“All of humanity’s problems, stem from man’s inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal
Scattered. I feel scattered. It is spring and the earth is coming alive. I take on that spring energy. I cannot sit still. I want to be in the garden. I want to clean out closets, rearrange the bookshelves, toss out stale spices. I want to walk in the woods to see the spring ephemerals—hepaticas, wild ginger, bloodroot—that are here for such a short time. I don’t want to miss them. I don’t want to miss anything! There is cleaning up the patio, bringing the lawn furniture out of storage, raking the lawn. Planting, preparing, pruning. Scattered.
Each of the seasons has its own tempo. Spring, for me, is presto, very fast. Winter’s tempo was largo and I am ready to speed up. Hopefully by summer I can move into moderato.
It must be time to retreat.
Retreat. To withdraw, draw back, retract. That is how my dictionary defines the verb retreat. When life is too much, too busy, too scary, to where do you retreat? What do you retreat from? Or to?
We find the tradition of stepping back from the routine of life across cultures and faith traditions. The Jewish people gave us Sabbath, a day of rest for people and animals where work was forbidden. The word sabbatical comes from the word sabbath. A sabbatical allows a person leisure time, often a full year, to pursue study or travel, a time away to rest and refresh. Europeans get 4-6 weeks of vacation yearly. That gives them time to step back for quiet as well as for active vacations.
Quiet time can be woven into our lives. We can find a quiet space in our home or a nook at the local library or a favorite coffee shop where we can linger to think or write or simply be. We could take a weekday or a weekend, clear our calendar and focus on our own inner journey.
Many businesses and organizations take their leadership team on an annual retreat. The objective is to get away from the day-to-day routine, in order to free up head space and encourage creativity, as they peer ahead and plan for the future. Often that planning requires a look back to see where the institution has been successful and where it needs reassessment.
Our personal retreat could be similar—where have I been since my last retreat? What is calling me now? We might go on a retreat to get reacquainted with ourselves, sit down with a journal, take a few minutes to quiet our brain, then think about what we are missing about ourselves. Have I lost my way? Or a piece of myself? Or am I out of balance in some way? When I look at my calendar and my bank account I see what is important to me. Does it match my values? Does my life need rebalancing? How do I balance the “doing” with the “being”? What dreams have I had that have fallen by the wayside, hopes I barely remember, parts of me that have gone missing in action?
Retreats give us space to consider where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going. May you enjoy your own company.
Recently, I retreated to my cabin in the woods. I didn’t go there to accomplish anything or to socialize or to work. I went there to be. At the cabin I can leave behind the tasks and be free of others’ expectations. The cabin has a stillness that holds simple being.
What is a retreat not? It is not an escape. It is not running away from our problems or dilemmas or fears. While we don’t have to leave home to retreat, binging on the latest Netflix series is not a retreat. Nor is a trip to Las Vegas to try our luck at Black Jack or to see the latest shows. It’s not playing video games. It likely will not provide a dopamine high. I can run away from things I would rather not deal with and enjoy the time away, but that isn’t a retreat.
A retreat is a journey inward, a place to catch up with ourselves, to reconnect with the person we once knew but have drifted away from. It is a quiet time out.
When do we rest our spirits? You may want a retreat to reconnect with the Holy-–a prayer retreat with a few days to sink into one type of prayer or a time to explore different kinds of prayer. There are meditation retreats that give the retreatant blocks of time for meditation, sitting and walking. There are directed retreats that blend quiet time with talks and structure. There are various retreat houses that offer space and time to calm our weary souls.
How does silence feel? Inviting? Terrifying? There are so few places of silence in our lives. It is easy to have music or news or commentary in the background or funneled into our ears throughout the day. What might three or four days of silence feel like?
During my most recent trip to the cabin, I was serenaded by frogs—loud, melodic songs—no doubt calling for a mate. That din offers me a calming presence. I am mesmerized by the complexity of the sound as it resonates from the nearby pond. If your retreat is in a natural setting you will be accompanied by howls, hoots, and trills. A joyful noise.
We are never really alone on retreat. Sometimes a whole phalanx accompanies us—old nemeses, our inner critic with her list of failures, a friend who understood us so well and died too early. We can gather trusted companions—authors, sacred texts, icons of saints or heroes to accompany us.
Maybe you want to bring a poet along, say Mary Oliver or Naomi Shihab Nye. Who of us couldn’t ponder for hours “Tell me what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life” from Oliver’s poem, “The Summer Day” or Nye’s “Kindness” where she says, “Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing”?
Retreats give us space to consider where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going. May you enjoy your own company.
