, and been in small groups where prayer was important. It was wonderful to have her state so clearly a problem I have wrestled privately with for years - like finding another person who shares with me the same rare disease. This women's group, on retreat at ARC, was delving deeply into the life of Mary Magdalene. They were reflecting on the feminine face of God and of discipleship. They were pondering what had been lost in centuries of male domination in the church, and they were engaged in the process of re-imagining God and discipleship in more feminine terms. Thus, the question - "If I am different, and if I imagine God differently, then how do I pray?" I have come at this question from a different angle, but the results are very similar. I am a person with a thoroughly modern consciousness. I truly believe in the scientific understandings that have birthed modern "big-bang" cosmologies. I am profoundly persuaded that there is Truth about the meaning of life in the discoveries of micro-biologists. Yet, this modern way of thinking about the world leaves very little room for the personal God of my childhood that listened to my petitions and, in some inscrutable way, answered them. I don't expect anymore that something supernatural happens when people sit in a room with their eyes closed talking out loud to an unseen presence. I long still to pray for people and that they would pray for me, but I confess that I wonder what any of us mean by this activity anymore. Someday, I plan to do some formal research and writing about this praying with a modern consciousness. For now, I only share where I have been on the journey in hopes that others might join the conversation. I think that my relationship to God must bear a strong resemblance to my relationship to my parents. They would have seemed like magical beings, if I could remember my infancy. They took care of me so consistently that they seemed omnipotent. Of course, they never were that way, and I discovered that as I grew older. And, as I grew older, my own sense of self changed. I could, more and more be an independent actor on my own behalf. The cries for attention of my infancy became ever more nuanced conversations with adults who cared deeply for me and who urged me to care as deeply for myself and for others. My parents and I gradually became collaborators towards a common goal - that love might be expressed in all that we did. Of course, this vision of love was what my parents had learned before me - the motivating force which would have led my infant self to believe in my parent's omnipotent goodness towards me. On my healthy and whole days, I am this more mature collaborator with the divine love that seems to move through all of life. And so, at those times, my prayer is more of a conversation, an interactive exchange where I talk and listen; learn and grow. And my conversation is with One whose specific attributes are not always the same. He is sometimes old and tired. She sometimes holds me, cradled in her lap. The only constant is this ever-present covenant of love, for me and for all of life. But there are still times when the child which will always live in me is hurt, or excited; awed or terrified. At such times, I still want to claim the right to cry out, or to dance, or to stare in wide-eyed, wordless amazement. For, if I am truly becoming a more mature spiritual being, then I will need a language for the infant, the child and the adolescent. For these are not superceded by true maturity. Rather, they are integrated into a larger, more complex and nuanced whole. And they will still need their own language on occasion. ================================================================== In 2005, we would like to include in our newsletters the names (only) of those who have given recent financial and in-kind gifts to ARC. We would also like to list those gifts given in honor and in memory of special persons or organizations. We hope you will support us in this! ================================================================== RESPONSE FORM Name(s): ______________________________________________Phone: (____) _____________ Street Address: __________________________________________________________________ City: ___________________________________ State: __________ Zip: ___________________ Special Needs (diet, accessibility, etc.):
