{"id":205,"date":"2010-05-22T07:49:47","date_gmt":"2010-05-22T11:49:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/?p=205"},"modified":"2010-05-23T20:45:23","modified_gmt":"2010-05-24T00:45:23","slug":"back-from-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/back-from-retreat\/","title":{"rendered":"Back From Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I returned yesterday from a few days of retreat at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bethanyretreatcenter.org\" target=\"_blank\">Bethany Retreat Center<\/a>.\u00a0 It is a quiet place in the hills of Pennsylvania.\u00a0 This is my second time there.\u00a0 I enjoy it because it is quiet, well removed from the &#8220;noise&#8221; of our society.\u00a0 They have walking trails and daily Mass in the chapel.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Life in our society today can be pretty &#8220;noisy&#8221; so I always look forward to the opportunity to take my yearly retreat to get re-centered on God and my prayer life.\u00a0 Even working in ministry I can get caught up in the things of the world and lose track of what ministry is really about, serving the people of God according to God&#8217;s will, not my own plan.\u00a0 Away from all the meetings, emails, and phone calls I had the opportunity to listen to what God has to say.<\/p>\n<p>The time at retreat is always a time to help me get my prayer life back in proper order.\u00a0 It isn&#8217;t that I had stopped praying but sometimes I find myself saying the prayers more out of habit than with the heart.\u00a0 A &#8220;speciality&#8221; at <a href=\"http:\/\/www.bethanyretreatcenter.org\" target=\"_blank\">Bethany Retreat Center<\/a>\u00a0is <em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.renewaloffaith.org\/basics\/prayer\/prayer.htm#Contemplative\" target=\"_blank\">contemplative prayer<\/a><\/em>.\u00a0 Contemplative prayer means taking the time to &#8220;not think.&#8221;\u00a0 It means to let go of all the thoughts that pop into our heads and to simply sit in the presence of God.\u00a0 It is a difficult thing for me to let go of all those thoughts but the reward of God&#8217;s presence is worth the effort.<\/p>\n<p>I hope you have the opportunity to make a retreat in your own life.<\/p>\n<p>Peace,<\/p>\n<p>Fr. Jeff<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I returned yesterday from a few days of retreat at Bethany Retreat Center.\u00a0 It is a quiet place in the hills of Pennsylvania.\u00a0 This is my second time there.\u00a0 I enjoy it because it is quiet, well removed from the &#8220;noise&#8221; of our society.\u00a0 They have walking trails and daily Mass in the chapel.\u00a0 Life &#8230;<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/back-from-retreat\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading &lsquo;Back From Retreat&rsquo; &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pMTPk-3j","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=205"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":216,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/205\/revisions\/216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.renewaloffaith.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}