Day One - London, 2 March 2010

St. Simeon Styletes sitting on his pillar.

How does one begin a retreat, or a spiritual quest?  When I made my new situation in life (being laid off from my job of some 24 years) known to close friends, almost universally they had the same advice.  "Go away," each one of them said.  "You have been given the gift of time."  The going away part proved to be relatively simple - it was the time part - that gift of time - that proved to be somewhat difficult.  How shall I spend the time?  It needed to have an intentional spiritual thrust to it, and my instinct was to go to Christ in the Desert, or something like that, and lay low and pray.

I wrote to a friend in England, and asked his advice.  Aside from the suggestion to go to Iona (which seemed way impossible) his alternatives were all urban.  So as I type this I am aware of the comings and goings of the Docklands Light Rail (DLR) system directly facing my window.  Around the calm garden and chapel of the Royal Foundation of Saint Katharine's are the working parts of this city, from the Canary Wharf developments, to the old brick dock buildings now housing other concerns.  This may not be a desert that Simeon Styletes would have appreciated, but it is an oasis in the setting like the one in which I try to do ministry.

It was ordinary things that got me here.  Seat 24J on a United 777, and an Express pass to Paddington Station and some dealings with the Circle Line on the London Underground.  As I walked under railway bridges, and between cars (I always looking the wrong way) suddenly I came on St. Katharine's, my urban wilderness.  Warmly greeted and shown to my "flat", I was informed that Evening Prayer was at 5:15.  So I went, and gathered with other clergy as we said the prayers, laying aside the C of E's Common Worship - Daily Prayer, to use a Roman breviary that was pronounced "not as wordy".  I had a hard time with my "hard 'r's'", as the British around me elegantly proclaimed the prayers.  It was hard not to fall into their cadence and pronunciation.  I thought of Arthur and the lady at Collins Street Bakery, "you playin' with me boy!?"  They wanted to know all about me,  did I know Alan Jones (from a former classmate),  had I done the Labyrinth at Grace Cathedral, which parish did I serve, and had I been to Sausalito?  All very human and ordinary stuff.  It was the prayers that led me beyond myself into the faith and customs that deeply united us.  I was sad when the office ended.

The chapel at St. Katharines

Now came the hard part - eating in England.  Trekked over to a restaurant called La Figa, which sits in a rather utilitarian manner on the ground floor of a residential block (two towers) called the Mosaic.  It was nominally Italian, although all the waiters spoke Italian, but the English with their boiling pot of water were there - this was not an Italian restaurant.  There was a little boy, quite cute actually, whose parents let him run around the space unattended and screaming.  The hard surfaces only made his and my plight all the worse.  I thought on St. Anthony and his temptations.  Was it my Großpapa who said, "the reason God made babies so cute is so that we wouldn't kill them."?  Right now I am in agreement.

So, I am both in and out of the desert, but am sufficiently alone to feel a tinge of loneliness, and spiritual purpose.  Tomorrow will bring other aspects to my search.