Retreat

Laurie is going on retreat tomorrow.

In high school, we used to have them every single year. We would overnight in a different retreat house, the priest would be different and so were the ultimate message they wanted us to learn. So, each year, you never knew what "kind" of a retreat it was going to be.

There were the crying ones where they guilt you as soon as you get there and make you realize you're such a bad, ungrateful, and insignificant person and you're so lucky God loves you still, and then,there were the ones where you are welcomed with open arms. You get there, and you are you, and God sees who you are entirely, and loves you so, so, so much and is so happy that you came for a nice long visit with him.

They all end up the same way of course, it’s the delivery that is different. You leave the place and you're happy, you feel at peace, you are thankful for everyone and everything, and you go home behaving like a perfect angel...for at least a couple of days.

So basically, what I'm saying is, Laurie, when you get home, can you please make me Choco-hot-o-pots?

he he he he...

Devil-woman.

For some reason, a lot of my memories about retreats involve food. I don't know whether they thought a well nourished body makes for a well nourished soul or that the constant internal struggle involved in the process made people hungry. Whatever the case, there was always, always, food around.

The places we used to stay in had five different meal times. Breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, merienda, dinner, then, in case you get hungry after dinner, they put out mini snacks and hot water with Milo or instant coffee in a corner outside the dorms.

This is where I learned to appreciate really good Batangas Coffee. The barako kind. Dark back, sweet smelling, no milk added and hot hot hot. I can see it now, on the tables in the retreat houses. One entire stainless steel kettle, just for you. Mmmmm.

Add to all of that, the massive amount of snacks everyone else brings to the retreat. Cookies, chocolates, brownies, cheese curls, Pringles and Jack and Jill Chippy. All of which we would eat in the dorms despite the strict prohibition against food in the sleeping areas.

It’s a good thing we were all teenagers and had hyper metabolisms. I had just one retreat in college, and I came home after three days three pounds heavier.

There were and are of course, always Ghost stories which abound in the retreat homes. It may be because the places are all old, or maybe it is because of the hundreds and hundreds of the weeping repentants who go through these places, whose teenaged sobs echo silently in the night, or maybe it is because of the abnormal silence of reflection…the unease of staying in a strange place, or just the lack of normal sounds we are so used to hearing, like the humming of the refrigerator, the lack of radios blaring nor the ever present and constant chatter of television shows.

Whatever the cause, you could feel it… just as the sun goes down. A sudden eerie goose-pimply feeling…and suddenly, you can’t go the bathroom without dreading that you may see or hear something there. Every flittering bit of light, any sudden flutter of the curtains, causes you to have a strange feeling of sourness in your stomach, a knot like tightening in your chest, and a chilly coldness right at the back or your neck.

One time I was in Tagaytay in a retreat house right on top a very high cliff. The dorm we had was basically a large room where plywood walls separated rows of cubicles. The top couple of feet from the ceiling remained open. In the middle of the room was a wide hallway. It separated the four rows of cubicles into two sides. The backs of the cubicles formed two solid walls running the entire length of the hallway.

The first night was uneventful, a trifle quiet but no biggie. The second night though, was another matter. I suddenly awoke in the middle of the night. I heard a clunking grating sound which was slowly going back and forth through the length of the hall. It was a grinding, stumbling, creaking sound. I was on the top bunk and I thought of maybe just sitting up and peering down through the darkness to see what it was, but then again, my waist wouldn’t bend, so I decided… maybe not.

So I lay on the bed, breathing weirdly as silently and as normally as I could. I hear the dragging go back and forth, up and down, the hallway, and back again. It moves very slowly, like a night watchman walking up and down his post. Creeking, stumbling, swishing. I lay there all night, forcing my eyes shut. I would hold my breath whenever the sound would pause a bit. I didn’t want to see it. Nope, nope. I just kept on pretending I was sound asleep…trying to convince myself I wasn’t hearing a thing.

Maybe an hour or so after, when the sun started shining through the windows, and the room was filled with enough light, I was finally able to gather up my courage to look down at the hall. And just at the moment I was finally able to tell myself nothing happened in the night someone fearfully asked “did anyone else hear that?”

Everyone did, and like me, everyone tried to ignore it the best we could . We all laid as silently as possible, all awake hearing the stumbling sound go back and forth the hallway.

