Retreat Day

Today we leave for our church Retreat, which I have helped to plan with several others. Our entire family is going, and we are all looking forward to it! The setting is beautiful, high atop the Grand Mesa here in Colorado, surrounded by whispering pines and still lakes where fish ocassionally pop there heads out for a look. After all the work, it will be a fun and relaxing weekend for everyone.

It will also be a time for spiritual reflection as we ponder the statement "This I Believe..." taken from NPR's series titled the same (you can learn more at www.thisibelieve.org/index.php ). We are having a workshop on Saturday morning to help each of us try and crystalize a core belief we have for our life and then write a short 3-4 paragraph essay about that belief. I think this will be a fascinating experience and very revealatory about each of us as individuals and our Congregation as a whole. As I tried to clear my head this morning in the shower I came to the conclusion that I have several firmly held core beliefs, but I need help in narrowing their focus and putting them into words. If I come up with anything worthwhile to share, I will post my essay or essays on the blog after we return. That doesn't mean that you have to read them!! Hahahaha! But as always, keep in mind that this blog is really intended for my sons and I think it might be important to them to know what I hold dear in this world, besides them and their Daddy :-)

Aside from the spiritual component we will have time for meditative hikes, fishing, games, and campfires to end each night. This will be a very special time for our entire Congregation, culminating in a Sunday morning service in an outdoor mountaintop worship area where we can survey the magnificent Colorado landscape for hundreds of miles laid out before us. It won't take much more than that to create a spirit of reverence and an appreciation for the holy.

I hope everyone reading this has a great weekend, and I'll blog when we return!