Forget Everything You Think You Know About a Spiritual Retreat

 

Forget everything you think you know about a spiritual retreat. What? Yes! Forget everything you think you know about a spiritual retreat. Let’s start fresh. That is certainly what I told myself as I began planning the Waiting by the Brook Retreat this year. Why? Because the world has changed since COVID-19. Why? Because we are all changing right along with it.  

 

After I launched the book, Waiting by the Brook: Seven Steps to Deeper Intimacy With God, earlier this year, I was in search of a way to connect with readers beyond the printed page. My mind was racing with possibilities, and then the idea of a retreat came to me. Why not? I had been to a few great retreats in the past. The most memorable one had been to a picturesque natural setting in Washington state. However, thanks to COVID, my retreat would be virtual.

 

How could I structure a retreat experience virtually? People are so zoomed out, I thought. Truth be told, I am too. If someone asks me to join one more webinar or one more Zoom master class, I am just going to have to say: “Thanks, but I pass.” Weekends are my Zoom free zone, no kidding! 

How can I effectively invite attendees to quiet the mind using technology? Is that even possible? Then there is the question of content. There is so much that I want to share with readers, and women in particular. How should I structure the content to maximize the time together? Should I share this? Should I share that? So much to do and so little time, right? 

 

The idea of a retreat in cyberspace almost seems laughable. How can you retreat, which literally means to “draw back”, when you are stuck at home? Isn’t that an oxymoron in itself? Isn’t traveling to a spectacular destination the best part of the retreat experience?  Like for real! Can I just admit that setting is an integral part of our spiritual encounters? There is something special that happens in quiet natural spaces where we draw apart to be alone with God. How can we even hope to approximate that if we are called to stay where we are? 

 

 

But what if we are not able to travel to a great destination?  Hmmm…I had not thought about that question before. In fact, in preparing for this retreat, I soon realized that in spite of everything I thought I knew, I was being called to lean into a deeper understanding about the hows and whys of a spiritual retreat.   

 

Give me a Great Destination or I’m Out!

Retreat spaces are not always the relaxing spots to which we aspire. You will remember the Prophet Elijah. God told him to “retreat” to a desert place beside a brook that would soon dry up. This was not anything like the lush mountains spaces that I had been to in Sumas, Washington. There were no delectably prepared meals for the prophet to feast on here. Instead, he would be fed bread brought to him in the beak of an unclean bird, and he would drink from a trickling brook that would eventually dry up. Oh, and then of course, we see Jesus drawn to the wilderness for forty days before the start of his ministry. 

 

What if the place where you and I are called to retreat is the most challenging spot of our lives? What if it is in this very space that we must confront some of the harshest realities of our spiritual life so we can be prepared for where God is leading us next?   

 

What About My Retreat Must-Haves? 

I will just go ahead and admit that in preparing for past retreats, far too often, the things that I was most concerned about had nothing to do with the purpose for the retreat at all. As a mom to two school aged girls, in the hectic lead up to travel it seemed there was always too many loose ends to tie up before my extended stay away. The week or days before the retreat I usually found myself in a frazzled mess. I had not made time to do the mental and spiritual preparation to benefit from the retreat experience. 

 

 

Most times, I was just glad that I had not missed the flight, and I was overjoyed that I had remembered to pack my retreat must-haves. Must have snacks, check! Downloaded movies to watch on the plane, check!  Book to read, check! My own stash of tea bags–I am a big tea person– check! Earplugs and eye mask for sleeping, check! Yada, yada yada….

 

But then, seated on the plane for the next couple of hours with nowhere to go, I would finally skim through the retreat information only to find that I had left important things undone. Sadly, I often arrived at the retreat not really prepared for the purpose of the retreat after all. 

 

And Who’s Leading the Retreat?

I remember attending a “retreat-ish” kind of conference in Denver one year. When the speaker got up to give the keynote address, I was not even paying attention. I was bent over in my chair, looking through the conference bulletin to see what sessions I should attend next. But as she began speaking, I suddenly sat up.  I was mesmerized. Yes! Yes! I thought. This woman gets me! The speaker was Brené Brown. It was the first time I had heard her speak about vulnerability and whole-hearted living. Mind blowing! 

 

I reflected on this encounter, recently when a friend told me that she would love to attend a retreat or conference session in which Brené Brown was leading out. Wouldn’t that be a GREAT experience? Brown’s work is profound, insightful and so needed. And yet at the core, a retreat has less to do with the person who is leading or organizing it than it does about the attendees. It has to do with the heart work that we are called to do in this space.

Excuse Me While I Pack My Bags.

A call to retreat then is not an invitation to pack our bags for travel to a great destination to hear a great presenter lead out. No! Not at all. A call to retreat is a call to unpack our minds for spiritual connection– to seek deeper communion with God. It is an occasion in which we cultivate stillness so we can come to confront our authentic selves. Thoreau captured this well when he described why he went to live in the woods near Walden pond for a little over two years. 

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. 

Thoreau

But how do we unpack our minds?  I like the analogy of the mind as a place hidden behind a fast flowing waterfall. Most days in the busyness of life, we cannot see past the cascading water to get to the center of ourselves– to begin to ask some deep and important questions.

 

 

Spiritual retreats done well, provide opportunities for us to push through the curtain of falling water that is our daily life to confront our own minds. 

 

As I reflected on what I thought I knew about a spiritual retreat, I realized that I did not know as much as I thought (Yes that sentence is a mouthful, but stay with me). Case in point, as I was reviewing the amazing content I wanted to share with  retreat attendees–I found myself sinking right into conference mode. I have so much wonderful content to share! And then a voice inside my head screamed:

 

“Forget everything you think you know about a spiritual retreat.” 

 

“Don’t make it into a conference!” 

 

“It’s not about the information you have to share; it is about what the people need to experience.”

 

“How can you help them create space so that they can do the mind and heart work needed to find healing for their souls?”

 

Here’s the thing. In an information obese age, the last thing any of us needs is more information. What we need is an experience!  What we need is a spiritual awakening!

 

Now, don’t get me wrong. Yes! We need to understand how to  get into a quiet mind space. But cognitive understanding–the work of the mind–is just the first stop in the ultimate retreat destination. A spiritual retreat calls us to engage the heart. Henri Nouwen said it best. The purpose is to do the deep work that will allow us “to descend with the mind into the heart.”

 

And so, I have come to think that as wonderful as it would be to journey to Sumas, in Washington state to that retreat center that is calling my name, I sense that in this season of life, the call to retreat is different. It is to find retreat in the harshness of the desert places in which we now find ourselves. There is important work to be done here “to descend with the mind into the heart” as we draw back to move closer to God. That is the simple invitation. Will you accept it?

 

Want to learn more about the Waiting by the Brook Spiritual retreat? Click here.