How (Not) to Prepare for a Retreat: Listening With Our Bodies in Prayer

By Margarita Mooney Clayton

This is the first post from The Way of Beauty’s most recent addition to the team, Margarita Mooney Clayton, who is an Associate Professor of in the Department of Practical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. She is also the founder and Executive Director of Scala Foundation. In this post she describes her experiences on a silent retreat at the Monastery of Bethlehem in the Catskill Mountains in New York State. She reflects on the distinctions between Christian contemplative prayer and the new-age and Eastern non-Christian forms of meditation that are so popular today.

Margarita writes.

Although I longed for a weekend of total silence, I was scared of that the retreat center I was heading to at the Monastery of Bethlehem in Livingston, NY  in the Catskill Mountains warned retreatants of the “austere” conditions they would find. Expecting a death-to-the-world, dark, cold, hungry three days, I spotted Five Guys and Fries off the interstate and stopped.

“Let me fill my belly now while I can,” I told myself. 

Greedily, I downed two patties and fries that only count as small because this is America, the land of the plenty. Not to mention I drank three diet cokes to top off my extra dose of morning coffee.

What awaited me, however, in my “cell of solitude” was nothing less than a two-story private chalet with a kitchenette, plentiful hot water and blankets, and a delicious home cooked meal every day, supplemented by practically limitless peanut butter, fruits, and cheese. I grabbed a small coffee maker from the shared supplies, mixing Starbucks Pumpkin Spice and Organic Arabica I found on the shelves. 

“This should be advertised as a Glamping Retreat, not an austere retreat,” I thought.

But I couldn’t find the inner peace I longed for. I set out for a hike, hoping to calm my jittery and achy body. So I set out for a hike. Nearly two hours later, I returned to the chalet of solitude with tired legs but eyes enriched by bountiful trees, changing leaves, a lake and birds. 

The previous day, in a class on aesthetics and Christian education, I had read about the body and liturgy with my students. In his book The Spirit of the Liturgy, Cardinal Josef Ratzinger (Pope Benedict XVI) explains that external activity of the body influences the internal disposition of the person.. Liturgy trains our bodies to surrender, to reorient ourselves to the resurrection. Our gestures, posture, and breathing all can help or hinder prayer.

One of my student’s questions resonated in my head: Why would God choose such a weak vessel—the human body—as a channel of grace? 

 I felt like Elizabeth Gilbert in Eat, Pray, Love, who travels the world looking to satiate her appetites for food, meditation and romance. First she stuffs herself with great food in Italy before heading off to a silent meditation at an ashram in India. Unable to be silent, a fellow retreatant nicknames her “Groceries.” 

The groceries with which I stuffed my belly were a sign of my lack of inner peace. I couldn’t sit still as the sisters prayed the liturgy of the hours in the stone chapel adorned with magnificent icons. I knew my agitation was not only bodily, it was also spiritual.

But I wasn’t at a Hindu meditation center like the one Gilbert visited in India. Eastern forms of meditation with their roots in Hinduism or Buddhism have expanded in the United States, but they don’t offer what a Christian retreat center can offer.

Christian prayer and Eastern meditation may share an emphasis on stillness, but stillness of Christian prayer is not a sign of nothingness, it’s an awareness of an external being who loves us. The most important part of a Christian retreat is not what I do but what God does.

As a student had said in class, summarizing Ratzinger, the mystery of the incarnation is precisely that the eternal divinity took on flesh and blood. God took on human form, becoming man in Jesus Christ. 

We are made of dust, but made for communion with God. In my weakness, I can make an act of the will to go on a retreat, indicating a desire to surrender my burdens.  A priest of the Franciscan Friars of the Renewal also visiting the retreat center let me break my silence and listened to an outpouring of my burdens. His main piece of advice was to forgive myself. God wants me to receive his love; he knows I’m not perfect but loves me anyway.

We all struggle with our vessels of clay, with our appetites that distract us from intimacy with God. But regardless, our bodies are an external sign of an inward state. Our bodies are an outward display of an inward truth. Our life with God is here and now, is bodily. Our communion with God is passive and active—we have to be still to hear his calls and respond. Christians seek stillness so as to enter into the dynamic receptivity of God’s love.

