Romantic and Spiritual - a great retreat

This week Elaine and I went on a much needed retreat together. We dropped the kids off at Grandma Carmack's and made our way to Mendon Country Inn.  The first year we were married we spent a Christmas Eve there on our way to Elaine's family get together. Our heating core was plugged and half way there the little electric heater, plugged into the lighter, went out.  By the time we got there our feet were blocks of ice and the fireplace and Jacuzzi in our room was a welcome experience. We loved our stay and the South African innkeepers were charming.

A little over eight years latter we had no idea where we had stayed, and it took some searching to find them. We got into the same room we were in years ago. Come to find out St. Gregory's Abby is only about twenty miles away. We went over there for communion, and I had a chance to show Elaine where I have spent my time when on my retreats there. We had pittance and a chat with the monks after the prayer service.

The weather was rainy and cold. We spent most of our time indoors, though the first night the weather broke, and we walked down by a creek flowing into the St. Joseph river.  The bed and breakfast had a little island with a gazebo surrounded by the flowing brook.  It was lovely to be in creation.

When driving we had some conversations about our frustrations in ministry and what it would take to breakthrough. Elaine and I serve as a tension between my realization of powerlessness and hers of action. The great question we have to live into is - how do we create space for people both in and out of the church to grow in the Spirit.

The innkeepers, Cheryl and Gerard, were wonderful at creating a hospitable space. The last morning we chatted over breakfast for a couple hours. It was a wonderful encouragement.  Hospitality is a wonderful thing.

There was another gran sorprendido.  Across the street there is a small mexican restaurant.  I could smell the hot tortillas. We decided to go there for dinner rather than an upscale option.  We didn't have great expectations - expecting a dive, but what we found was the best authentic mexican food I have had in years. Salud is the name of the place, and it made us wish we were going to be there for another week to sample everything.

Elaine, How I Love Thee

Music to accompany this post.

The last few weeks I have been falling in love with my wife all over again. It is like a spiritual awakening. I am seeing her with fresh eyes. I see the wrinkles forming around her eyes and mouth. She is taking on a look of maturity, and it matches her growth spiritually. There is something very sexy about those lines.

I look at my hands, something I often have done while contemplating my own personhood. Coming out of anesthesia after having my wisdom teeth removed, my mom told me I was looking staring at my hands funny, like they weren’t my own. Some how, though looking at them and realizing they are my own has sometimes granted me a heightened self awareness, I am alive, I am separate from the world, the world exists apart from my imagination. Rolhieser suggests that it is this separation that is at the basis of sexuality. To be sexed is to be divided from the rest of humanity based on gender. I see in my hands today knuckles that are growing knobbier, with more creases. They remind me of my father’s hands, rough with work. I have caught myself taking on attitudes and postures so like his as well. I am maturing. I’ll be thirty this year. I am a pastor, a father, in short an adult. How subtly all this snuck up on me. How subtly Elaine grew from a college sweetheart and salacious girl into a woman.

I step back, and realize what has caught up with me. My breath is caught away; she is so beautiful, inside even more than outside. I held her tight the night before she went away to Chicago, attempting to convey through the touch, through the pressing of her body the depth of love I have for her.

I said, “I’m scared you might not make it back to me.”

“Why?” She asked.

“Because,” I said, “in the movies with someone realizes how much they love another, that is when they loose them.”

I thank God for this romance of the Spirit, for it is as much a romance with him as it is with my wife, his gift to me. My heart races even in the writing of this post, and the praying of this prayer.