(photo from 2009 retreat)
Each spring the women of Lake Murray Community Church trek up the mountain to my own neck o' the woods for our Women's Retreat at the Pine Valley Bible Conference Center (a mere two miles from our home and my daughter's employer). We start on Friday night with dinner together and games, enjoy a speaker, an extended quiet time, and much craft and free time on Saturday, and a lovely worship service and Communion on Sunday before packing up at noon and often meeting for lunch at Major's Diner in our town before the rest of the women wend their way back down the mountain and I remain atop the mountain, wishing the retreat lasted at least a full week.
Usually we retreat in March, but this year an early Easter moved us into April, and thus I was jotting NaPoWriMo poems while listening to the speaker. I'll share Friday night's offering here, and the other day's poems in subsequent posts. I'm still behind in my goal of composing a poem a day--but only by four poems or so (although the cinquain I just composed as an example for my 4th-6th grade poetry class lesson may help make up the difference).
So here's Friday's effort, written as the women gathered to eat salad and sandwiches for dinner and as we started the lovely women's worship--which I think sounds positively angelic as we sing.
Retreat 2010The chatter of women
rise in laughter,
drop to near-whisper
in more private conversations.
Greetings spring across the hall--
joyous echoes as friends
welcome and are welcomed,
both old and new--
"one is silver and the other gold,"
as the childhood song goes.
Arms encircle,
holding each other close to our hearts.
His Love weaves lives together,
warp and weft entwined--
treasured.
Voices harmonize in worship,
song of sopranos and altos swirling upward--
like curls of incense rising to heaven,
seamlessly blending with the holy chorus
of the angels.
Copyright Susanne Barrett
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