Sabbatical reflections #2: changing gear

My sabbatical started with the May half-term holidays - a week of adventures with the kids, and various combinations of friends and wider family, climbing hills, whizzing down water-slides and, over the second weekend, cycling 70 miles around the Isle of Wight with my father-in-law Jim and brother-in-law Steve, celebrating Jim's 70th birthday.

The day after the cycle ride - my first Sunday off work! - I drove Janey and the kids home to Birmingham from the Isle of Wight, and after a swift bit of re-packing, continued driving further north, on my own now, to the Community of the Resurrection in Mirfield, in the middle of the Yorkshire Dales.

I arrived at the door of the Retreat House, my laptop in a bag on my back, and weighed down by a holdall full to almost-overflowing: enough changes of clothes for the week in one corner, and the rest of the space taken up by a small library of books. My plan for my time there, among other things, was to read and write for a journal article due to be submitted the following week, and maybe to write two or three chapters of my book, the deadline for which was also fast approaching.

A kindly monk answered the door: a gentle smile, and eyes clear enough to see right through you. We move slowly through the house, down corridors, through doors, up staircases. On our journey, my welcomer points out the common room, complete with well-stocked bookshelves. "But we don't encourage reading on a guided retreat." Not weighty words, merely clarifying. But stirring within me a lurking fear: I have things to do; things that need doing. My laptop and book-laden holdall suddenly feel much heavier on my shoulders.

By the time we reach my room for the week, the penny has begun to drop for me; a lesson not just for this week, but for the whole of the 3-month sabbatical that begins here: there is an invitation here, which is also a challenge, a struggle even... to not do; to not need to do; to not be needed to do...

My other realisation on the way up the stairs was that "silent retreat" meant silent. Before leaving home, with Janey and the kids we'd agreed to try and get in a daily phone conversation. But my arrival at Mirfield clarified that the most communication I could reasonably allow myself would be a brief daily text conversation.

"And then the bell rings, summons to Compline. Navigating the warren of corridors. The smell of incense. And the opening out into a cavernous space - the church. A cavern that echoes with my every cough, and sniff, and fidget [predictably, I'd come down with a cold in the first few days after stopping work!]. That echoes with the words of prayer, so that the pauses are needed to let the echoes fade to silence, to make space for the next phrase to be said. Compline. Familiar yet strange. Navigating a different book. Realising that we've entered Ascensiontide. And complex plainsong that seems to defy the rubrics given. A secret code known only with the practice of time. I am a stranger here. Not a tourist. A guest, welcomed. Not yet at home."

This first entry in my journal I headed "Dis/orientation". A sense of being a bit lost, but also discovering a new direction, at least for a time. But looking back, I've found myself also talking about "changing gear": a slowing down of my walking pace, of my breathing, of my activity, of my over-active brain. A slowing down not just for its own sake, but for becoming more able to pay attention. A slowing down for sabbatical time - but perhaps (and this first stirring deepened in the weeks that followed) even for the "ordinary time" beyond sabbatical...