Sabbatical reflections #3: fleeing and staying

"Where can I flee from your presence?" (Psalm 139)

Looking back on the journal entries from my week of 'individual guided retreat' (at the Community of the Resurrection, Mirfield), one of the things that strikes me is how quickly my internal (emotional, spiritual) state seems to shift - in tandem with the 'slowing down' that I've already noted. The retreat lasted just six days, which at times during the week felt like an eternity, and while I can point to very little activity during that time, a lot happened nevertheless.

My days were made up, mostly, of sleeping (during the night, but also napping during the day), eating, wandering in the woods, gathering for prayers in the church (four times a day), plenty of time for solo reflection and a tiny bit of reading (alongside the Bible, I allowed myself one novel - Marilynne Robinson's Gilead - one reflective book - Nicola Slee's Sabbath - and one book of poetry - Wendell Berry's collection of sabbath poems), and about 10 minutes each day talking with my 'guide'. This could hardly be called 'busy'. But on my first full day there, Monday, I wrote 13 pages of my journal, and I can trace significant internal shifts even over the course of that day.

On the first morning, at 8.15am, after breakfast, I was all set to escape...

"I've already contemplated leaving. Going home. Or getting on the bike and cycling a good distance. There's a cycleway by the River Calder that would take me to Hebden Bridge. Then Rochdale. Then Manchester. Or, in the other direction, towards the sea - at least, that's what Google Maps told me this morning!

But this is a Benedictine house. They have taken a vow of stability - a vow that I, just for a week, am being invited to adopt. Staying, not fleeing. Being here. Within these walls, the confines of this place, and no other.

Something about that weighs heavy. But not that it is too little - it is too much. "Too much God" - was that how [a wise friend] described going on retreat? …

I want to explore this place - to see what treasures are hidden in its grounds. And yet part of me resists. Am I afraid? Of disappointment? That what there is, is all there is? Or am I afraid of who I'll bump into, walking in the cool of the day, and of discovering that I'm naked?"

By 9am, I had found my way to the woods behind the house - a maze of winding pathways that seemed to reveal new routes every time I went to explore them again.

"Why are you so full of heaviness, O my soul?" (Psalm 42)

"Part of the heaviness is things not done... And all those who have taken on extra responsibilities, for me to be here... Part of me longs to just sit down with the laptop and write. Finish something. The article. A chapter. Whatever. Part of me longs for the wind that is blowing the trees around me to just blow those commitments away - postponed, if not cancelled. But those commitments are relationships. Friendships. Trust. They will not, should not 'blow away'. But I do need them to 'settle', somehow. Is that what 'confession' means? 'We have left undone those things we ought to have done...'?"

At 10.30am I met with my guide. We briefly introduced ourselves to each other. And then he offered me two short bible passages, to take away and 'sit with', 'chew on': Deuteronomy 2:7, and John 1:35-39.

Back in my room, I read them and re-read them, consciously slowing down, resisting, my habitual tendency (entrenched after 6 years writing a PhD!) to skim-read, dissect and move on. And I found myself staying with just one phrase of the Deuteronomy passage:

"these forty years the Lord your God has been with you; you have lacked nothing"

I'm 43. "These forty years" is effectively my lifetime, more or less. I found myself looking back over that lifetime, remembering parts of the journey that had been long-forgotten, submerged. Remembering some of the harder stuff - lots that I've attended to, wrestled with, in 9 months of psychotherapy, but is by no means just 'past history'. Remembering also so much that has been good, so many blessings. And remembering too a faith, a conscious journeying with God, that I can trace back into early childhood. A faith journey entangled, as a teenager especially, with other parts of my identity: the nerdiness of someone who was a high achiever academically and loved words; and the social awkwardness of an only child who moved schools a lot and was a bit clueless about intimate relationships. But in the remembering, a profound thanksgiving - "the Lord your God has been with you... has blessed you in all the work of your hands... you have lacked nothing". A blessing often only half-acknowledged.

"Walking the woods again tonight, I took a flight of stone steps that, at first glance, looked like it came to a dead end at a wall. In fact, at the wall the steps turned a corner, and then the path bent round into a clearing, overlooking houses. At the other end, it narrowed again, and took me over the top of the big locked gates I'd peered through earlier in the day. A twist and a turn, and I was back at the bench overlooking the valley. A little sigh of relief, the gentlest thrill of excitement, at finding a new path, at coming back to a familiar place from an unfamiliar direction, at the secret treasures of this confined space not yet being exhausted." (Monday evening)