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Prayers

Youth 2011 and Claiming Space

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Last week Kevin & I spent the week alongside my nephew & Josh Vegors putting together the ‘Sacred Space’ for Youth 2011 in Purdue. So what was this ‘Sacred Space?’ Well, it was a contemplative prayer & arts space that we set up that the youth could experience God on their own, where they were, and express that however they felt it.

The thing with crafting contemplative space is that you give up control. In a contemporary worship environment you can control the flow or the highs and lows of emotion through the time. When we do these contemplative spaces you set the stage, but whatever dance that happens after that is out of your control.

I was completely and beautifully reminded of this in this one moment at our Youth 2011 Sacred Space. Josh who was helping out started to take pieces of the artwork that the youth created and placing them in the hallway in a display type manner. Not part of my original plan but it is what he was led to do so we went with it. Hours later I was coming out of the sacred space room and I see this girl sitting on one of the chairs in the hallway. She looks distressed enough that it gave me some cause for concern. So I was just about to walk up to her and ask her if she was okay when I realized that she was actually visually meditating on the art pieces and probably in prayer. So I backed off.

To my surprise even more. She, just then, fell from her chair to her knees and proceeded to hold that prayer posture for some five to eight minutes. It was crazy. This was the freaking hallway.. There was not anything sacred about this hallway, until now. This youth broke some of my ideas of the space we set up in a contained room and took the sacred into the hallway and claimed it as something special.

I think it is neat that teens are wild and uncontrollable. God probably thinks they take after him.

Claiming Space as Sacred
Claiming Space as Sacred

 

Fairwell Father Matthew Kelty

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Saddened to hear of the passing of Father Matthew Kelty, one of the monks of Abbey of Gethsemani. He was a real treat to those of us who visited the monastery because often he would spend evenings with guests doing homilies, reading stories, poetry, and other conversations. They even video taped some of his talks for a dvd because so many people appreciated those times so much and yearned for a little more.

The community of Gethsemani is saddened today by the loss of its eldest member. Fr. Matthew Kelty died after a brief illness. He spent the morning talking with community members who dropped in to see him. He was lucid and interested up to the last. He passed away during a nap, near noon. Several community members, including Abbot Elias, were with him when he died.

Fr. Matthew was one of the community’s most prominent members, who touched many retreatants over the years with his compline talks, and many more people around the world with his writings.

I have some great memories of times at Abbey of Gethsemani on retreat and look forward to some more in the future. It will be a little different knowing that one of the keystones of the monastery for us visitors is no longer with us in physical presence gracing prayer times, but part of the cloud of witnesses that surrounds the hills of Kentucky.

thanks Lilly for the news. Some of my photos from a retreat a number of years back

to not be happy but have joy : prayer for youth

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“… Be present especially with the young who must choose between many voices. Help them to know how much an old world needs their youth and gladness. Help them to know that there are words of truth an healing that will never be spoken unless they speak them, and deeds of compassion and courage that will never be done unless they do them. Help them never to mistake success for victory or failure for defeat. Grant that they may never be entirely content with whatever bounty the world may bestow upon them, but that they may know at last that they were created not for happiness but for joy, and that joy is to him alone who, sometimes with tears in his eyes, commits himself in love to thee and his brothers. Lead them and all thy world ever deeper into the knowledge that finally all men are one and that there can really be joy any until there is joy for all. In Christ’s name we ask it and for his sake. Amen”-Frederick Beuchner, The Hungering Dark, page 33

Posted via email from Pilgrimage of Gavin Richardson