Interfaith Retreat

This past weekend I went on the Saint Louis University Interfaith Retreat. It was awesome! Seriously, it was one of the best experiences I've had here. The retreat was held at a Christian retreat center in Loeches, about an hour from Madrid. Here are some pictures from the weekend:


The sun was setting when we arrived late Friday afternoon. The view from the place was beautiful.

Here are Peter and Priyam. Peter helped plan the retreat... he's a student studying here for the semester from the Saint Louis U. home campus in Missouri. We've traveled a lot together this semester and have become good friends! Priyam is a permanent student here from India. He gave a presentation on the Hindu faith, and I had fun talking with him about yummy Indian food!

Here are Tadzoka, Amal, and Nick. They lead a Bible study on Sunday morning...

Here are Caley and I... lying on the floor before we started the "Imaginitive Prayer." It was a prayer lead by Peter... and it was cool to think that all of us were praying in our own way, yet together, as people from several different religious backgrounds!

I signed up for the Interfaith Retreat pretty last minute, but I'm so glad I did! We had people representing several different faiths: Islam, Hindu, LDS, Catholic, Baptist, non-denomonational Christian... the goal of the weekend was to learn about each others' faiths and to get to know each other. I've been on retreats before, but this one was special... we all shared very personal feelings about our faith with people we barely knew, and of course, we all bonded quickly! It was awesome to hear about Islam from people from Algeria, Saudi Arabia, and Yemen... they explained their faith and as we all shared our own backgrounds, we really discovered how similar our religions are in many ways. We talked about the difficulties of living our religions in today's world, the misunderstandings among our faiths, etc.

We were woken up in the morning by the call to prayer... a Muslim song that is played in the morning to signify that it's time for morning prayer. We also had a Catholic mass on Sunday, and for many, it was their first experience in a mass. Father Reck, the Jesuit who lead the retreat, explained the mass to everyone, which was great. And he said he knew of my great uncle, Joseph Sheehan, who was a Jesuit. Small world!

I am sad to think that I am leaving in a month, and some of these people I may never see again after that. However, I'm so glad I took advantage of this chance to get to know all of these awesome people. If only we could all get together under similar circumstances... perhaps our world would not be so full of hate.