“When we live without listening to the timing of things, when we live and work in twenty-four-hour shifts without rest – we are on war time, mobilized for battle. Yes, we are strong and capable people, we can work without stopping, faster and faster, electric lights making artificial day so the whole machine can labor without ceasing. But remember: No living thing lives like this. There are greater rhythms, seasons and hormonal cycles and sunsets and moonrises and great movements of seas and stars. We are part of the creation story, subject to all its laws and rhythms.”
~Wayne Muller, Sabbath: Finding Rest, Renewal and Delight in Our Busy Lives
The last few days have been spent in planning for a retreat I will help lead this weekend. I love winter retreats. The act of retreat seems to hold hands with this time of January darkness and the cold of deep, blue snow. The days themselves seem to offer an invitation to step off the merry-go-round of our lives and spend time mulling over the turn of the year, what lies beneath the frozen ground. The call of clear blue skies and brilliant sun on icy water is the stuff of reflection for me. This reflection often leads to an urgent sense of creativity. It is what I am hoping for in this weekend away with a sweet circle of women. My prayer is that there are the right portions of guided time and unstructured time, time for deep words and even deeper silences, ample portions of laughter and silliness. All this is a good recipe for a renewed spirit.
As I have been planning I have thought about how most faith traditions have a value of retreat….that time to pull away from the regular patterns of daily living to give one’s self over to patterns of prayer and silence, scripture and contemplation, a time to allow the Holy to sit down beside our weary, programmed bodies. Yet so few of us take the time for this important work. Most churches I have known spend more time in meetings and large group activities than in a spirit of retreat. Sometimes even our worship has little sense of holding the precious sabbath time outside the regular rush of any other day.
The ancients and those who seek to follow their wisdom know that the work of retreat is important to forming the faithful life. Retreat can come in many forms. One does not need to pack up and head to a hermitage some place to have retreat, though I do love this idea, this practice. I know people who intentionally close their office door and remove themselves from the push and pull of the world for just a few minutes when they need to. Still others have a special chair, an adult-sized ‘time out’ chair where they go to stop the forward thrust of daily time. I wish I had the wisdom to adopt this practice with greater regularity. Any time we can stop our head long motion long enough to connect with our breath, remember our beating heart, pace ourselves to walk with the One who causes both breathing and beating, this can be the work of retreat. Look at the number of times our brother Jesus employed this wisdom.
I will continue to plan this retreat over the next few days. I will choose songs to sing and stories to be shared. I will make sure there are plenty of things to do. But what I will stop myself from doing is planning too much. I will make sure there is ample time for staring at the frozen lake or walking in the woods, for drinking coffee and talking quietly with an old…or new….friend, for doing nothing at all. Which is probably what most people need the most…doing nothing at all. It is so seldom our gift to ourselves. And yet it is most often the place where Spirit can move in to dance.
