Winding down the weekend

I slept in this morning and skipped the inspirational reading meditation at 7:00. I didn’t sleep all that great, in fact I fell out of bed in the middle of the night. The top mattress kind of slid around on the box spring and I guess it had moved off to the side enough that when I went to get up, the top mattress flipped over tossing me unceremoniously onto the floor. Not the athletic swing around like a cat and land on your feet kind of a landing, more like the ponderous flopping ‘is that guy okay’ kind of dive. I would have been embarrassed except there was no one to see me but me. 

Got in a shower to rinse the tiredness from my bones then joined the crew for breakfast over at the dining hall. Just us and the two girls again. The retreat center is very quiet. Introduced Brent to FaceTime and he was like a kid discovering a new toy. We ate our veggie omelets then met up in the Luiseno room for our meditation. 

We did an exercise where we wrote positive changes we have experienced in our lives on the outside of a folded piece of paper and a difficult life experience on the inside that precipitated the change and allowed the positive growth. Something like ‘living life on a spiritual path, met my current wife and having the ability to openly communicate in a relationship’ on the positive side and ‘hitting an alcoholic bottom and going through a divorce’ on the change agent side. Things that may have seemed devastating at the time but actually were the driving force to initiate a new way of living. We tossed our papers in a bowl and we each pulled one out and read it then we meditated on the positives, then we repeated the practice on the hard knocks that caused the change. Afterwards, we discussed what we got out of the practice.

We returned to our rooms, stripped the beds and made them up for the next pilgrims. Part of the Franciscan tradition at the mission is for the retreatants to change the sheets for the following visitor. They leave a clean set in the room. We stuffed all of the used sheets and towels in a pillowcase and threw it out in the hallway. Packed up our stuff and put it in the cars then met out in the sun for our final meeting to set dates for next year and to give feedback and ideas for the future retreat. Got Dave and Brent hooked up with air drop and sent them photos from my iPhone that I had been taking during the retreat. It was a beautiful sunny day and we all enjoyed sitting together on the patio feeling the bond that gets created spending the weekend together working in common for positive growth.

We hit the cafeteria for our final lunch, then said our farewells and hit the road back to families and whatever life circumstances were out there waiting for us. When I arrived at Dad’s, the whole family was there putting Christine’s new gal through the inquisition. Lee took off to go finish some tile work at their house then Mette and the kids made cookies while the rest of us sat around the table talking. The cookies were a feed the homeless thing that Nancy is doing through the Interfaith Council in Escondido. The kids were excited at the chance to bake cookies while Nancy was excited to kick back and let them do all the work. A win win.

Meditating is exhausting work😅so I had to slip off and take a little nap before heading over to Carlsbad for the Sunday night speaker meeting. Grabbed a bite of chicken at Pollos Maria then walked across the street for the meeting. It was good to be there although I was tired and headed straight home when it finished up. 

FaceTimed PJ for a long time. She’s been keeping really busy in Mexico. On Sunday, there is a group of friends from Bucerias that drive down to Puerto Vallarta for the morning meeting then go out for breakfast after. When she got home, she had a long nap then went into the town center to meet with some friends for dinner at a nice restaurant in town. We had lots to talk about and soon nearly an hour had gone by. Said our good nights and I got things prepared for tomorrow.