Retreat

I walked with God from August to August of one year and for the following twelve months, I allowed the experience to unfold in me and onto these pages. It takes a gentle space to let things settle in then rise to the top, to arrange in my thoughts what I have come to know so deep in my marrow. To float and fathom, fathom and retrieve.

My walks with God were a retreat from my usual pace and groove and the more I retreated, the more retreat I craved. One day on a whim I drove to the southern point of New Jersey, my birthplace, to take my walk in a state park on the shore. Later, sharing the experience with a friend, she told me about a retreat center there and I couldn’t sign up fast enough. In August, during the last weeks of this year of walks, I took a silent eight day retreat where I met with a spiritual director each morning. She told me, “It takes a week to complete a retreat but a year for the experience to unfold in our lives.” I have found this wonderfully true! Gifts of both “retreats” continue to manifest richly in my life.

At the park my feet met with ground set apart from my normal life. Every inch holy, each step divine. I would otherwise be dull to yellow irises standing at a sluggish pond. Koi had seemed alien and odd, not the splashy playmates who sometimes spoke the metaphysical to me in their cumbrous way.

Retreat, because when they find one alone and quiet, irises, ponds, and koi have something to whisper. Retreat because God prefers to speak under a mantle of gesturing leaves, where gurgling water meddles in to tell half of the story. Or perhaps that’s just how I hear Him best. Anyway, retreat.

As the deer pants for streams of water, so my soul pants for you, my God. My soul thirsts for God, for the living God. When can I go and meet with God? Psalm 42:1-2