Retreat

A Sunday talk :-

A few days ago I was talking to a friend who was soon to go for an MRI scan. Quite possibly you’ve had one yourself, and know all about it.  My friend hadn’t, which allowed me to parade my exhaustive knowledge of MRI scanners, the result of my having had one maybe five or six years ago at the Royal Shrewsbury.  What happens, I told him, is that they strap you onto a sort of stretcher and slide you into a metal tube that isn't all that much bigger than you are, and then you're in there for about half an hour, or I was, while they probe you using ultrasound technology.

The one thing I did clearly recall was that last thing before they slid me in they gave me a sort of panic button to press if I had any problems. There was a more than slight thrill of claustrophobia as they slid me into the tube;  I’m not usually good in confined spaces, and will use stairs rather than lifts even when I’m quite a few floors up. So I half expected I’d be pressing that button at some point, but, as I explained to my friend, I didn’t.  I didn’t need to.  In fact, once I was in there, I found it a strangely comforting and relaxing experience, despite their insistence on playing me the Jeremy Vine Show, not my favourite radio programme.  Even with the radio playing, I actually felt quite detached from the world outside;  I suppose it might even have been a little like returning to the womb.

Having said that, half an hour of it was certainly quite enough - but looking back I’d have to say that something I'd expected might have been a bit of an ordeal in the end wasn't that unpleasant.  And since I’m the sort of person who can find it hard to switch off and just relax for a while, being forced to relax in this way and in this rather artificial setting, but one from which I couldn’t escape . . . well, I think it probably was quite good for me.  In fact, leaving the ultrasound tests and the medical reasons for me being there on one side for a moment, the experience was similar to some of the therapies used when people go away to be de-stressed and to get their batteries recharged.

And this is something I'm sure is true:  whatever your personality type and the lifestyle you follow, everyone at some point needs refuge.  And it’s good that there are people and places about to help get us back in trim.  Places where we can change the pace of living, and lift the pressure off a bit, and maybe also find a listening ear that's not going to be judgemental or to turn what it hears into gossip.

In a faith context, we talk about this sort of thing as ‘going on retreat’.  It’s something that I as a Franciscan am supposed to do regularly, and I admit here and now that I’m not good at getting round to it.  The problem is that we do very often feel the need just to press on, as if taking time out is akin to giving up, and admitting to weaknesses we don’t want the world to know about.  But if Jesus needed a place of retreat, then his people need it too.

The home of Mary, Martha and Lazarus was surely a sort of retreat house for Jesus.  These people were friends he could trust and could relax with;  we don't how the friendship started, in fact we don’t know very much about them at all, but from the snippets of information the Gospels do give us we can tell that Jesus had something at Bethany, something that differed from and complemented the relationships he had with others who shared in his journey, including, even, the Twelve Apostles.  Bethany was the retreat house, I think, that Jesus made use of: a place of refuge where he, the Servant King, could feel treasured and be served.

I should have spent more time than I have on retreat; when I have made a retreat, it's always been a special and a healing and restoring time.  Retreat for me is time away from the world, with the aim not so much of drawing closer to God, but really being more aware than I usually am of his closeness to me.  Retreat houses are I think a growth point in the Church and in religious experience just now, and I’m sure that’s a good thing.

If organised religion is in decline, which I suppose it is, at least in its traditional forms, then the retreat movement would seem to be bucking the trend, since there seem to be more houses and places of retreat opening all the time, and they seem to appeal not only to established churchgoers but rather more widely.  Certainly, I suppose it will be people who are at least open to the reality of religious experience who go to places of retreat, but by no means all of them will be in church or chapel regularly  on a Sunday.

Of course, not all retreat centres are Christian.  There's one just up the road from here that I think is Hindu in ethos, and next door to where a friend of mine lives there's a small house used as a place of retreat by Buddhists.  And of course, there are retreat houses that claim no particular religious affiliation at all. All of them, though, would hope to be offering an antidote to today's fast-moving but so often rather heartless and uncaringly secular and selfish world, and to the way lives become weighed down by decisions and crises and responsibilities, but starved of spiritual resourcing.

The prayer I used at the beginning of this service spoke of Jesus finding in the household of his friends "learning, argument and hospitality".  Learning, argument and hospitality - I like that.  Those might not have been the first words in my mind if it'd been me that wrote that prayer, so they deserved a bit of reflection, I decided.  And I think on consideration that each of those words has something particular and important to say about our need for refuge and refreshment, and what will provide those things.

So let me just touch for a moment on each of them, starting with learning.  They say that the whole of life is a learning experience, and it is.  But how much do we manage to learn from all the stuff that hits us on a daily basis, and the ups and downs, the highs and lows of our own lives, while we’re still out there, while we’re on the hoof?

