WEEK 31

Jesus is with us.
The mystery of our everyday lives is that Jesus is with us, but we often don't recognize him. This week we will reflect upon his presence with us, as we continue to ask for the grace of joy with Jesus risen.

When Jesus appeared to two disciples on the road to Emmaus, after his resurrection, they didn't know he was with them. They were quite caught up in their discouragement. Good Friday had been devastating to the "hopes" they had. They were so down because their expectations had died on that Friday. And in their self-pity, there was no room in their imagination for the Good News that God was trying to reveal to them.

This week we want to enter into the road to Emmaus scene and recognize this pattern in our lives. We will try to notice, through our background reflections each day, the ways we get absorbed in problems, discouragements and worries and are unable to see Jesus with us.

We want to focus on two key parts of the story. Jesus makes the "breakthrough" in two ways.

He begins by "opening up the scriptures to them." This is very much what Jesus has been doing for us during this retreat. We have come to understand the story and to appreciate how he came to enter our lives completely. We now know the patterns we face of not wanting to embrace our lives completely, resisting our own diminishment and death. The temptations to riches, honors and pride abound. Jesus has been confronting our discouragement by revealing himself to us and inviting us to fall in love with him and his pattern of giving his life away. And, we have seen the "scandal of the cross" as his revelation that his gift of self is "for me." How often our hearts have burned within us!
Jesus then comes into their home with them and ritually gives them a way to recognize him and remember him. When he "took the bread," they must have seen him as the one who is there to nourish them with the daily bread that he promised would sustain them. When he "blessed it," they must have remembered how he gave thanks to God and placed his life in God's hands. When he "broke it," they knew he was the one whose life is broken open to reveal servant love to us. And, finally, when he "gave it to them," they knew who they were again - his disciples. Isn't this how we come to recognize him today?

Use the further helps to the right to get started with this week. Our joy with Jesus grows this week as we come to know, through his self revelation, in the way he gives himself to us in the breaking of bread, that he is alive and with us.
As we approach the end of this retreat, please fill out the anonymous form to the right, to give us feedback on the retreat and your interest in some more online help for prayer in the future. Thank you.
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WEEK 30

Jesus is Risen.
We knew from the beginning that God's victory over sin and death was complete. Now we come to know it through the experience of new life given to Jesus. For months now we have been given the grace to become intimate friends with Jesus, who has shown us his life and who he is for us. Now we simply pray to experience joy with Jesus in the gift of risen life he enjoys.

Jesus really died and his dead body was laid to rest in a tomb. The tomb is empty! It is forever a symbol of God's power to liberate - to set us free from the power of sin and death.

Jesus is alive! And he is forever alive, with a life beyond our imagining. For the next several weeks we want to enter into a taste of that new life. For in celebrating his liberation with Jesus, we grow in anticipation of the way that has been opened for this new life for us.

This week we contemplate, using the scriptures and our imagination, the experience for Jesus of being raised from the dead and his sharing of that experience with those he loved. What inexpressible joy Jesus must have had at experiencing Eternal Life, as a human being! Having just experienced the depths of our suffering and death, he now knows what it will be for us to experience the life of the resurrection.

And how he must have delighted in sharing that joy with those who suffered with him at the foot of the Cross! We can only imagine what joy filled the heart of Mary, his mother, when she saw him alive. Who could have experienced joy with Jesus more completely?

Finally, I contemplate our Risen Lord sharing his joy with me. Alive forever, and able to be with me at every moment, he still has holes in his hands and a gaping wound in his side. He still is the person whose life we have contemplated for months. The past and the present come together for us in this encounter with Jesus, risen.

All week, we will try to let ourselves walk around in the sense of Jesus, alive and with us. The more I let Jesus be alive and present in every event of my daily life, the more completely his resurrection confronts the fear, doubt, lack of courage, lack of hope I might experience.

Use the resources to the right to get started and enter the movements of the week more deeply. Our awareness of Jesus' standing with us in the most mundane and ordinary moments of our days will breathe the life of his Spirit into our hearts. And we will indeed share his joy.

