Sometimes the scariest trip is the trip you make alone. Alone, in a room, no props, no safety net. Stripped of all your toys, your familiar things. Everything taken away, and all that is left is you and God.

That’s all there ever was anyway.

Everything we do, we buy, we read, we are, is an escape from God. We are constantly filling our heads with noise so we can’t hear the still small voice that is God.

I’m doing it now. I’m afraid of the silence. When is the next part of the retreat? Where is it? What if I need something? Where’s my map? Where’s my schedule?

I want to catalogue this experience. I want to lay out words like breadcrumbs so I can find my way back. But what am I finding my way back to? Am I finding my way back to where I was before the retreat? Or am I leaving a trail so I can find my way back to God?

Breadcrumb trails work both ways.

Words are my lifeline. I’m afraid of silence. I’m not talking, and I don’t have anything on – no podcast, no music. I’ve turned off my phone. I just remembered to turn off my wireless signal on my Kindle.

I did notice there is wireless here for the guests. I did try it. I admit it. I don’t have the password. This is a good thing. Temptation, thy name is the internet.

So, silence. Am I obeying the rules? We can have our journals so we can write. I have made a commitment to not send anything out (no posts) and not take anything in (no email, no Facebook). So writing on my Kindle – is that cheating?

Words are Jesus’ way in for me. And beads. And painting. And music, dance, yoga. He isn’t picky. He wants it all. But I like words. I’ve used them for many years. And he is the Word made flesh after all.

I’m afraid. The first retreat I went on in my adult life, I got woken up in the middle of the night to have a chapel call, only I didn’t know that was what it was. It was strange. It was beautiful. It resulted in the diaconal discernment program I was in being put on hold. I came back a little more Pentecostal than the Episcopal priest could handle. I was made to feel that I was being done a favor by the program being put on hold. It could have been stopped forever. Once you get told “no,” there is no going back.

The second retreat after that resulted in me writing a post about how I believe that we as a church are doing everything wrong. Jesus didn’t come to create an organization with denominations and hierarchies and committees. He didn’t want us to have ministers separate from lay. We are all ministers. We are all the body of Christ. That post got me in trouble with the priest and the head of the pastoral care committee. They were angry and hurt. They took it personally. I’ve not been back to church at all since then.

But I’ve not left God.

I’m wandering in the wilderness. I’ve left a ritual heavy church, where moment to moment you know what is going to happen next. There’s a program. There’s a script.

Now I’m adrift, at sea. And Jesus is standing twenty feet away, his feet lapped by the waves, saying “Follow me.”

(Written 9-13-13, 8pm, at the beginning of a 26 hour silent retreat.)