Choosing Presence at Big Bear

Written By Illuman SoCal

Top Row: Sergo Gonzalez, Robert Svatos, Christopher Barry, Will Dickerson, Gabriel Fernandez, Bob Juarez (Co-convener ISC), Joe Filipi (ISC MROP coordinator), Sam Perkins-Prince, Jason Bonilla, Jim Heaney (Retreat leader, author, host) 
Bottom Row: Brian Mueller (Retreat leader, Ohio Illuman), David Blanzy, Jim Taylor (Retreat leader, Illuman Weaver), Lucho Haro, Samuel Perez, Greg Peña, Winston Siemens

Reflections from the Retreat — June 12–14, 2026
by Brian Mueller (retreat co-leader)

I'm writing this from the confluence of the Ohio and the Mississippi Rivers, near Cairo, Illinois — about a day from home and four thousand miles into the drive that carried me from Dayton out to Big Bear Lake and back. I didn't want to fly. I chose the road because it's slower and that's what the weekend at Big Bear felt like too: an invitation to slow down and simply become more present.

The retreat was the culmination of our eight-week Choosing Presence cohort, sponsored by Illuman SoCal, that began back in April. After all those Zoom sessions together, there's nothing quite like finally sitting in the same room. Eighteen of us gathered at Jim Heaney's cabin near the lake — Jim and Patricia's generosity made the whole thing possible, including a second cabin across the street so everyone had a comfortable bed and plenty of room to breathe.

We opened our retreat on Friday night after sharing a pizza dinner, in no rush at all. I gave each man a copy of my new collection, Trust Stillness, and read the title poem, whose three stanzas trace the seasons of a man's life. Then we checked in — where each of us really was with our practice of presence — and broke into council groups to reflect on a time in our life when we felt most present. The four councils which took place throughout the weekend, opened the men to a profoundly deeper movement of presence in themselves. 

Saturday, after our morning practice, Jim Heaney, Jim Taylor and I led the men through a session called Sustaining Your Practice of Presence. It's easy to begin something yet hard to sustain it, and the practice of presence is no exception. We talked about building a rhythm without turning it into a grim discipline — about finding the actual joy in the practice and remembering that presence isn't only the twenty minutes you give it in the morning. It's something you can return to all day long, with three conscious breaths and three honest questions.

In the afternoon we gave the men time to wander — to eat when they were hungry, drive into town, or, better yet, head out into the national forest and let Big Bear Lake and the mountain air do their own quiet work.

Saturday evening was Presence in Relationship. This session began as a conversation with Jim Heaney and Jim Taylor, opening with a question based on a confession Jim Taylor has often heard as a pastor: what are people really saying when they tell you they've never had an experience of God? This opened into some of the most honest and compelling conversations of the weekend. Jim Taylor was on fire, speaking straight to the men among us still working to deconstruct an inherited evangelical faith and find something truer underneath it. The point I'd hoped to make made itself: you cannot be present without relationship — with God, with one another, with the whole living world.

We closed Sunday with a Eucharistic ritual that Bob Juarez and Jim Taylor shaped and led together — readings, song, a circle, a blessing for the ailing back of one our brothers, and communion. "Here. Now. With God.” After the ritual we said our fond farewells and a few men lingered, the way we often do when something good has happened.

Shortly after our retreat, I turned around and began my drive back to Ohio, I carried with me fond memories for the eighteen men who participated and were genuinely present to one another. Our retreat was a tremendous gift to me and well worth the long drive.

Resources Mentioned

Illuman SoCal
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