Retreat weekend, no agenda

A friend asked if I could go for a walk with her this weekend. No, I said, regretful to miss out on the walk but not regretful at all for the reason. "It's our annual retreat weekend."

 

Inevitably, the question followed as it does whenever I mention the retreat weekend to friends who haven't participated: "What do you do?"

 

We do nothing, I have to respond. Well, not nothing. We walk, talk, read and write. But what's so great about it is that it feels like we're doing nothing.

 

That's a retreat? people sometimes respond. Don't you have any more of agenda than that?

 

But the twenty or so of us who attend every year actually joke about how little agenda we have. In fact, the retreat house manager sometimes ribs us about how loose our agenda is compared to her other guests.

 

We know this. We've heard stories from other groups who use the same retreat house. They go for soul-searching. They dig deep into their psyches.

 

We, on the other hand, go for walks. We dig deep with the tips of our snowshoes.

 

Which isn't to say that soul-searching doesn't happen on our retreat. It just doesn't happen with much of an agenda. Important and meaningful conversations transpire over meals, by the fireplace, in the double and triple dorm rooms, on long walks along the country roads near the house. We learn about each other. We inspire each other.

 

I started attending the retreat when my kids were still very young and I was desperate for chances to get away, to think, to have silence, to sleep late, to write. Now, almost a decade later, it's different. I'm not so desperate anymore, with both kids in school all day, leaving me alone to write for hours, and then both kids sleeping well past nine o'clock on weekend mornings, I'm not so deperate for a good night's sleep either.

 

But in a way, it's almost more fun now because I have even less of an agenda than I used to. I used to head to the retreat house with stacks of books and articles to read, essay ideas to explore, journal pages to fill. The idea of a free 48 hours was so thrilling as to be almost overwhelming in its potential; I would totally overburden myself with all I wanted to accomplish.

 

Not anymore. Now I go just to be there. I go to walk and talk and write and read. But with no particular idea of what I need to have to show for my efforts by Sunday afternoon. I don't have specific issues to expurgate or goals to outline.

 

So maybe it's not everyone's idea of a retreat, but it's the habit we've fallen into every January: a retreat just for being away together. And regardless of how little of an agenda we have, everyone always seems to take all they want from the experience.

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Accounting for time -- whether in a weekend or a lifetime

This was the weekend of our annual retreat, and it’s a weekend that inevitably goes by too fast. For the past eight Januarys, I’ve joined a loosely structured group of about 20 other women – most from Carlisle, some formerly of Carlisle, and some from elsewhere who are brought along by Carlisle friends – for a trip to the northeast corner of Connecticut, where we spend Friday evening through lunch Sunday in a hundred-year-old house, reveling in our free time, enjoying silence, taking walks along country roads, and eating meals that are in fact quite tasty but whose greatest merit is that they are cooked by someone else, the retreat house’s kitchen staff.

“This is how life should always be,” someone always says, and of course they mean the relaxed conversation, the leisurely mealtimes, the camaraderie. But as I was thinking about how I wanted to spend my time, I realized how much meaning that phrase actually held for me.

Because the only problem with the weekend is that the time always goes by too quickly. I start out with plans to do lots of writing, and some reading, and go for a long run and take several walks. But then I get caught up in conversations, or just distracted by the option of having seconds at mealtime.

This time, I resolve each year, I’ll plan my time really carefully. It’s less than 48 hours in all; I need to make every second count. Conversation is important, yes; but don’t use it as an excuse not to pursue more difficult options like writing. And yes, the mealtimes are lovely here, but don’t linger at the table for so long that you end up skipping that afternoon walk.

And at some point it occurred to me that in that sense, the retreat weekend really is a lot like how life should be – or at least my approach to the weekend was how my approach to life should be. Camaraderie matters, but so does reflection. Don’t let laziness – or weather – keep you from enjoying the outdoors. Above all, don’t let the time squirm away from you, unaccounted for. Figure out what matters to you and make sure you’ve set your priorities, because your time at the retreat house is really limited, and the weekend will be over before you know it.

The words had a familiar ring, and then I realized that Henry David Thoreau said the same thing only a hundred orders of magnitude more eloquently when he wrote “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I have not lived.” Yes. That’s exactly what I was trying to tell myself. Time is limited; use it wisely and well. Above all, be aware of the choices you’re making before it all melts away.