Not too much, I’d say.  You need time, space, the chance to step back for a while;  then, once you’ve been able to get a sense of perspective, once some of the pressure has been eased, then even some of the bad stuff can be truly a learning experience, that helps us grow stronger, more aware, more attentive, better at discipline and choices.  This sort of learning isn't of course about being remembering facts and figures - it’s about processing and understanding and realising the meaning and use in our own situation of things that have happened to us and around us.

The second word in the prayer was argument:  I came across a news report not long ago about an argument that turned into a brawl that eventually turned into a news item because the police had to break it up, and certain people found themselves in front of the magistrates in consequence.  Yes, I know, it happens all the time - but the thing that struck me in the story was that the argument originally had been about the age of some so-called celebrity of whom I’d never heard.

I found that really rather depressing, and a sort of statement of the emptiness of our so-called civilized society, in which the cult of the celebrity has, for me, expanded far out of proportion with reality.  Is that all they could find to argue about?  The kind of heated argument that comes to blows makes better TV, I suppose, than the more serious stuff.  “Eastenders” the other night never made it down to an acceptable vocal decibel level from the beginning of the programme to the end.  At the time I was at the other end of the house, trying to be quiet and read!

Argument in the sense of today's prayer, is about testing what we stand for and what we believe, in conversation with others. We need to do that so that we’re confident not only about what we believe but about why we believe it.  This too needs time and space, and the kind of friends who're prepared to both challenge and inform our awareness of ourselves and of our world.

The third word was hospitality.  How much hospitality should you have on retreat?  Shouldn’t retreat houses be a bit spartan and austere?  Shouldn’t retreats be a taste of the desert, of the wilderness?  One retreat house I used to know well was famed for its excellent food and comfy rooms, and when I first went there that raised exactly those questions in my mind: shouldn't my time on retreat be a bit more rigorous - shouldn't there be something of the discomfort of the medieval monastery?

Well, of course, that is genuinely and rightly part of the retreat movement in all its breadth.  Some Christian shrines are by tradition approached barefoot, some even on hands and knees, and of course days of fasting can be part of the discipline of a retreat or a pilgrimage.  But, when eventually I challenged them (or perhaps admitted my own uncertainty) the couple who ran this house told me they’d discovered that often a time of good spiritual refreshment requires our physical needs to be comfortably met, because then they’re not going to be always there at the forefront of your mind.

And I can understand that, and the hospitality of Mary and Martha is given full weight in the Gospel stories.  It appears that Bethany was open house for Jesus whenever he called by;  there’d always be food on the table and a place to lay his head.  In our Gospels we tend to find Martha providing traditional hospitality, and Mary maybe just sitting with Jesus enjoying his company. At one point we find Martha rather resenting the fact that she's slaving away in the kitchen while her sister's just sitting around.  But when she tells Jesus to send her sister in to help, he doesn't, but instead tells her that Mary has chosen the better way. We’re not told quite how Martha received that information, but there’s an important point made about hospitality.

True hospitality of course needs to include bread and board, but it isn't just about providing what the norms of society require (the appropriate meal, the well-laid table, and perhaps the best silver). Do that, and you’re still no more than a restaurant or a bed-and-breakfast place.  More is needed - making space for the other and attending on them, listening to what they have to say.  This sort of hospitality is healing - it helps renew and encourage and reinvigorate, it takes the other person seriously as who they are (more than just 'the guest').  And it’s a costly thing, that involves an offering of oneself.

Anyway, between the two of them, or the three, if we count Lazarus in, Mary and Martha provided retreat for Jesus, and I thank God for those who’ve done the same for me - sometimes by design and arrangement, when I have managed to get away to a retreat house, but just as often in informal ways, when friends have just made space, asked the pertinent question, allowed me room to perhaps grouse a bit about things, and been patient with me when I've done that.  I hope I've managed to do the same in my turn, and it’s an essential Christian ministry within a healthy Church.

But enough, I need to finish.  One last thought, going back to my memories of my MRI scan.  I recall having to take off all my metal bits and pieces before being slid into the tube.  In my case this included ring, watch and mobile phone.  Afterwards, putting them all back on was almost a sacramental thing.  It was about taking on again the responsibilities and relationships and work programmes of the real world, after my little bit of quiet time out of it.  In reality, all our Christian endeavours will benefit greatly from a directed and purposeful time out - because when we take the chance to learn more about who we are, review more deeply what it is we believe, and when others for while offer hospitality and attend to our needs and maybe our frets and fears as well, this will make us all the more ready for the road ahead, and all the more certain that we travel it in company with our Lord.