We never did find out what it was. The next night we never heard a thing.

There were more pleasant memories that happened during retreats too. My favorite retreat was during my third year in high school. It was the year when my barkada encompassed about one third of the classroom. We were all chummy and were very, very close.

some of us

We went to Antipolo, in a monastery, along with our favorite theology advisor, Sister Erlinda. She who was the most worldly of all the nuns I have met. She was pretty, and giddy, and according to her, the belle of the ball when she was younger. She professed she was vain, and had all the boys following her around. Her family had laughed at her when she told them she was going to be a nun. They couldn’t believe it. Nor could the droves of boys who paid court to her. According to her, her suitors could not stop themselves from barging into the convent in order to try to convince her to change her mind.

As she entered her novitiate, She told us she bought a years supply of Ivory soap for her face. At the time, Ivory could only be bought in Cash and Carry. It was imported and came in double bars stuck together. They were required to bring a years supply of basic needs for their year’s seclusion during the first year of her training. Little did she know that the supplies that they were required to bring were communal. She said she never saw one bar of that soap again. It was probably intentional though, they wanted to train the women out of their personal vanities. She had cried buckets when they cut her long silky black hair off. She hated the nun who “viciously” chopped off her hair and couldn’t make herself forgive the nun for ever so long.

She was a gentle and sweet and she really understood why we were the way we were. I think her girlishness was so much a part of her that you saw her before you realize she had a habit on. Unlike other nuns whose habits identify who they are and close contact is needed before you see the different personalities within.

Anyway, it was the first time we were in a monastery. There were all these monks and a lot of seminarians who went about with hooded cloaks and rope belts, and silently went throughout their day with bowed heads.

Side: I’m really glad I came from a coed grade school, where I was grew up with the same boys year after year. Boys were not alien to me. My classmates in high school, who spent their entire lives separated from boys went gaga at sight of a male figure. Once I saw a group go crazy over the sight of a guy, the top of whose head ( the top mind you ) they spotted from four floors up. They craned their heads from the windows all excitedly.

It was weird.

So we were in this monastery. And there was this one monk whose bowed head showed his very very red lips. That’s all you could see. Just his lips. He drove the girls mad. Even as she listened to the giddiness of her girls, Sister Erlinda knew exactly what was bothering them “the brother with the red, red lips?” she asked, as she had noticed him earlier. The girls drove him mad too, and not in a good way. They would drop pens and pencils just in front of him as he passed by. Just so they could bend down and peer up at his bowed head

Once, he was in the canteen standing on one side of the door with a jug of water. His role was kind of like a manual water fountain, silently pouring water into glasses that were presented to him for refills. The girls almost drowned themselves trying to chug down their water so they could get another look at him. I mean really… I think the poor boy had to fill up his jug 5 or 6 times during the course of a mid morning snack.

I think that was the last straw though. After that, the monks sent him to kitchen duty and confined him to where he was hidden from the retreatants. He had apparently begged the elder monks to be relieved of the duty, and the monks finally relented and assigned him another post. He was too much of a distraction anyway.

The monks were a strange species to us. It was hard to conceive that they kept themselves secluded and silent and constantly in prayer.

I remember that this was precisely the time for the coup d' etat near the Camelot hotel. The one that nearly succeeded? A few of the parents went up all the way to Antipolo to pick some of the kids up. It was at a time when such revolts were still foreign to us, and as such, instilled a lot of insecurity and dread. We were in the big lecture hall room and the stress and fear level was high. Monsignor Paloma quit talking about spiritual matters and dealt with what was concerning us at the moment.

I remember him saying very calmly. “Ladies, there is no need to worry, you are at the safest place you can be. If danger comes, the brothers and I are here. We will not let anyone harm you; we will stake our lives for you because it is our duty to God. ”

It was such a nice chivalrous statement. After all who can you trust more than brothers in a monastery?

Very much knights in shining armor and evokes images of the crusades, and medieval times. Don’t you think?

So very noble…

And to a gaggle of sixteen year olds, it was sooo damned cool.

There are other stories of course, but I think I’ll save it for next time.

Laurie, I hope you’re retreat is fruitful...

And in case you’re feeling angelic when you come home…

Choco-hot-o-pots?