The Restory Retreat Centre

We aren't immortal. We don't last long. Like our dogs, we age and weaken. And die. Ps 49:12, 20 (The Message) She came to me as a stray more than a decade ago. On a rainy December night she somehow managed to get through the electric fence. She was terrified, thin and in a general bad state. When you approached her she growled and snapped in all directions. We left her alone to find her the next morning deep underneath the stack of sprinkler pipes. She wouldn’t budge. For two weeks I left food and water close to her place of safety. When I was at a safe distance she came out, ate and drank, sat staring at me for a while, then returned to the hide-out. Gradually, there was movement in the tip of her tail to be seen when I brought the food and looked at her under the pipes. And then, one morning, as I was walking with the other dogs in her vicinity, she came out and tentatively started to walk along. She had decided to stay. She was a mongrel in the ...

I love trying new recipes. Especially those that call for unusual ingredients or combinations of ingredients. And so I buy limes because they have exactly that –a hint of otherness. They seem somehow loftier than their relatives- oranges and lemons being so ordinary. Not l imes. Their subtle taste and fragrance satisfies my yearning for the unusual, the exceptional. I find it exhilarating that there exists such a thing as a lime.      I put them in a pretty bowl and pass by them day by day thinking that I must use them for something special. Simply juicing it like some common orange and drinking the fresh juice just won’t do. And so a week passes, and then two. And the limes in my bowl become withered and dry while the apples and bananas come and go in quick succession to nourish me at breakfast time.      Why do I do this? I seem to have a tendency to treat anything special this way. Fresh cherries, strawberries or gooseberries. Tender asparagus ...

Increasingly I find that I am not alone in my perception of what seems to be the necessary, but time-wasting activity, of resting. Even by unthinkingly calling it an activity, I in effect defy its purpose, that of regeneration through non-activity. Why do we feel so guilty when we try to rest? Our minds rushing ahead to what has to be done, what needs to be done, how to do it, when to do it. I often give up on resting and get up to start the doing, robbing myself of something life giving. Like not drinking enough water to hydrate my cells , I dehydrate my soul by not getting enough rest. I promise myself, of course, to go to bed earlier tonight. For somehow, a night’s sleep can be justified. And for most of us that is mainly what resting consists of: going to bed at a reasonable hour and sleeping till duty calls at daybreak. But to purposefully REST? To have a regime almost, like a gym program, to schedule time to settle down, to become quiet and to find peace? That ranks very low on...

It is essential to experience all the times and moods of one good place.     - Thomas Merton   I am very privileged to know such a place. It has been for such a long stretch of time that I can claim to know most of its times and moods. For the best part of forty years I have lived here on the farm Rietfontein in the district of Bronkhorstspruit. It is here that the Restory dream is now taking shape. When I came here as a child, the farm had all the potential of   adolescence with only two Black wattle trees, a bore hole, a dilapidated old shed and veld. There was no Eskom power in the area. We stayed in a caravan and a small corrugated iron shed while my dad was building our house and the barn. Gradually my mother established the garden and planted trees. When I grew older I took over the planting of trees and I still try to plant at least two new ones annually. The land was cultivated and over the years we enjoyed her bounty   with crops of tomatoes, potat...