Midyear Retreat

Our second retreat of the year (July 30-August 2) focused on the concept of kinship as expressed by Fr. Greg Boyle* in his interview with Krista Tippett on her podcast show On Being.* Retreats being about getting away from the world, I'm not going to give you a full account of what we did. I'll tell you that we did this retreat together with the JVs from Tacna. I'll tell you that one of the strengths of doing a joint retreat is that we could learn from each other's differing JV realities. I'll tell you that we all had stomach issues. And I'll share this quote with you, that for me sums up the key takeaway of the retreat:

“Jesus, with God, imagined a circle of compassion and imagined no one standing outside of it. Yet many do stand outside the circle. And so, it is outside the circle where Jesus chooses to situate himself, as much geographically as spiritually. He stands with the leper, the outcast, the public sinner, and Carlos until the prevailing culture – which aggressively shames, humiliates and isolates the outcast – welcomes the outsider in. If our goal was to create a community of kinship such that God would recognize it, then we would no longer be promoting justice, we would be celebrating it. The popular bumper sticker announces: “No Justice, No Peace.” I believe the stance of Jesus announced: “No Kinship, No Justice.” For Jesus seemed to hold no interest in taking the right stand on issues, but wanted to simply stand in the right place. He didn't fight for the rights of the leper, he touched the leper. He didn't seek equality for the tax collector, he ate with him. He didn't insist on improved conditions for the prisoner – he said, simply, “I was in prison.”

-Fr. Gregory J. Boyle, SJ The Voice of those who Sing

Yeah I have a cowboy hat. You know you jealous.

I'll also share this picture with you.

*I won't go into who Fr. Boyle is because he wasn't the focus of our retreat, kinship was. If you want to know more about who he is, type his name into the box on this FANCY NEW WEBSITE I just discovered and hit enter. You'll find all sorts of stuff about him.

*If you want to hear the full podcast (which I recommend), click HERE.