"Waking from sleep after about 3 hours. The first hour or so was resting, listening to a (noisy!) lawnmower just outside the window. After that, deep sleep! Waking, my first instinct is to reach for my phone. 'What are you looking for?' What are you seeking, longing for, desiring, wanting, needing...? Mostly to see if Janey and the kids have texted. Some contact. Touch. Being in touch." (Monday, 4.45pm)
In our household, we often talk about the 5 'love languages', different ways of expressing and embodying our love and care for each other: 'gift giving', 'quality time', 'physical touch', 'acts of service', and 'words of affirmation'. They're a helpful tool for us to remember that the ways in which I naturally express my love for you - and the things I most readily appreciate in the way you express your love for me - may not be quite the same as your natural ways of expressing love, and the ways that you most want or need me to show love to you. They can also, in self-reflection, helpfully highlight where we're feeling a bit of a 'hole' in our lives - ways of feeling loved that we're missing, lacking - but without instantly jumping to pointing the finger at someone else to make it better.
I'm conscious that the 'love languages' I long for, want, need, seek, crave the most are touch, words, and the kind of loving attention, presence, company that is here labelled 'quality time'. I struggle when I feel 'out of touch', physically and communicatively, with those with whom I share, to broaden an over-narrow phrase, a 'love life'. Some of the deepest longings I've plumbed in psychotherapy, and longings that have been close to the heart of my work in Hodge Hill, have been about being in the midst of a community of people 'in touch' with each other, present to one another. Home-making. 'Growing loving community', as our church mission statement puts it.
And entering this guided retreat, I was very conscious too of the ways in which I've found myself less present than I long to be. Less present to my wife and children - by not being around as much as I want to be, or being around, but with laptops, screens and phones getting in the way of us being truly present to each other. Less present in my neighbourhood and church - partly through various 'steps back' to support and supervise others, but partly also in responding to invitations to travel, teach and speak beyond the parish.
In John chapter 1, Jesus asks the first disciples, 'what are you looking for?', and they respond by asking Jesus, 'where are you staying?'. It struck me that these are two sides of the same coin. Perhaps, as well as asking us, 'what are you looking for?', the question, 'where are you staying?' is a question for us too. Where are you abiding? living? calling 'home'?
Nicola Slee's book, Sabbath: the hidden heartbeat of our lives, was one of just three books I got out of my heavy holdall during the retreat week. Over the week, on so many levels, the journey of the book resonated with where I found myself at the beginning of my sabbatical, with the journey of the retreat and its questions and themes (both those offered by my guide, and those which emerged in all kinds of unpredictable ways), and with the physical surroundings of the retreat house where I was staying. Three questions from the book, in particular, framed the beginnings of my time there:
- where is the place where you feel most at home, most truly yourself, the place that tells you who you are in the world?
- where is the place to which you seek to return for rest, renewal and recreation?
- where, for you, is the woods or the wilds? [Sabbath, p.73 - in reverse order!]
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