Glibert finishes her book finding love in Indonesia—a truly Hollywood ending full of bodily passion. Her story resonated with so many because we live in a time that people long for a spiritual journey that is quieting and filling at the same time. 

But the passionate love affair Gilbert describes in her book becomes her second marriage—and then her second divorce. 

Everyone struggles to maintain the human loves we so desire. Christianity tells us that we can’t sustain intimacy with others without intimacy with God, which is the key to intimacy with ourselves.

The very limitations of our bodies remind us that intimacy with God is not the result of kind of spiritual Gnosticism. Retreats are not heroic occasions of mystical encounters. 

Retreats are times to discipline the body, even at ‘glamping’ style retreat centers which offer solitude but also the beauty of liturgy, bountiful nature and wonderful food. God created the material world. We are called to redeem it. 

What we do with our bodies at retreats, and in everyday prayer and living, is part of that redemption. 

Stilling our bodies to receive God’s love is needed to experience the lasting the intimacy we all seek with others. It is because we have received that love that we can respond with our bodies, rejoicing in the goodness of creation. Our bodies humble us so that God can exalt us.

Margarita Mooney Clayton is an Associate Professor of in the Department of Practical Theology at Princeton Theological Seminary. She is also the founder and Executive Director of Scala Foundation whose mission is to restore meaning and purpose to American culture by focusing on the intersection of artists, liberal arts education, and religious worship.

The next Scala Foundation annual conference - Art, the Sacred, and the Common Good - takes place in Princeton, April 21, 2023 @ 4:00 pm - April 22, 2023 @ 5:00 pm EDT.

It is recommend to all Way of Beauty readers! I will be there [this is David Clayton writing!] moderating a dialogue between myself, Aidan Hart my old friend and teacher and one of the worlds leading iconographers; and the internationally known Canadian iconographer and podcaster Jonathan Pageau. Aidan is traveling from England to be with us at this event and I can’t wait to be part of it.

Business, Beauty and Liturgy - a Theology of Work and the Entrepreneur

In his book the Wellspring of Worship, Jean Corbon (who also wrote the section on prayer in the Catechism) wrote the following: 'Work and culture are the place where men and the world meet in the glory of God. This encounter fails or is obscured to the degree that men "lack God's glory" (Rom 3:23)... If the experience is to be filled with glory, men must first become once again the dwelling places of this glory and be clothed in it; that is why, existentially, everything begins with the liturgy of the heart and the divinisation of the human person.' Elsewhere he states that an absence of communion through Eucharistic liturgy 'that is at the root of injustices in the workplace, with its alienating structures and disorders in the economy.' (pp 225, 229)

How can we change society and the culture into one that is beautiful, is just and is built on true community? I say, following on from Corbon, that if we wish to change society we look to ourselves first so that we become the people who are transformed in Christ - transfigured - and show him to others by our actions and interactions. Society is network of personal interactions, and we change society, therefore by changing the way we interact with others. There is no aspect of human life to which this does not apply.

Only God's grace can do this for us, and it is by prayer, or more precisely, by worship of God that we encounter Christ in such a way that it can happen. When we can be one of those people, then people will be drawn to the Church through us and join us. To the degree that anyone is participating in the divine nature and showing people the transfigured Christ in their daily lives, he is someone who, by grace, will relate to others in properly ordered love. This is what attracts people to the faith. This will be evident in the workplace as much as anywhere else. All economic interactions ought to be personal and loving as much as any other in a good society. In the sphere of economics this is how the principle of superabundance is invoked that creates prosperity for society. This principle of superabundance is the great untold secret for the creation for wealth; if it isn't actually the pearl of great price it will certainly give you means to buy it!

