{"id":569,"date":"2017-05-06T15:33:12","date_gmt":"2017-05-06T19:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/?p=569"},"modified":"2017-05-06T15:33:12","modified_gmt":"2017-05-06T19:33:12","slug":"168-my-first-personal-annual-spiritual-retreat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/?p=569","title":{"rendered":"168. My First Personal Annual Spiritual Retreat"},"content":{"rendered":"

Back in February, a friend pointed me to an exercise where you visualize what you’d like your life to be like 10 years in the future. You try to describe a typical day in great detail.<\/p>\n

Somewhat to my surprise, Future Sondy was booking her Annual Personal Spiritual Retreat on the Isle of Iona for that springtime! In other years, she’d gone to places like Prince Edward Island and Mont St. Michel.<\/p>\n

I got to thinking that Present Sondy should start this habit! But I don’t have any money for a fabulous place like that. But I realized that my own home is a nice place for a retreat. After all, I’ve got a lake view. So I looked on the library schedule for a time when I could take a week off, and chose the first week of May.<\/p>\n

It’s been lovely, if not as peaceful as the Isle of Iona would be!<\/p>\n

I did take some time for cleaning – hard to avoid if you’re staying home. But these last two days, I’m taking a 48-Hour Book Challenge and getting lots of books read and reviews written.<\/p>\n

I also worked on Project 52<\/a>, and got this week’s post done in one day, instead of stretching it out over three or four posts. And the week I finished was about the year when my divorce was finally final. And that felt good.<\/p>\n

Then I found this verse. With that timing – finishing thinking through the hard years – I’d like to take this as my theme for the year – until my next personal spiritual retreat.<\/p>\n

Song of Solomon 2:10-12<\/p>\n

My beloved spoke and said to me,
\n“Arise, my darling,
\nmy beautiful one, come with me.
\nSee! The winter is past;
\nthe rains are over and gone.
\nFlowers appear on the earth;
\nthe season of singing has come.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s to a season of singing!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Back in February, a friend pointed me to an exercise where you visualize what you’d like your life to be like 10 years in the future. You try to describe a typical day in great detail. Somewhat to my surprise, Future Sondy was booking her Annual Personal Spiritual Retreat on the Isle of Iona for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[9,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=569"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":570,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/569\/revisions\/570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sonderbooks.com\/sonderblessings\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}