_______________________________________________ PLEASE CHECK APPROPRIATE ITEMS: ___ I am registering for the following retreat(s): (Deposit: $35 per person per night, nonrefundable) Title: _________________________________ Date: ______________ Deposit: __________________ ____I am contributing to the ARC retreat ministry with a gift of $___________. (in honor or in memory of a loved one __________________ )
___ I would like a Gift Certificate. (All gifts are
tax deductible.) ___ I would like to volunteer ________ for a day, _________ a weekend, _________ longer. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ A Ruby-throated Lament by Nancy Victorin-Vangerud Is the soul solid, like iron? Or is it tender and breakable, like the wings of a moth in the beak of the owl? Who has it, and who doesn't?... One question leads to another. Does it have a shape? Like an iceberg? Like the eye of a humming bird? --Mary Oliver, House of Light, 1990 "Some Questions You Might Ask" This time of year I am walking along paths strewn with golden leaves. Soft, wet, they hold small wells of rain. My heart drinks from this fallen landscape. Summer is past, winter is coming. My thoughts give way to memories. Yet when you read this, future paths will be determined by an election many will lament, many will praise. I recollect that on a warm day last summer, Chris Wolf brought the dead hummingbird she found to our daily worship. It was a ruby-throated hummingbird, still soft, with small black eyes. It must have hit the window near the feeder. How we curious, human ones want to hang our bird feeders close enough to watch these high-speed flutterers! But at what cost-especially for this hummingbird? Imagine it, one day winging along searching for food, and then confusion, disorientation sets in and a broken bird falls to the ground. Those of us gathered for worship couldn't help but gently touch the shimmering red feathers. They were so captivating, beautiful, intricate... Am I led to ruby-throated praise or lament? I remember too that day, at 4:32pm, being suddenly aware that in Saudi Arabia, angry men were threatening to break Paul Johnson's body in a cinematic act of intimidation. My mind couldn't hold it. How could I exist in such a secure, safe space with enough food, people who care for me, an embracing forest…and in another place, some place, sheer terror was in that moment bleeding through the heart of another one like me? My mind couldn't hold it. It was too obscene, too voyeuristic, too absurd to contemplate. Yet, somewhere, every day, human violence robs what only a divine being should be able to give and take. How can we learn to hold the anguish of others in our hearts? Could this be the spiritual challenge of our time? I'm not sure I'm up for it. I worry my heart is not wide enough, strong enough, soft enough to become soul-full. We can hear the excuses. We can hear the political platforms, where both sides turn to the discourse of triumph and unassailable might. Of course, we need to make decisions and respond to the sanities and absurdities of our day. But how I long to see a deep sigh of anguish or hear a quavering voice of compassion. Maybe I need to start with my own heart, here and now. Last weekend at ARC, my mother and I shared in a Minnesota Women's Press book retreat. We had read six books in preparation for the wonderful whirlwind of reflection together. But I was reminded that my own learning and enjoyment of the story (the pleasure of the text!) is indebted to the real anguish and pain of a woman's struggle for survival. As Salomé Ureña's father tells her, "Tears are the ink of the poet" (In the Name of Salome, by Julia Alverez). Ah! Maybe this is the clue for the softening of our hearts... Today, I am walking along paths peopled with white pines and oaks, poplars and maples. Leaves continue to cushion my steps along the way. Sometimes the trees groan. Sap runs down their trunks like streams, like blood, like tears. Mine join them. A retreatant recently whispered to me that tears open us to God's Spirit. Maybe so, hopefully so. Veni Sanctus Spiritus. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ If you have the interest in serving for a three year term on the ARC Board, please talk with Casey vanderBent, our current Board Chairperson, 651-436-2919. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Efforts have begun to develop an approach to deep prayer which uses the activity and "noise" of human living as the fuel for habits of deep prayer which are within the reach of ordinary people. --William R. Callahan, Noisy Contemplation +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The new ARC cookbook makes a great Christmas present or holiday helper. Favorites from the ARC Kitchen is a combination of new and old recipes from ARC. If you wish to order one or two now, please send your request to ARC RETREAT CENTER, 1680 373rd Ave NE, Stanchfield, MN 55008 along with a check for $20.87 per book (book $14.95, tax $0.97, shipping and handling $4.94) or you can pick one next time you're at ARC. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies 1/2 c. margarine 2 tsp. baking powder 1 c. cooked pumpkin 1 tsp. baking soda 1 c. brown sugar 1 tsp. cinnamon 1 egg 1/2 tsp salt 1 tsp. vanilla 1 c. chocolate chipps 2 c. white flour 1 c. chopped nuts (opt.) Mix in order listed. Drop onto greased cookie pan. Bake 12-14 minutes at 350 degrees. Yield: 3-4 dozen cookies. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ARC NEEDS LIST: tea lights, candles, cut firewood, white or colored paper, 8 1/2 X 11(of various stock), new hand and bath towels, new coffee carafes, new or used woodchipper, new or used 4x4 ATV and small trailer, new or used chainsaw, air compressor/battery charger, power compound mitre saw, an overhead projector |
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