WEEK 29

Jesus Dies for Us.
We pause this week to be with Jesus in death. There are few moments of intimacy greater than the privilege of being with someone we love, in the last hours of his or her life. We want to enter into the whole scene that surrounds his death and the treasured memories of the early Christian communities.

We also want to connect the meaning of Jesus' death for us, with the realities of our every day lives. We want to consciously move through our days with a heightened sense of awareness about how his death gives hope to us in our fidelity, our struggles each day.

We begin by prayerfully reading the accounts of the scene at Calvary, in Luke and John. We enter these scenes with our own imagination - where we choose to stand, where we look, what others are saying, what we feel. It is very important to imagine the scene of taking him down from the cross and, perhaps to join in the tender cleaning of his body and the sorrowful carrying it to the tomb. The reality of death is complete.

We then can let these images fill the background of each day. From the earliest conscious thoughts of our morning, to the final concluding thoughts of our day, we want to let ourselves be touched by the death of Jesus for us.

We can be especially conscious about four area of our lives, to which Jesus' dying brings life and freedom:

Our Sin. What we have done, what we are doing and what we are tempted to do to separate ourselves from God, as well as all the ways we fall short of self-sacrificing love.
Our Diminishment. Any of the ways we experience death: our growing older, our failing health, a physical or personal handicap, perhaps our own approaching death, experiences we have that are humiliating, our inadequacies, being rejected, financial difficulties, family stresses, a broken relationship, feelings of hopelessness, being disillusioned, the experience of depression, the loss of a loved one,
Difficulties with Others. All the conflicts in our day to day life with "difficult people" that leads to mutual suffering, hurts, and the breakdown of unity.
Sin in the World. The stories that fill the headlines and the day to day world around us: war, genocide, dehumanizing social structures, the unjust distribution of the the world's wealth and resources, political oppression, abortion, child abuse, the drug economy, all senseless violence, capitol punishment, bigotry, demagoguery, the destruction of our environment, dishonesty, infidelity, greed, consumerism.
Use the resources to the right to help with this wonderful week of being with Jesus in his death for us. Use the Stations of the Cross to enter the experience more personally.
Let us all give thanks each evening for the one who shows us the deepest meaning of the Good News - we are free from the power of sin and death over us. By entering our life and death completely, Jesus fell into the hands of a loving God, who raised him and us to life, redeeming all sin and death forever.

IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO SAY GOODBYE

NOTES OF DOUGLAS SMITH'S LECTURE

October 10 Ramada Suites. 8-3:30. Sponsored by Hospice of the Red River Valley

“You have been calling them patients, I call them teachers.” – Buddhist Monk

We learn what love is all about. We learn what life really means. We get nourished from the people that we serve. We live our life for others.

Daughter Marin.
When death hits home, we forget all that we have ever learned.

Marin was born with neurofibromatosis.

When someone has a combination of nerve pain, with tumor pain, Marin died with an immense amount of pain.

Dad, the other children point at me and call me names. Dad let go of my hand and walk behind me and don’t say anything, just listen. Watched daughter walk through gauntlet head hanging down. Knew that she would face those difficulties with an immense amount of difficulties. She did not go to a single child’s home after school.

If there was not someone who would be a recipient of her love, she contracted with a man to get her pregnant.

Children will love their mothers, even if they have large tumors. She had a vocation but she needed to make a living.

She bought her own home across from the school, successful in telemarketing. People did not see that terrible disease, a single mom, that other people labeled her for, but they did see her.

She wanted to have another child, and contracted with another man and the boy had neurofibromatosis. Marin had the loss of a leg and confined to a wheelchair.

Doug invited Marin and her new child with them. She lost more than a quarter of her skull. Marin interviewed perspective parents for her children. Her last night of consciousness was spent in a Hospice house, made to feel like a home. Last night of consciousness, she spent with her brother Joshua.

“Let's sing a song: “Angels we have heard on high” “Lift high the cross” Marin ended her life with courage as she had lived it. When death hits home we need to relearn some things. The importance of focusing on the strengths of the care recipient, rather than on our strengths as caregivers.

