Our faith community has a group of people that meet on a weekly basis to study and reflect on the readings that are read each week during the Sunday services. The group is open to anyone that wants to attend. Some people will show up once a month and others a few times a year. There is the core group that tends to make the meetings each week. This core group decided that they would sponsor a meditation retreat for the members of the community. They decided to hold ask for volunteers from the parish to help with the planning and organizing.

I am not one of the people that are able to make the weekly meetings. I decided that I would help with organizing the meditation retreat because I was interested in attending, and I have not been putting a great deal of time into the faith community. I thought this would be a good way for me to meet new people, as well as grow in my faith. I did some research into various retreats and found that there is a wide range of topics to structure the time around. I brought outlines of different topics to the first planning meeting.

Our pastor was opened to any ideas that the group wanted to do. I shared the information that I had found. We decided that if we could hire a leader for a reasonable amount we would do this. We decided that we would focus on prayer in our day to day lives for the main topic. This would be less general than simple mediation, but would not be too specific. We wanted to have the meditation retreat opened to all age groups and prayer is an ageless topic.

The idea of the meditation retreat was well received by the parish. We decided that we would hold the event at a retreat center that is located on a small lake about twelve miles from our church. The facility is very reasonable. They would provide us with a light supper on Friday evening, bedroom spaces with shared bathrooms for sleeping and meditating and meals on Saturday and ending with a brunch on Sunday morning. They have a large meeting room as well as smaller rooms for break out sessions and private reflection. There are paths for spending time walking in the woods and a gym for working out.

The facility was wonderful and reasonably priced. We had forty people attend the meditation retreat weekend. It was a great time to spend reflecting on your faith and renewing the use of prayer in day to day situations.