Silent Retreat

I had the opportunity this past weekend to attend a silent retreat with my fellow Jesuit Volunteers. If you are unfamiliar with how such a retreat works I will fill you in a little bit, it is not that complicated. One is basically silent at all times, except when speaking with a spiritual director or participating in a prayer service, each of which occurred both days of the retreat. Other than that one is supposed to pray, sleep, reflect, read, walk, eat, relax, sit, etc. Basically one can do anything that does not involve talking, which also includes communication through body language, facial expressions and things of that nature too. It is actually a pretty exciting yet anxious experience because we are not used to engaging ourselves in such personal, reflective solitude. I, for one, enjoyed the experience, but I would not say it was joyous in any way or filled with puppy dogs, rainbows or any other fun bubbly things. It was an intense exploration of my year as a JV at the Center that allowed me to confront such feelings as anger, fear, violence and insanity. Definitely not puppy dogs.

The first day of the retreat, Sunday, went by in a breeze. I attended a prayer workshop, met with my spiritual advisor, slept, prayed, ate, all the stuff I mentioned earlier. Although I did have some issues I wanted to work out in prayer, I would not say that they were super stressful. My advisor, Daniel, recommended short bursts of very relational prayer and that is what I did. I walked with Jesus along the paths of the retreat center, we joked, discussed some minor issues and parted. It was great. I also met with some of the guys from the Center and we worked out some tension. Also fairly simple.

Things started to change Sunday evening. We all met that night to begin a Peace Vigil, a traditional ritual that JVC:Southwest performs as long as there is unnecessary violence in the world. As you can guess, they hold it every year. It starts with a prayer service, there is a candle lighting ceremony, a slow, deliberate walk to the rotunda where the vigil is held, and then peaceful silence throughout the night and into the next morning. There are always at least two JVs holding vigil throughout the night either praying, reflecting, reading journals, writing journals, or at the least staying awake in support of peace. I went to bed Sunday night knowing that I would be holding vigil from 3 to 4 in the morning. This is when the night got interesting.

I awoke, after an already restless night of sleep, at 2:40 am because of a nightmare. This is how it went. I was running home from the T in Boston, which is the public transit they have there, in running shorts, a T-shirt and flip-flops. It was late at night and I knew I was in a bad neighborhood. The air was heavy, the lighting dim and the streets seemed more narrow than usual. Everything felt small and suffocating. I knew, just knew, something bad was going to happen. And sure enough as I was crossing one of the streets I came across a young kid wearing a white tank top and holding two empty fourties. Before I knew what was happening he was threatening me with one of the bottles, broken to create a sharp edge, and I had the other bottle, also broken to create a sharp edge. As we struggled my movements were slow and sluggish. I kept yelling, "No, no, no," over and over again. All I wanted to say was that this was not right, that this should not happen, but only No would come out of my mouth. The kid just looked at me with a blank stare, and calmly replied, "No." He seemed to be saying that what was going to happen was inevitable. It might be meaningless, you may not know my motivation, if there even is one, but nevertheless you cannot do anything about it. And as I continued to blubber all I could think about was what it was going to feel like when the cold, jagged glass hit that vulnerable spot in the front of my neck, letting the life in me seep out. In a blink we were no longer holding the bottles, but we were still at a face off, and I saw a police car a block away. In that instant my heart rose, only to fall just as quickly as I realized the cop was going to continue driving away. The street continued to shrink and as I contemplated running awaythe kid pulled out a gun from behind his back and pointed it at my head. "No," is all he had to say as he again shook his head with that dull look in his eyes. Here my dream ended.

Needless to say I did not fall back asleep before going down to hold my place at the vigil. I also was not feeling very peaceful. But it was a good chance to try and work out this dream, to see if I could engage this character and find Christ in the whole situation. It didn't happen. I spent half an hour thinking through things and praying to no avail. The next 30 minutes were dedicated to sitting and doing nothing. I was spent, I felt as though I could work through the issues with my spiritual advisor the next day. Apparently, however, I had more coming.

The next dream I had was just as violent, even if a little more bizarre. I flashed into a scene in which I was outside of a big stadium. There was a man inside on the top rows who had taken people hostage with a gun. I fired away, almost mindlessly, with a machine gun, tyring to kill this guy. Mind you I have never even held a gun much less fired one. The only idea in my head was that I have to kill the man. I saw innocent people surrounding the guy but decided that it was ok to hit them as long as I also hit the bad guy. Upon later reflection I could not believe that these were my thoughts. This part of the dream ended as it melded into a new theme. There was a crazy, psychotic killer on the loose, running around cutting people up. I found myself in an artillery shed, on a corner in the "bad" part of town. Once again the darkness and layout of the streets was quite suffocating. The whole mood was heavy, dreary, hopeless. I was holding my shotgun telling the clerk that I wanted as much ammo as I could hold, I wanted everything he had. There was a knock on the shed door and I knew instantly that the killer was oustide, waiting for his next victim. As the clerk went outside and around the back of the shed I ran off without my gun or any of the ammunition. I knew the clerk was already dead. I next found myself in a house where the killer just was, destruction everywhere, but the killing weapons left for me to take. I picked up the sharp objects and started to look for the killer. As I found him I no longer had the weapons and I quickly realized that he was a completely insane man with arms flailing, other grotesque movements and incoherent babbling. I found myself on top of this guy, holding him down. His face was distorted, his teeth dirty and crooked and he was trying to bite me. The guy was completely nuts. My dream ended.