For Marin taking care of Trey was taking care of herself. Even Trey knew that. Trey would guide Marin’s hands as she changed the daughter. Wait until Marin was able to pour the cereal into the bowl.

Three strengths that I have as a caregiver:

Focus on person.
Variety of interests
Enjoy other people

You’re the one with the problems. I am the one with the solutions.

The problems we addressed on Tuesday are out of date on Wednesday.

Another problem is relationship dominance.

All of us have been going through little deaths, and through that we have been developing strength.

What strengths do they have and what coping style do they use.

The best that I can discover is where I need to go, from a problem assessment.
With a strength assessment, I have a map in which to get there. So that the person can have a familiarity with coping with this new problem as he had in the past.

Your strengths are certainly more valuable to me than mine are.

If humor is strength, capitalized on this strength.

If I am focusing on my strength, I can take away strength of theirs.

How come we are always feeding our strength instead of theirs.

The goal is to make the other person strong.

We are continuing reminding people of things that they are well aware of.

Many of things that we have listed as problems, not sure I they are problems at all.

Is it a problem to have lost a loved one and be depressed?
Is it a problem to be dying and be angry?

By problem assessment, we create problems.

Psychologists have had to bend or twist a problem in order to meet a DSMIII category.

I feel: empty, worthless, regretful, a burden, punished, life has been empty, dead inside, and nobody cares if I live or die.

Doug, we have been waiting for you. There was no other “we” in the room. I want to initiate you into the international brotherhood of magicians. Doug come closer. Closer Doug. Jack was looking through his eyes. Doug watch me disappear, and Jack died.

Allowed to experience a reality that is not my own.

Scott had Alzheimers. 40 in the unit. He was considered to be the most difficult of the 40. Smear his feces on the walls. This might be a strength in disguise. He can take shit and make art. Brought finger-paints, and did not reach in his diaper that day. Scott was an artist and just taking whatever he could find and worked with it.

Kira’s love was dance. Tamara would accomplish Kara on workshops. If you never dance again, you will lose two of your loves. Whenever you dance the dance of sadness, dance the dance of sadness you see in tomorrow, dance of joy.

Doug needs to process his healing through the death of Marin, and do so in workshops.
Teach himself while he trying to teach others.
*****
Anger as strength

“If you were doing your job I wouldn’t be in this bed”-To Nurse
“You are living in a world of illusion, would you grow up”-To Chaplain
Social worker wrote: My role is being yelled at.

If I take away her last way of asserting herself I have done a disservice to her.

This is the way that she has always been. This is how she copes. It somehow makes her feel strong.

The role of this work is not to make me feel comfortable; it is to make her feel strong.

Misconception of Kubler-Ross’ book. Kubler-Ross is not to move people towards acceptance. You can’t be at A all of the time and Z all of the time and go back and forth.

If other people would just get to know our children…

We say later, we would be able to give our children the attention that they deserve.

Imagine something that we don’t love is trying to get our attention like death. Not now in many forms.

You qualify for Hospice at 6 months. The median is 17 days.

I cannot simultaneously focus on life and focus on death.
Don’t you dare tell me that I am not mature. I need to respect the choice: they don’t want to talk about it.

I do not need to know the reason, but I do need to respect the choice.

Doug we know that Tom is doing but we don’t know if he can handle it.
All as I leave this room, and go one at a time and express how you would feel if you were in this bed. If after that discussion, I will honor what you have decided, but first put yourself in that bed.

Families often want to talk about it, but they don’t know how.

Often we have Physicians in denial. “If I knew that Tom wanted to talk to you about this, would you want me to tell you?” Do you think that Tom wants to talk about it? I am not sure but maybe you should ask Tom.

*****
Giving your current capabilities, how would you want to spend your time?

****
Something is very wrong about our current care plans.

We treat people merely as a set of problems.

If I can make my care plan for the patient, the same as my care plan for myself.

Even if it is unrealistic, it is still their care plan.

If I can’t get her to Hawaii, I need to bring a little Hawaii to her.

