Captain’s Log Star Date September 23-25-22
I suppose the idea was mine but the operation was cooperative and crewed by Marc, Charlie, Patrick and Jude a superb back-up team of Barbara, Collette, and Gillian in the Guest office and Leanne promoting the venture on the website. With images produced by Nasa, ESA and the Open University we were prepared to go ‘to Infinity and Beyond’.
The Cosmology Retreat was one of CR’s experimental retreats aimed at finding new ways to explore spiritual questions and to attract new retreatants. I worried quite a bit about this experiment. I wanted to do it. I was a child of the first space age. Flash Gordon and Dan Dare were my heroes. I was a schoolboy when the Sputnik went up and a teenager when the first man went into space. However I was slow to get my act together and computer difficulties threatened to leave the magnificent images of planets, galaxies and nebulae to our imaginations.
But it was ‘alright on the night’ and I think that everyone enjoyed and benefited from the experience. It was a pleasure to have such a talented group of the younger members of the Community on board ( I was tempted to call them Space Cadets – I will have to give up reading the comics). Patrick was unable to deliver his address but produced a masterpiece for the participants to read. All the retreatants expressed their gratitude for the devotional liturgy produced by Charlie and Jude. This was Benediction with scripture and litanies drawing us to adoration of the Creator of whom the psalms say ‘the heavens declare the glory of God’. Marc led the final discussion with a moving testimony of his own journey and drew the retreat to a close by leading us in the hymn: O Lord my God when I in awesome wonder…’
Then sings my soul, my Saviour God to Thee, ‘How great Thou art!’
Fr John CR