Thursday, June 2, 2022
(click here to listen to or read today’s scriptures)
Moments at Saint Meinrad
Today we will visit Saint Meinrad’s Archabbey, an hour from Evansville. Our friends Neal and Miriam will join us, also driving an hour, from Louisville in the other direction. I suppose the weather will be a little warm, down there in southern Indiana.
Our visits are rich with memory. We met and communed for two years together in our spiritual direction class. Our class was taught by a Franciscan priest and a Presbyterian teacher, male and female, Catholic and Protestant. The class was an equally balanced mix. Neal and Miriam, both teachers at Lincoln Christian University, fit right in, as did Margaret and I.
For eight two-night weekends at the Chiara Center in Springfield, we grappled with ideas about healing and listening, as well as theology and ministry. Between meetings we read spiritual books, wrote papers, and practiced our new-learned spiritual direction with friends and family who assented to being our guinea pigs.
Lifting up his eyes to heaven, Jesus prayed. “I pray not only for these, but also for those who will believe in me through their word, so that they may all be one, as you, Father, are in me and I in you.
Our first trip to Saint Meinrad happened before I had a spiritual director of my own. I asked the guest house staff for a reference, and then I spoke with Father Coleman during each of the next three days. He wore his robe; sometimes we met after one of the six services “of the hours”.
Father Coleman was nearly my age, but rather than traveling the world as I had done, he came to Saint Meinrad when he was eighteen and never left. I was jealous. We talked about many things. I expressed my uncertainty and insecurity which stemmed from a life that was just about the opposite of his, at least in place. He sat still, I couldn’t stop moving.
He (of course) wondered how his life would have been different if he’d moved around more. Much more. As usual, we envied the other’s situation.
My heart is glad and my soul rejoices, my body, too, abides in confidence. You will show me the path to life and the delights at your right hand forever.
On our last day at Saint Meinrad, after Father Coleman and I had said goodbye, I met him on a small monastery street driving a garden truck with produce in the back, as well as a hoe and rake. Margaret took our picture. The picture is precious to me, as is the campus of this group of Benedictines. I can’t wait to get there and see our friends, and remember a bit about my first experience with spiritual direction. Thanks to Father Coleman.
(posted at www.davesandel.net)
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