Whenever I enter her room I am going to say Aloha.

Sit around the campfire and tell his last story and sip a beer. Set a date and called relatives, built a fire in the fireplace, brother brought a beer and a straw, sipped this beer.

Where are your measurable outcomes and where is your quality improvement.
You take whatever they say and divide it into 5 measurable outcomes

Everything we are asked to do we can do a slight shift, instead of having unconditional positive regard for the commission we have it for the patient, and bend it for the patient, because they don’t fit forms. We are closer to meeting them, and less likely to be cited.

W start out with what we believe to be a good care plan. “You don’t have this” SO we add another page, and then they site us for inconsistencies.

You cannot find a single example in the Joint Commission manual around problems. We are supposed to be measuring, NEEDS CONCERNS EXPECTATIONS AND PRIORITIES. And even this individuals.

Each institution sees thee as problems. We are claiming to deliver something that we can never deliver.

Were people not sharing their needs, concerns, expectations and priorities?

GRIEVING

Given our relationship, ex Chaplain, what is the best thing that can come from that relationship? However a person answers that question is there care plan.

FANTASY: I need Michael, my brother who died back. I need to go on a canoe trip, I am a workaholic. The counselor said lets try. The counselor said I don’t care what it takes, but somehow take off two months.

First month build a canoe entirely from scratch, and on each side put the name Michael, take that canoe up to Ely MN. Each evening write a letter to your son and two you plan on relining your priories from now on. Sometimes we might have to be quite creative, address it and measure our effectiveness.

FANTASY DATES

Marin decided that she wanted to go to Target.
1. Have you even noticed that nobody looks out of place? Some people are wearing pajamas, and other people dressed to the hilt, I think that I might be able to blend in at Target.
2. It is an ideal place for a mother to go. Clothes for me, for Tray, for Videos
3. Maren wanted to feel normal. What is more normal than going to Target?

Guidelines for guided imagery.

Anything that is powerful can go in to directions, positive or negative.

1. Always give the client an overview of where you are planning on going.
2. For some people even closing their eyes may not be a good thing.
3. Use multiple senses whenever possible.
4. Use gender neutral words
5. Focusing on the client’s resources rather than mine. If I want to relax me and imaging myself on a beach with palm trees swaying in the wind. And imagine my breathing to gentle waves coming in and going out, Mildred has a lot of anxiety, imagine yourself on this beach and march your breath, didn’t now Mildred, didn’t know that she didn’t’ know how to swim. Hardly relieving her anxiety. Early on in her relationship. Mildred is there a day that you might remember when you felt relaxed and at peace. I remember the day that the last child went home. Went to a bed and breakfast and read a book that she has been wanting to read for months. One page after another, one page after another. Mildred can go back to her bed and breathe whenever she likes.

We need plenty of time to process where she wanted to go. Doesn’t work as well in a group setting.

Image of God Imagery

People know the answers to their own questions.

What is my purpose now?

This doctor does not know how to cure anything, but knows how to answer any question.

Coming into that space is this person, and now you are going to ask your question

In your space ask the question and the doctor says. They are able to reject from someone who is not able to be overloaded.

In your past, when you have had a special need, is there anyone who has had the answer. This time ask your mom. If the mom does not have the answer don’t give up. Wait a minute, maybe they both had the answer, and the answer is there is no answer. No matter what happens I have something to work with.

Releasing your loved one.

How can I let go? Guided imagery has three people, you will be one, your wife another, and this loving person that you can ever imagine will come to you Coming over the horizon is this loving person, behind is a line of people disappearing over the horizon into a warm light. I want you to look into the eyes of the loving person. Arms are stretched out toward you. And in your arms carrying someone who has died Recall the memories. Look up at the loving person, and the arms are not for you but hey are for the friend that you are carrying, put your arms into. Loving person takes your friend and places in the line of people and passes it into the light, and the loving person says thank you, and you feel nice and safe and it is ok to go on

Maren said Nurse is using guided imagery from a book that you wrote!