None of us should ignore this, for we are all involved in economic interactions of some sort and we all need to flourish and make sufficient wealth to live on. However, some people have a particular calling to be entrepreneurs. They have a special grace, an ability to make money beyond their personal needs and in a way that encourages human flourishing at all levels. When they do this they are participating in the creative work of God and contributing to the culture by creating something of beauty. However, for that calling to be realized, they need also to be aware of not only how to make money in a way that is in accord with the common good, but also, the end to which that money should be directed responsibly. They must be good stewards.  It is the nature of charisms that unless they are directed in love, they evapourate, ie they cannot be misused. So while it is possible for someone to make money selfishly, or course, and also for people who do not have this particular calling to develop the skill of entrepeneurship and be driven by good motives. The person who has this charism, however, and special calling, will generate wealth almost effortlessly (compared to others) and in great abundance when does so in accordance with the principle of love.

Benedict XVI describes this ideal for personal interactions in economic activity in his encyclical, Caritas in veritate. It is a network of such personal interactions that in aggregate form a free society and the free economy described by John Paul II in Centesimus annus.

Benedict describes how Christians are transformed in Christ in this life by degrees and by grace - transfigured and participating in the divine nature - through a personal encounter with God in the Eucharist. To the degree that human relationships are driven by concern for the other person, they are in accordance with the Trinitarian dynamic of love that is the model for the loving component of personal relationships. When this Love is present it is always superabundant. Love is superabundant  - fruitful without measure - because of the generosity of God who can give beyond all limitations and creates out of nothing. It is by this principle that wealth is generated in properly ordered economic transactions.

Though we may not think of it as such, the ordinary exchange of goods for money that we are daily engaged in does not redistribute wealth, it creates wealth. By this simple exchange both parties have something they value more than before and so wealth has been created (otherwise they would not both choose to make the exchange). There is a caveat. This is true provided that there is personal freedom (understood not simply as lack of constraint, but also full knowledge of the practicable best).

One of the beauties of the participating in the market in a free economy is that if I am dealing with someone in such a transaction who is genuinely free to choose whether or not he trades with me, then even if I am driven by selfish ends I am forced to consider his needs and what is good from his point of view. If I don't then the chances are that he will choose not to trade with me because he is free not to do so. So provided that freedom is present, even the selfish like me are forced to some degree at least into loving action. Even in this minimal form of love there is superabundance. In practice, rarely is someone wholly driven by selfish interests, just as it is rare that is someone wholly loving in action and thought. Superabundance is maximized to the degree that both parties are genuinely interested in the well being of the other as they engage in the transaction. This is when all the aspects for which a price cannot be paid - at a simple level a genuine care and attention, for example are given freely too. To the degree that the loving component grows then people relate to each other so that the other flourishes. When the conditions exist that allow for this to happen, people will naturally seek out others who interact in this way and the complexion of the economy gradually changes. Economic prosperity is maximized to the extent that the activity that creates it is in harmony with a flourishing of the society of human persons. When people are transformed in Christ, then they are more naturally inclined to consider the other in what they do and go beyond the simple contractual elements of trade, and create an economy that is rooted in a love which goes beyond the minimum requirement of justice.

One might refer to this as a covanental economy, one that is ordered to mutual giving, rather than one that is purely contractual and relies on the alignment of self-interest alone.

John Paul II pointed out in Centesimus annus that the market is the most efficient and best way to distribute goods for which a price can be paid. He then stated that this also defines the limitations of the market, it cannot distribute those things for which a price cannot be paid which are also vital in life and the flourishing of the human person. That is why he said that this market will be in the context of what he called a 'free economy'. Benedict in Caritas in Veritate connects the two much more directly in each economic transaction and says that unless those aspects for which money is not paid are present there too (he calls this additional element one of gratuitousness) then there is no superabundance. In fact he goes on to say that gratuitousness must be present if wealth is to be created.

When freedom is lacking - as it would be even in an otherwise free society in the case of an addict buying illegal drugs for example, the result is not the superabundant creation of wealth, but an enforced redistribution of wealth that favors one party more than the other inequitably. The party that gains is not just taking advantage of the other person in the exchange, but is parasitical upon society as a whole , drawing from it, rather than contributing to it; one only needs to look at a neighborhood in which drug dealing is rife to see the effects. Similarly, government taxation directed towards paying for activities that go beyond the natural role of government (which  should be limited to the regulating for and protecting personal freedom) are also acts against the common good that go against freedom, are contrary to what a government's role should be and will have the stultifying effects on society as whole that we see, for example, in Venezuela today and we saw in the Eastern bloc countries of the past so markedly.

