Retreat

Retreat - the great misnomer

Every year the Anglican clergy of our diocese gather for retreat. There is no truth in the ugly rumour that we actually nick off to the Melbourne Cup and bet on slow horses.

So what do we do?

We gather for a rather noisy meal on Monday night. We catch up with each other, share our triumphs and our disappointments, chatter about our families and share a delicious meal.

On Tuesday morning the Great Silence begins. We say nothing unless we are gathering for worship which happens 4 times a day. There is a retreat conductor who offers two addresses a day and is available for consultation about everything and anything. Sometimes it’s good to have a fresh perspective from a complete outsider.

This pattern goes on all day Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The evening meal on Thursday is again a very chatty event because the next morning, straight after church, we scatter off back to our parishes and families. From Warracknabeal to Portland, to Coleraine to Ballan and every God box in between.

While some of my colleagues find the silence hard going I have always relished the deliciousness of the quiet. However, there is a sense in which ‘Retreat’ is misnamed.

It is true that we geographically retreat, but with all that quiet, other things, nasty little bombs of truth, come exploding to the surface and we are left with no place to go, nowhere to hide, nothing to do but confront them. Some of them are easy because well they’re history, or it’s way above our pay grade and there is nothing we can do. But there are others…. There is nowhere to retreat from these ugly little blighters. This is the most difficult and valuable thing about the experience we misname retreat.

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