Base Petawawa Fall Retreat Spiritual Pathway: Building Spirituality and Community One Blessing at a

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Base Petawawa Fall Retreat Spiritual Pathway
Building Spirituality and Community One Blessing
at a Time

• Session One Introduction
• October 28th to 30th, 2008

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Objectives

• To get acquainted
• To share spiritual exercises
• To enjoy
• To discern the sabbath time

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Your Objectives/expectations

• ?
• ?
• ?

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Breath Exercise Foundation Practice

• Breathing into the pain or uncomfortable
  feelings, not only releases the spasm but feeds
  the brain and can actually make us think more
  clearly. Resnick, Stella, The Pleasure Zone,
  Berkeley, CA Conari Press, 1997, 88-89

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Spiritual Pathway Building Spirituality and
Community One Blessing at a Time

• Explore Your Inner Life
• Personal Spiritual Assessment
• Guiding Questions Sit and reflect on the
  following questions

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• What is significant in your life right now?
• What nourishes your spirit?
• How do you describe the purpose for which you
  live your life?
• What is your source of strength when you feel
  afraid or need special help?
• How would you describe your relationship with
  yourself?
• What best describes your relationships with other
  people?
• How would you describe your relationship with
  God, nature, creation, the mystery of life?
• What inspires you to be creative or how do you
  describe your creativity?
• What gives you hope or on what hope do you build
  your life?
• What gives you the greatest sense of belonging?
• What would you let go of for a moment in order to
  feel really good and really happy right now?

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Jot down the following

• A summary of your answers to the questions which
  were most important to you.
• And/or jot down a prayer, song or poem that
  focuses on the feelings that were evoked in you
  by one or more of the questions.
• And/or take time to recall music that reflects
  your response to the questions.
• Finally, consider sharing the experience,
  especially any significant discovery or shift in
  your feelings, with another person.
• Allow the experience to be with you in your
  memory, recalling it in your thoughts so that
  insights may be claimed as they come to your
  mind, and the memories used to comfort and soften
  your heart.

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Compassion to Self and to Others

• As we learn to have compassion for ourselves,
  the circle of compassion for otherswhat and whom
  we can work with, and howbecomes wider.
• Pema Chodron, When Things Fall Apart, p.105

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Journal

• Journal a prayer or reflection.
• Or dialogue with God writing your thoughts with
  your preferred hand and Gods response with your
  alternate hand.

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Reflection

• Share your experience with two others.

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Pray and Journal

• Offer this experience of reflection in prayer or
  as an act of gratitude.
• Journal significant insights and blessings.

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Fresh Bread and Other Gifts of Spiritual
Nourishment

• can it be?
• have I for so long forgotten to feed
• myself? yes.
• for nigh a year now I was slowly starving.
• getting lost in busy days, tossing aside the
• hunger that chewed away inside.
• Yet, I did not die.
• By some quiet miracle I made it to this
• moment of truth
• I nearly starved to death.
• It was not my body that I failed to feed.
• It was my spirit, left alone for days
• without nourishment or care.
• And then one day I paused to look within,
• shocked at what I found so thin of faith,
• so weak of understanding, so needy of
• encouragement.
• My starving spirit cried the truth I can!
• I will! I must be fed! Joyce Rupp, p. 16

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Guided Meditation

• The Sacred Pause or A Sabbath Timehelps us
  reconnect with the present moment. Especially
  when we are caught up in striving and obsessing
  and leaning into the future, pausing or sabbath
  enables us to reenter the mystery and vitality
  only found here and now. .Brach (2003),71.

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