Search retreat `unfolds’ during weekend VIEW GALLERY (use keyboard arrow keys to navigate)
GALLMAN — Going on a Search Retreat? The less you know the better.
“Those on their first Search retreat don’t really know much about what will happen,” said Jeff Cook, who with wife Ann have directed Search retreats in the Diocese of Jackson since 2004. They are Jackson St. Richard parishioners.
“We want them to experience it rather than know everything that’s going to happen,” he said. “We want it to unfold for them.”
That air of mystery about the Search experience drew John Maloney of Meridian St. Patrick Parish to try it.
The 16-year-old high school junior heard about it from older friends who had attended the retreat. However, they were long on praise but short on details about their experience.
“They wouldn’t give me any details but kept telling me how great it was. How they could really open up and express themselves better than on any other retreat they had been on. So I decided to go and see for myself,” Maloney said. “Now I understand why.”
He was one of 12 junior and senior high school youth who attended the June 27-29 retreat at Camp Wesley Pines, located 40 miles south of Jackson.
Youth staff members have attended a retreat and now help facilitate the experience for the newcomers. They give talks, pray with and listen to those on retreat, getting the opportunity to give back what they experienced on their first Search retreat, said Cook.
Maloney shared many of his thoughts and feelings during the retreat, surprised at how he easily talked to complete strangers.
They talked about the regular teen presses – drugs, drinking, financial problems, problems with parents – he said.
”Opening up like that allows you to be more free with yourself and more free in your relationship with God,” he said.
“And talking about my faith was a big thing, talking about what Jesus meant to me, about what my faith life was about,” he said.
In the environment provided during the weekend, the youth are able to form a community of their peers, Cook said.
“It is important for them to connect and see the good things and the difficult things going on in their lives, and then realize as they listen in their small groups, that the same things are happening to others,” he said.
Maloney said the Search retreat environment facilitated his sharing with othes. “I don’t know what it was about that place. The people there were complete strangers to me and yet I felt like I had known them for months,” he said.
Cook said in addition to the June retreat, Search retreats are available in December and February (email: search@jacksonsearch.com).
