Retreat Narratives

By: Flewelling, William

In late 1995, with the advice of a friend, I arranged for a retreat with Sr. Cornelia Gust, a Benedictine Sister in Crookston MN. That first retreat came in January of 1996, a partial week set up to test the model. In response, I created a narrative tracing my way through the retreat, adding a selection of verse centered on the surroundings. I decided to repeat the experiment in the Summer of 1996, again in the Spring and then the Fall of 1997. In each case, I gathered the experience in what I called a Narrative along with a series of poems that responded to the overall experience. Together, I found them satisfying and worthwhile. About 30 years later, I reviewed those narratives and the poems and decided to put them together into this review. It happened that I moved in 1998 and tried another retreat in another venue and discovered the experience not nearly as helpful. I offer these four narratives and the associated verse as a testimony to what proved to be a very helpful integration of the spiritual life that I had been experiencing into a more recognized presence of mind and heart. I hope that the sum of those four retreats so long ago allows my readers to enter the dialogue inherent in the retreat experience. Sr. Cornelia and most of the sisters with whom I spent those weeks have died long since; these narratives give witness to the wealth they provided me.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0HCDK7RFX
• ISBN13: 9798823069557
• Release Date: July 2026
• Publisher: Authorhouse
• Length: 270 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"