Disorientation and Welcome – by Kevin Driedger

I like to plan. I appreciate having an idea of what is going to happen and I presume others appreciate these things too. I want to put people at ease so that they will know what is going on and what to expect. I believe it is a welcoming and hospitable thing to do.

And yet, I also know that my preference to plan and to anticipate what will happen can muffle my ears and blinder my eyes to what is actually going on around me. Expecting one thing to happen means I am not willing to engage when some other thing happens.

Feeling disoriented is, well, disorienting and it is not comfortable. It leaves me vulnerable to the unknown. I experience this also on behalf of the guests who come to visit The Hermitage. For some retreatants this is their first time here and it may be their first encounter with deep silence. A key part of my job of welcoming is to orient them to how things happen here and what to expect – to remove their own disorientation and dis-ease (whether it is real or projected.)

I remember a pilgrimage my wife and I took to Ireland. Travelling is hard for me, because there are so many unfamiliar things and all my planning can’t prepare me for them all. At the first gathering of our pilgrimage group our leader named the disorientation that many (all) of us were feeling, and the importance of accepting and living in that disorientation. That disorientation is necessary if there is going to be any kind of reorientation.

And so, I need to learn to allow some space for disorientation for our guests and for myself. The next time a guest arrives late for Saturday morning centering prayer after we’ve finished the introduction, (although I feel uncomfortable with the individual’s possible disorientation), I will pray that this be a time of reorientation – both for the guest and me. I will pray that we both are able to simply receive God’s reorienting welcome.