That was my night. No bubble gum or birthday cake. I spent the morning ignoring the night, I was not ready to deal with it. I was holding off until I could sit down and talk about it with someone else. Finally 1:30 rolled around and as I sat down across from Daniel I said, "Boy do have have some stuff to share with you." He told me to go ahead and tell my story, which I did. This ended with me asking, "Pretty crazy, huh?" Which got the wonderful response of a slight laugh and a short period of uneasy silence. Daniel helped me out, though, we talked through the dreams, did some analysis, some associations, some connections to the real world, etc. He was very helpful in that he let me identify what the themes were in the dreams, what the things represented to me, and how it all connected to what is going on in my life right now. Without going into too much detail, and knowing that anyone who reads this can probably think of what some of the themes were, I will say that there was a lot of anger in these dreams, a lot of fear, violence and a sense of absurd insanity. Connecting these ideas to reality was not too difficult. There is a lot of anger at the Center, usually not violent, but still always present. There is the violence in the city of Oakland, muggings, shootings, etc. There is the threat of violence at the Center. There are mentally unstable people who we work with. And I know that even though I am not usually afraid of these things, there is an underlying sense of unconscious fear in what I do. There it was, everything was covered, but I still had not resolved anything.

Daniel and I continued to discuss other things, but at the end of our meeting he looked at me seriously and said, "You have to pray about this, you have to engage what is going on here." I knew he was right and thought to myself that I was going to confront Jesus with these problems. I would set myself up in some kind of discussion and we would beat the answers out. This was not as easy as it might appear. I spent all day thinking about other things, and when I tried to pray about it it was just too hard. I could not find the right way to access the problem, I could not find the right way to approach Jesus with what I wanted to talk about. More importantly I was afraid that when I confronted the problem and tried to work through it I would not be able to find any answers. I felt paralyzed.

The day continued into the night and still nothing happened. At 7:30 we had a prayer service that stressed healing and gratitude. Even though there was some good stuff involved I did not get as much from the service as I could have becuase my mind was in other places. At the end of the prayer service, as everyone else was leaving, I decided to stay not really knowing what I was going to do. I enjoyed the chapel. It had a sense of history to it. I could tell that it was built with purpose and with care. The wooden beams holding up the roof reminded me that it was built in a time before our own. I suppose I was simply feeling a little nostalgic. The lights were dim in the chapel, just as they had been in my dreams. As I looked to the front of the building I started to observe the crucifix. The only bright lights in the whole chapel were mounted on the back of one of the support beems and they focused on the representation of Jesus hanging on the cross. As I sat there a little longer it suddenly hit me. This is were I had to access the anger and violence and insanity in my dreams, and it was the only way in which I could still hold onto God.

My previous meetings with Jesus were pretty cordial. Even though we discussed some serious topics we could still laugh and joke with each other. This situation was different. I was going to deal with a dying man. But not just that, one who had been betrayed, beaten, ridiculed, humiliated and then strung up on a big piece of wood. As I approached Jesus the air was cold and just a little wet, enough to make your skin dry and cause some irritation both inside and out. I looked up and said, "I have to talk to you about something." Jesus' head snapped down towards me, his eyes completely black, almost empty as he yelled, "What do you want now?" The earth seemed to tremble a bit. I was taken back by his anger, so uncharacteristic of him. "I need to talk to you about something," I answered with whatever courage I had left. Again he violently looked at me, this time with even more passionate anger. "Look at me, Tom. " And as I looked he explained, "I have a crown of thorns on my head. My body is full of welts and cuts. There are huge, rusty nails going through my hands and feet." His voice was still angry and I did not blame him. The scene was gross. Blood and sweat was everywhere, both dripping and dried. Every breath was disgusting, his body lurching to stay alive. It looked as though at any moment his body would simply rip and fall off of the cross, his skin and muscles looked so weak. It must have been unbearable pain. I did not know what to do or say. I was at a loss for how to approach this once beautiful and gentle man. And without even thinking I asked, "Well, is there anything I can do for you?" More quickly than I would have guessed, and with his eyes shut Jesus answered, "I could actually use a few vicodin." In an instant the whole scene changed and I found myself speaking with the once again humorous, yet informative, son of man. I finally got it. All I had to do was ease his pain. And to get there all I needed to do was ask some simple questions. Lesson learned. This is how I must deal with the people in my life. Most of the anger that I see stems from some sort of past painful experience or continuing painful experience. And even though everyone is different and every situation is different, asking a few simple questions will often lead in the right direction to solving the problem. But I still felt a little uneasy about my dreams and dealing with absurd situations. As if he could see what I was thinking, in fact as if he was reading my mind, Jesus said to me, "Do not worry about being right and wrong. There is no right or wrong answer. And there are going to be absurd situations that you have to deal with. Nevertheless, all you can do is seek to alleviate the pain by asking questions and formulating a plan of action. The only "right" way to go about all of this is to follow your heart." Wow, I thought, I guess that's it. Jesus continued, "That is all I can do for you, and they say I'm God. The rest is up to you, buddy."

So that is what I learned this weekend and that is what I seek to bring back to the Center. There is a lot of anger and fear in our lives. With that comes the possibility of violence and absurd situations. For the most part I am not in control of what kind of people or what kind of situations present themselves to me. Therefore I cannot do anything about that. But when I do engage these people and situations I must be willing to ask questions so that I can hopefully alleviate some of the pain that they feel. I may not always be right, but as long as I stick to my heart I can never go wrong.