Retreat #1

Today was my first retreat day that I have been able to do as part of my clergy training.  The instructions we are given are pretty vague.  The only thing I knew I had to do was morning devotionals, prayer at each meal, and a full druidic right.  There is nothing about how long a “day” is, or what to do when we are not doing any of the above.  As I was thinking about what I would do, it occurred to me that in a lot of ways every day for me right now is a retreat day.  I am on summer vacation and I am not currently working.  So I stay at home, do some chores each day and do work for my Clergy training.  I do morning devotionals each day, and often say prayer over meals (though not as consistently as I should).  I don’t do a full druidic rite each day however.  In the end I decided that I would cut myself off from all electronics for the day.  No phone and no computer.  I also decided I would keep myself to the room where we have our alters and which also functions as a guest room. 

                I started the day off with morning devotionals and meditation.  I got very deep and had a nice Spirit walk but nothing of great import was passed on to me.  It was more like a spiritual recharging and resting.  After that it was breakfast and prayers to the ancestors, offering a bit of the breakfast to them. I used the prayer suggested to us, but I didn’t really care for the way it was written.  I then set to organizing the alter room.  It was beginning to be used for storage which really it shouldn’t be.  I got rid of a lot of junk and made it much more comfortable.  I then set to reading and writing.  I rewrote the prayer to the ancestors to say over meals to be more to my liking.  I also wrote an invocation to Airmed for the upcoming summer solstice ritual.  I didn’t get one done for Miach just yet.  Not sure how to go about that considering in the tale he’s killed.  Well we offer and invoke our dead relatives, why not a god? 

                I did a lot of reading in Serith’s book “a book of pagan prayers”.  This helped me to write the invocation.  I also spent some time just doing some plain old thinking.  I started to get anxious as the day wore on however and found it difficult to sit.  At around 4 I did my full ritual of blessing.  During the divination phase I asked these questions; is the offering accepted, what is the nature of the blessing, and what do I need to be aware of?  To the first question I received Duir, to the second I received Emancholl, and the third I received Or.  My interpretation is that the offerings were accepted, that I will be challenged with an illness in some way, and that I need to be more aware of my money.  Not really what I was hoping for, as I was already challenged with illness this winter, and not looking forward to doing that again, then again, it could be an illness of someone else such as a friend or child.  Time will tell.