Wisdom of Retreat

Oct 05, 2015

This week it happens not once, not twice, but three times.  What am I referring to? A retreat. I am honored and blessed to get to be leading three retreats this week.  Today’s private retreat guest just departed for home. She drove away relaxed, content and renewed  with clarity of vision for next steps in her professional development.  She was like watching Jennifer Louden’s wise words about retreat come to life.

"... Retreat is about stepping out of your ordinary existence to listen and attune to your truest, most authentic self. It is about being self-referenced to become self-restored. It is setting apart time to tend the hearth of your inner life, feed your muse, reclaim your dreams." --Jennifer Louden

Today’s guest originally stepped out of her ordinary existence two years ago to book a retreat with me. She has scheduled follow up retreats since then as she says that during retreat she can finally hear herself think. Additionally, there’s enough space that she can actually listen to what her life is telling her. The result? Clarity emerges in a way that does not happen in her everyday busyness as a department leader, a wife and grandma with a grown child and grandson living under the same roof.

Tending to the hearth of her inner life? Positively. What I witnessed in all of this week’s retreat guests is what I affectionately refer to as “relighting the pilot light”. That inner hearth, the flame of awareness, the flame of self-reference, the flame of appreciation gets lit and the internal fire fueled for sustenance in the months ahead.  Retreat offers such life-affirming energy for the wise ones who invest therein.