My mind is full

Let's see where shall I begin. In September I have co-officiated at a wedding, been working as a temporary church administrator at the church the AngloBaptist pastors, lead a weekend retreat for that same church (I had agreed to lead the retreat late spring long before the Anglobaptist asked if I needed some temp work), lead the retreat for the Community of the Holy Trinity, all the while keeping up with my pastoral responsibilities with Reconciler.

In the midst of all this there is much going on around us, the Presidential race of course is in full swing and we are finding ourselves in an economic crisis that brings up comparisons to the period that began the Great Depression.
My mind is full because I am still trying to process my experiences leading the two retreats the past two weekends and trying to figure out what I think about this Presidential race and the economic crisis we are in.

Until, this week I thought I was balancing all this pretty well. This week I have found myself a bit of a muddle, finding it difficult to remember where I am or what I am doing. At one point I answered the phones at the church with "the Community of the Holy Trinity... Larry speaking how may I help you." As I said the last bit I realized that I had not said the right name of the church, and was about to correct myself when it turned out it was a member of the church who was also at the church retreat so we ended up having a good laugh about my not knowing where I was. I am finding that keeping the life, schedule and patterns of three different religious communities in my experience and head is to much for one person. It has been fun to work with the AngloBaptist again even as his support personnel, but I will be glad when they will not need me anymore.

Holy Trinity's retreat at St Gregory's Abbey in Three Rivers Michigan was an amazing time. We prayed with the monks and reviewed our Rule and life together. In that we discovered somethings about ourselves that we want to continue to do and do so with greater intention and recommitted ourselves to aspects of the Rule that we had not been attending to recently. I think the highlight for me was when Abbot Andrew came and talked with us, and gave us an excellent brief history of Benedictine monasticism and western monasticism, and also was able to learn about our group enough to give us some suggestions on how we might adapt aspects of Benedictine sprirituality and practice to our context.