I did end up using my time well during the weekend. I visited with the other retreat-goers over meals and during discussion group sessions, but I also spent hours reading and walking. It’s trite to acknowledge Thoreau’s wisdom, but that’s how I feel. He said it far better than I could, but that doesn’t mean I can’t use his words as a guidepost. Rules to live by, in effect, whether for the weekend or for a lifespan.

Annual retreat

This past weekend was Winter Retreat for me. Every year since 2005, on the third weekend in January, I’ve joined a group of fifteen or twenty other women to travel to a retreat house in northeast Connecticut. We have only a very general agenda for how we plan to schedule the two days ahead: mealtimes are designated, as are a couple of discussion sessions, a crafts project, a Saturday evening film screening in the retreat house’s comfortable living room, an informal Sunday morning worship service in the retreat house’s chapel space.

But no one in the group cares who does and does not participate in the loosely scheduled events, and it ends up being a weekend when everyone who attends is free to spend their time however they wish. There aren’t too many weekends in my life devoted to spending my time however I wish, and I’m always grateful for this one when the date arrives each year.

In the past six years, not very much as changed about how I like to spend this time of freedom and non-commitment. If anything, it always crystallizes for me how specific my four areas of interest are when it comes to free time: running, walking, reading, writing. And in between, conversation and bonding with the other retreat participants. But the social aspect is lesser to the amazing opportunity of devoting so many long hours to the other four.

On Saturday before breakfast, I took a six-mile run through the countryside that surrounds the retreat house. This area, as I learned when I wrote a travel article about it a few years ago, is called Connecticut’s “Quiet Corner.” In the 19th and early 20th centuries, it was a favorite rural vacation destination for New Yorkers, especially those in the publishing and newspaper industries. Families would pack up and head to these rolling hills so that the parents could savor the quiet and the children could swim in the ponds and play in the meadows.

Today, the area seems to be about half preserved farmland and half suburbia. Being on a retreat here isn’t exactly like being deep in the White Mountains or the Outer Cape. Cars pass along this country road regularly, and there’s a Walmart less than two miles away. But that takes nothing away from the sense of escape we all bask in here. As I ran three miles out and three miles back, I passed beautifully preserved antique farmhouses, bungalows, and small shingled homes. The air was chilly, and vapor froze on my eyelashes, but I was grateful to be able to take more than an hour for my run without feeling like I was needed anywhere else – and even more grateful for the breakfast of eggs, scones, fruit and muffins prepared by the retreat house’s kitchen staff while I was out.

And then after a hot shower, a sense of absolute freedom for the hours that lay ahead. Some of the women were gathering for a morning discussion on six-word memoirs and an afternoon project making Joy Boxes; others were taking the time for themselves, as I was. I wrote for hours throughout the course of the day, reflecting on the year just passed and sketching out tentative hopes for the year just beginning. And then when I couldn’t think about writing anymore, I walked for an hour, down the road in the opposite direction from where I ran. Tired after that, I read, and then later joined the other women downstairs by the fireplace to work on putting photos from 2010 into my photo album. The latter has become a yearly tradition for me; since this retreat always falls in mid-January, after New Year’s I order prints of all the photos I think worth keeping from the previous year and then take an hour or two during the retreat to put them all in my album.

After dinner I read until I fell asleep. Sunday morning, another run – four miles this time, and it wasn’t nearly so cold. Then more time for writing and a little bit of reading before lunch and the trip home. Other years, I’ve felt more desperate for the escape and the solitude the retreat offers. These days, life is at a point where there isn’t as much of a lack of solitude in daily life for me. When I started attending this retreat, Holly was two years old; I was home full-time with her, and Tim was only in kindergarten and home a lot as well. These days I’m alone for six hours a day while they’re at school.

But I don’t spend their time at school reading, going for walks, or writing in my journal; I spend it working on paid writing or editing assignments. So it’s still a magnificent luxury to get away once a year for two days of this kind of self-indulgence. I write, I read, I walk, I run. And I go home ready for another year, feeling rejuvenated and slightly amazed that I had the luxury of these two days once again.