Benedict to the Quakers

A happy interlude, albeit a working one, will be tomorrow, when I will have a contemplative day, mostly, facilitating a day-long session on Benedictine spirituality for a group of Quakers.

The group is enrolled in something called "On Being a Spiritual Nurturer" (run by the School of the Spirit) and it's what some would call a formation program for spiritual directors, except that the word director, which is already not too useful for Anglicans and Catholics and Methodists and U.C.C.-ers, is most definitely un-Quakerly.

So I'm one of the imported alleged experts in the program, and we're going to have a partly didactic, partly experiential time, complete with chanted Psalms (which I must practice) and a lunch with someone reading to us, various reflections on community and humility and hospitality, and, of course, lectio divina.

Since the day takes place at a retreat center in Durham, I will have a thoroughly Benedictine schedule and get up at an ungodly hour to drive up there.

And then I'll get back here in time for the beginning of Yom Kippur.