Benedict describes in many places in his writings how the personal transformation, by which a person is capable of and inclined to interact lovingly with his neighbors, will occur. Perhaps one of the most simply and concisely present examples is his little paper on the New Evangelization. We must first look at ourselves; we must learn to pray. It is through prayer, and to be precise a liturgically centered piety that we are transformed.

Not all prosperous societies are Catholic societies (whatever we mean by that) and not all Catholic societies are prosperous. But it is to the degree that any earthly city and its people participate in those ideals of the City of God, Catholic or not, that it is prosperous and stable.

It is the beauty of the culture, and especially the culture of Faith that will inspire Christians to pray well, and non-believers to pray at all. Beauty engenders creativity, inspires us to love and so to participate in the superabundant love in anything we do, including trade. This is why beauty, the free economy and the liturgy are inseparable.

People today yearn for community and for a beautiful culture that they feel is absent from their lives. This is not a new thing, this is what people have yearned for since their were people around to yearn for anything in life. The answer lies in each of us looking to ourselves. We must retreat to the wilderness symbolically in prayer, the place where Christ engaged with the devil, then transformed, we emerge and engage with our fellow man. We do not need to flee further at this point. We engage wherever we happen to be, wherever there are people. In doing so we will create the culture and the community we yearn for around us, where we are now, right here and right now. If this is not happening, then we look afresh at ourselves. While this mean that work becomes that of the artisan, like St Joseph, which we tend to romanticise today, we do not need to think that this is a process of turning back the clock. Rather it is one of adding to the workplaces that we are already in, the factory, shop, office, building site and so on and raising it up to a place of beauty and love.

Even in these workplaces, which are often seen as places that are opposed to Christian values, we can be that person, clothed in glory, who transforms those around them and transform the work culture. This is the message of the Church and of the New Evangelization. It begins with us being transformed in the liturgy and the hope is that after we engage with them we lead others back to the liturgy. It will be by the grace, beauty and love that others see in our work that they will let us do so.

A word on the pictures: the first is Titian's Transfiguration, the second by the 20th century Italian artist Pietro Annigoni is St Joseph the Worker with Our Lord. The other three photographs are of a car production line, a NY trading floor and a clothes factory in India. It is easy in some ways to look back on the work of St Joseph as a carpenter and see this as participating in the Transfiguration, and this is reflected brilliantly by Annigoni. We tend to romanticise the work of the artisan nowadays and assume that somehow this work is intrinsically different from the work most people do today. This is why, supposedly, the factory worker is more alienated today than the agricultural worker of the 16th century. I am not persuaded of this. I think it depends as much on the people involved as the nature of the work. I suggest that we should not seek to eliminate or escape from the modern workplace, but work for its transformation with our participation in the liturgy at the heart of what we do. Then by our engagement with them, these places too can be in harmony with the life of the world to come. I hope that when we look back on the work of the sacred artist if the 21st century, it will portray saints on the trading floor with as much empathy as the man tilling the land; or the seamstress on the shop floor with the same light of grace as Our Lady sewing the curtains for the temple.

— ♦—

The book, the Way of Beauty is a manual for a formation in beauty that explains how the whole culture is a reflection of divine love, how we can become agents of that change  as well as educators who can form offer that formation to others. It is available from Angelico Press and Amazon.

—JAY W. RICHARDS, Editor of the Stream and Lecturer at the Business School of the Catholic University of America said about it: “In The Way of Beauty, David Clayton offers us a mini-liberal arts education. The book is a counter-offensive against a culture that so often seems to have capitulated to a ‘will to ugliness.’ He shows us the power in beauty not just where we might expect it — in the visual arts and music — but in domains as diverse as math, theology, morality, physics, astronomy, cosmology, and liturgy. But more than that, his study of beauty makes clear the connection between liturgy, culture, and evangelization, and offers a way to reinvigorate our commitment to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful in the twenty-first century. I am grateful for this book and hope many will take its lessons to heart.”