Camp Courageous-Assistant Director, Steven and Jennifer is the dad of Maren’s children. They are able to get the invaluable education that others aren’t able to get.

One of the first things the new family would do is go to Disney world. In guided imagery Maren was able to look over their shoulders on the rides at Disney world.

ANEMNESIS

In remembering something from the past, in the present we make it present.


Sometimes this is used in the prayer of consecration, when the elements are transformed, we make it present. The doctrine of the Real Presence: “really, really, present.”

That is what love really means.
Something in your past that you are proud and which you experienced love.

Do in remembrance of me

Life review with these two words: Proud, Love

What one positive memory comes to mind when you were five or six years old.

Amanda could not erase but could get unstuck.

Linda, age 44, her illness had something to do with things that she had been carrying for a long time unrelated to anything that we are talking about, abused by male babysitter. Since then I have only shared with my husband.

Mother to children: I want you to do something in your minds that will end the cycle of child abuse.


We want to emphasis with people the positive. Is there anything in your past that has ahold of you right now that you would like to let go.

We can do life reviews through photographs. A sign under each photograph that says “Ask me.”

What was important about the 79’s and 89’s what was not important about the 60’s and 50’s. How come your brother is not there?

We can do life review with people that are non-responsive.

A book on Albert’s bedside table of someone who is non-responsive. ‘The history of black baseball. Albert’s eyes were not open, and Albert said Um. Albert raised his fingers 3 times. On page 33 was Albert nicknamed speedball. “Do you know Satchell Page”, Albert’s eyes opened.

Who are you are what makes you different from everyone else.


Labels. Where would you go to find peace?

Put a book, representing your beliefs or values.

How would you physically represent the glue that is holding you together?

Sometimes the language can be quite unusual.

“Stormies” is like a good church:
Wear what I want
Learn something about another, and they learn about me.
If you break a few rules, and if you break them, you get kicked out. Everyone pretends to follow the rules in church

Sufi tradition. Christian tradition, using the same words. Jump into the language and rock back and forth, arm and arm.

Love the other person for who they are.

They’ll know we are Christians by our love. Don’t tell me the words until you first tell me what they mean. When we live them, people will see it and they will ask.

Where do you get the strength? We get in trouble when we get into the issue without being invited yet.


Clinical Distance has been overdone. Kitchen Table Wisdom. Rachael Naomi Remmen. It is hard to touch someone with our vulnerability, unless we reveal our own.

We cannot understand what someone else is going through.

Using people for our own therapy.

Whenever we are sharing our wound, it is for our mutual benefit.

I do not change another person.

What we do as helpers to represent ourselves as real human beings. I don’t know your way, I can’t know your way.

You can use the old form in a new way. Let’s get as many problems on the form. Now let’s take this same information, but let’s put it into a different form, in the form of a resume.
All of a sudden using the problem assessment form to get at the strengths.




Doug, you are looking at your gift, go sell it. No matter how difficult things seem to you right now, there are strengths.

Touglen, with each in breath, I breathe in their pain and suffering

People who have gone through a similar loss.

Tonglen is the spiritual equivalent of a good spiritual exercise. We are spent but we are energized in the spending. View yourselves not as a receptacle but as a channel, if you are getting stuck.

A Shoshone technique. Nasasuqui. You reverse the process and your blow out the negative.

The difference between my world and the world of my grandparents, are that we are aware of the suffering that is going on in our planet.

Giving someone permission to die.

Only you will know if the timing is right for you.

Have we expressed our love?

Anything that is in the handouts feels free to use. There is no copyright.

Service of remembrance.

Offer not only a funeral service, but 3 months later, have a service of remembrance.
Compromise, according to the funeral director, the church, planned during a time of numbness and confusion. It was there family son and they didn’t sing it.

PEOPLE THAT WE CAN’T HELP – PEOPLE THAT DON’T WANT OR NEED US

Wilma, you may be good with other people, but you are not with me! Called up Doug, and you make sure that we will never see one another again because she does not listen. Wilma does not go back to that house.

Timothy – Paul as a feeling that he is not going to make it thought the winter. Timothy will you do your best to come before winter.

