Teaching Listening to the SONG of Life
2.3 Before Teaching Listening to the SONG of Life: Two Decades of Planting Seeds
Two stories, from pre- and post-tenure time periods, illustrate how “planting seeds“ eventually sprouted into the Listening to the SONG of Life course.
Pre-tenure, I found myself navigating winding mountainous roadways from the driver’s seat of a 1976 Chevy Nova. With navigational assistance from my partner, we found our campsite among the sweet-smelling woodlands of pine, oak, and maple. Looking across the campsite at my partner’s growing abdomen, I felt grateful for the new life growing within her as I reflected on my inner growth. One book I read on that campout significantly nurtured my inner growth, The Mantram Handbook.[1]
I began reflectively reading about mantram prayer for the first time. Little did I know how this simple prayer would help me listen to, and cope with, the stresses of tenure, fatherhood, intimate relationships, and illness through the next two decades. I imagine the mantram seed planted as an acorn on that campout. I visualize the tree now, inside of me, like the child was inside my partner, well rooted, steadily growing, maturing into something mysterious that eventually lead me to birthing and teaching the Listening to the SONG of Life course.
Moving from the pre-tenure years to my immediate post-tenure year, another significant seed was planted on a Sunday afternoon after a religious service. A wise elder in my community announced a video showing after the service about a local retreat center. The last retreat I attended was in my late teens. Intrigued by the possibility of exploring my adult spirituality on retreat, after the service, I watched a fuzzy video tape play for five minutes on a small television screen set atop a mobile cart near the corner of an otherwise unoccupied room. There was me, the elder, and the video. No one else in the community of over two hundred people answered the invitation. The video describes The Well Retreat Center[2] located on ten acres beside a small lake in Isle of Wright County in the state of Virginia.
Over time I would discover more riches in nature at the Well Retreat Center than the video could portray. Visually, the landscape of the retreat center is stunning.[3] Additionally, the video provided a glimpse inside the hermitages that I would eventually call home while on retreat. Rough wooden walls surround a bed, chair and table, and bathroom–austere but adequate. The main retreat center contains offices, meeting rooms, a cafeteria, a library of religious-spiritual books and tapes, and a small chapel. Inside the chapel, a brightly colored stained-glass mural of the retreat center rests against one wall opposite three chairs. In the center stands an oak-colored wooden altar with a white candle atop. I made it a ritual to visit the chapel at the beginning and end of each retreat. During my retreat years, the Well Retreat Center, especially the library, chapel, an