The Way of Beauty and the New Evangelisation

Why an education in beauty and the Liturgy of the Hours are important in the formation of lay people as part of the New Evangelisation. Thomas More College of Liberal Arts was treated to a lecture by a husband-and-wife team of theologians who both teach at St John's Seminary at Boston. David and Angela Franks run the newly established Masters of Theological Studies for the New Evangelization. Although based at the Seminary, this is aimed at lay formation and can be taken on a part-time basis. It is the first new programme of the Seminary's newly established, Theological Institute for the New Evangelisation (TINE). David and Angela inspired our students (and myself!) with the vision that the Church has for the role of lay people in evangelising the modern world, charactererised by John Paul II as the New Evangelisation. All this is invaluable in itself, but what surprised and interested me particularly was their assertion that an education in beauty is an essential element in the formation of the individual who is going to be carry out their mission of taking the Word to the world. Furthermore, they highlighted the importance of the Liturgy of the Hours in this education.

They described a process that is both active and reactive. The active role is one of living the life of faith, which is ultimately living the life of love that God intends for us. And we should do so, they said, without apologising for it!

There is a description in the Acts of the Apostles of the growth of the early Church in which people were attracted to the Christian life, we are told, 'because they loved each other'. When we lead a life of love then our lives will be beacons of light that will arouse curiosity in this secular society. Love is not so much a set of feelings but rather a set of actions motivated for the good of the other. That requires fortitude especially because it is precisely this that will cause us to stand out in the crowd and because, as David puts it, we live in an age when 'powerful forces are arrayed against true love'.

That light will be brightest when we are answering most completely the personal vocation that God has made to us (aside from following the commandments of the Church). The determination of this personal vocation is an important early step therefore. I was lucky in my own life in being given some inspired guidance in trying to discern what this might be. This has ended up in me doing what I am now at Thomas More College. I have described the process here. The programme at the St John's Seminary offers guidance also in this first step.

The second part is reactive. When people see a life of love it arouses curiosity and they ask questions. At this point we need to be able to answer them truthfully and prudently. Part of the programme at St John's is about equipping people with knowledge of the truth - we must know what the Church teaches, or at the very least, where to go to find out what the Church teaches.

But also, we must present this information in such a way that it continues to attract people. Force of logic will only take you so far. It is not just what you say, but how you say it. Prudence guides this. While knowing what to say and when can be trained in some ways directly, so much of this is about developing an intuitive sense of it. A key principle in operation here is beauty. When we do something attractively, we are doing it beautifully. This is why a training in beauty is so important, we were told. It develops that instantaneous intuitive sense of knowing what to do best.

After the talk there was a lively question and answer session and one student asked directly. What should we be aiming for in our spiritual lives in order to be able to achieve this? To my great delight, David answered without hesitation, that beyond the basic requirements of the sacramental life, he felt that the Liturgy of the Hours was a powerful and 'supremely effective' form of prayer.

David and Angela invite everyone who might be interested to take a look at the exciting opportunities for lay people offered by St John's Seminary. You can find out more by going to the www.sjs.edu and clicking on the 'TINE' logo.

For a growing series of articles about the Liturgy of the Hours as part of The Way of Beauty, see here.

Thomas More College of Liberal Arts offers a traditional education in beauty, incorporating the Liturgy of the Hours as one of the key components of the spiritual life of the college. The course, The Way of Beauty is part of its core curriculum with the intention of offering our students to best chance of coming out as ambassadors of the New Evangelisation.

In addition, our summer programme has short courses open to everyone to teach precisely this. Artists and musicians can learn it in conjunction with the skills of icon painting, academic drawing or Gregorian chant in our two-week programmes in July. Our weekend retreat in creativity and inspiration in August offers everyone else the chance to learn the traditional education in beauty - developed as part of the training of artists - but without having to learn the artistic skills. For more information about all of these courses see here.

Images Top and bottom: The Calling of St Matthew by Hendrick ter Brugghen, 1621; candles at the Birmingham Oratory, England; The Presentation of Jesus at the Temple (Candlemass) by Tintoretto, c1550