Messages of regret-I didn’t think that mom would go so quickly. There wasn’t a next visit.

Louis Bascolia: Things you wouldn’t do. Thought you would kill me ,but you didn’t. I thought you said that you would say I told you so. Remember when I flirted with all the guys to make you jealous and leave me but you didn’t.

Come before winter.

Clyde was very stoic. She seemed to alternate between times of staying to be alive, I t is Ok to let go. In recent years there had been a lot of distancing. Could there be something unfinished in your relationship. Said I love you, she took three breaths and dead. Clyde was convinced that those three breaths stood for three words for him.

I was in the room..

Come before Winter. It is in each one of our homes. Sometimes these opportunities that we have today, may not be here tomorrow.

We all know what we need to do and who we need to do it with.

WEEK 28

The photo was taken in the Jesuit chapel at the University of Central American in San Salvador, El Salvador. This is the Jesuit community whose members were brutally assassinated, along with their housekeeper and her daughter. This photo is one of the stations of the cross in the chapel showing, in powerful drawings, the images of the unjust torture of innocents.
(To see the full El Salvador Stations of the Cross, click here.)

Throughout the centuries, the account of the passion of Jesus has been told to help believers understand the mystery of suffering and how Jesus' surrender defeats the power of sin and death.

At this point in our retreat, we are prepared to contemplate, in detail, the passion of Jesus. Our desire is to enter into the gospel story and to be there with Jesus. We want to be touched by the power of this drama. The one we love, and want so much to be with, invites us into his story to experience his suffering, with him. The depth of our compassion for him leads to an even deeper intimacy.

Take each part of the story and experience its meaning. The garden struggle to surrender; the betrayal, the arrest and abandonment by his disciples; the trials; the mockery, the crowning with thorns, the beating, and the way of the cross are scenes we want to become very much a part of our consciousness this week.

Throughout each day this week, we want to know the profound love of Jesus for us. As we go through the ordinary struggles of living, and face the most difficult challenges of our lives, we want to experience Jesus' solidarity with us. As we contemplate upon the meaning of his passion, we want to see his solidarity with all who have, are and ever will suffer.

Use the resources to the right to get started, and enter these reflections more deeply. We have added an online Stations of the Cross, to offer this powerful centuries old devotion as a resource for our journey this week and next week.

Every night, let us give thanks for the graces we receive by walking through our lives more conscious of the passionate love of Jesus for us.

WEEK 27

Jesus Gives Us His Body and Blood,
as Food and as Example.
This week we come to see and experience the ritual culmination of what Jesus' life has been about and what it will forever mean. For the one accused of "eating and drinking with sinners," this is his last supper on earth. This meal represents a way for us to remember and celebrate who he is for us. It is a covenant in his love that both nourishes us for our mission, as it gives us the example of servant love that marks our identity.

This week we go there to that scene to watch and listen. We become a part of the experience, as a person in the scene. Like participants in the annual Passover memorial of the liberation from slavery in Egypt, we enter this scene as though it was happening to us.

Jesus takes his life in his hands and gives it to us. So that we will never forget the meaning of his life for us, the bread of this meal is his body - taken, blessed, broken and given. The wine is his blood - poured out for the forgiveness of our sins. When he says, "do this and remember me," we know he wants us to never forget, but we also know he is calling us to be taken, blessed, broken and given, that our lives might be poured out in service of others.

When he takes off his outer garment and wraps a towel around his waist, we can sense Jesus knows the time has come for him to fulfill his mission. As we let him wash our feet, the whole of our retreat, up to now, is summed up in this sign of his love for us. Our prayer to be with him in his mission is now granted, as he lovingly gives us our mission in this example of his servant love. With him, we have become transformed - "for others" in the same way he is for us.

Throughout this week, from morning to night, in all the background times, the mystery of what it means to be broken and given, to be poured out in service to others, comes alive in our thinking, desiring and our gestures.

Use the helps to the right. We pray to simply be with Jesus - so we might not miss the full power of his gift to us, so we can let it penetrate our hearts all week.