The Restory is a Retreat Centre nestled against Tafelkop, a singular mountain head near Wakkerstroom, South Africa. Here we live a simple life as contemplatives.
It is a place of re-connection: with ourselves, people, Nature, Silence and Creativity. Our retreats are aimed at this. Our conversations, writing and art centre around the univocity of life. We need a place that reminds us that we are all one. The Restory hopes to be such a place and space.
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From The Restory -Conversations On The Journey (54)
“Jesus said, “You’re looking for proof, but you’re looking for the wrong kind.
All you want is something to titillate your curiosity, satisfy your lust for miracles.
The only proof you’re going to get is what looks like the absence of proof: Jonah-evidence.
Like Jonah, three days and nights in the fish’s belly,
the Son of Man will be gone three days and nights in a deep grave.”
Matthew 12:39-40 (The Message)
~ ❖ ~
“Joseph bought a linen sheet,
took the body down, wrapped it in the sheet,
and placed it in a tomb which had been dug out of solid rock.
Then he rolled a large stone across the entrance to the tomb.”
Mark 15:46 (GNB)
~ ❖ ~
It is in the darkness, when there is nothing left in us that can please or comfort our minds, when we seem to be useless and worthy of all contempt, when we seem to have failed, when we seem to be destroyed and devoured, it is then that the deep and secret selfishness that is too close to us for us to identify is stripped away from our souls. It is in this darkness that we find liberty. It is in this abandonment that we are made strong. This is the night which empties us and makes us pure.
Thomas Merton
~ ❖ ~
Merton describes the moment when Christians the whole world over gather in front of the tomb on the evening of Holy Saturday, “watching in the night.”
"The first voice that speaks in the silent night is the cold flint. Out of the flint springs fire. The fire, making no sound, is the most eloquent preacher on this night that calls for no other sermon than liturgical action and mystery. That spark from cold rock, reminds us that the strength, the life of God, is always deeply buried in the substance of all things. It reminds me that He has power to raise up children of Abraham even from the stones. . . .
The fire that speaks from the stone speaks, then, of his reality springing from the alienated coldness of our dead hearts, of our souls that have forgotten themselves, that have been exiled from themselves and from their God—and have lost their way in death. But there is nothing lost that God cannot find again. Nothing dead that cannot live again in the presence of His Spirit. No heart so dark, so hopeless, that it cannot be enlightened and brought back to itself, warmed back to the life of charity."
The Conversation
Elements From The Conversation
Finding seeds
Whichever spiritual angle you are coming from, there is something significant about this festival season that acknowledges humanity's universal longing for hope.
Situated at the turning of the seasons, we align with an ancient planetary rhythm written in our bones, a deep and rumbling reverence in the background of our hearts that parallels the ebb and flow of the turning earth, sun, moon, planets and stars.
We align with a rhythm that recognises death, followed by life, loss, followed by gain. Our myths and stories tell of renewal, rescue, hope, emergence.
Why do we want things to be better? Because they can be. Seeds tell us that. Despite whatever darkness we are in, be it depression, fear, brokenness or oppression, seeds stay alive.
They guard the future as eager packages of potential, eternal optimists.
They are like little knights in smoothened armour, who defend the grail of life.
I read this in the rivers that flow to the sea and always return to water the mountains. I read it in the rocks that rumble and crumble as sand to the sea then go millennia-journeying into the dark and molten heat-heart of the earth, only to emerge as beautiful crystals. I read it while breathing the very same molecules of oxygen that creatures on the shores of vanished lakes breathed, long before the continents assumed their current temporary shapes.
There are generations of people ahead of us whose clear bright faces are yet unknown; there is a heart-seed in humanity that wants those people to survive, to thrive, to somehow emerge both living and immortal after all the dying is done.
May you and yours know and experience deep peace and fresh hope in the coming days.
Die Week Na 'n Dood Sebastien op sy gelukkigste - by water, besig om vis te vang Die Gesprek Elemente Uit Die Gesprek Musiek Sebastien het altyd gesê, "I like old music.' Hy het. Billy Joel se Piano Man was vir baie lank die ringtone op sy foon. Dat ons só gelukkig kan wees, dankie Sebas. George & Matilda
Onlangse Oorsig / Recent Summary Foto's Van Onlangse Gebeure / Pictures Of Recent Events 'n Huis opgeknap en geverf met 'n nuwe badkamer, die koms van lente en reën, retreats, die CMR se breimarathon, aanbied en afsluiting van die Verfrissingskursus in geestelike begeleiding, bywoon van ons kleindogter Ariana se gradeplegtigheid ("Nee Oupa, dis 'n gradige plegtigheid!") voordat sy volgende jaar grootskool toe gaan. A house renovated and painted with a new bathroom, the arrival of spring and rain, retreats, the CMR's knitting marathon, presenting and finishing the Refresher course in spiritual guidance, attending our granddaughter Ariana's graduation before she goes to big school next year. Klank / Sound Die klank van sagte reën na die storm is op baie vlakke nou gepas. The sound of gentle rain after the storm is now appropriate on many levels. Met ons liefde, soos altyd. With our love, as always. George & Matilda
Skuld as Motivering Die Gesprek Elemente Uit Die Gesprek ~ ❖ ~ "I am convinced that guilt and shame are never from God. They are merely the defenses of the False Self as it is shocked at its own poverty — the defenses of a little man who wants to be a big man. God leads by compassion toward the soul, never by condemnation. If God would relate to us by severity and punitiveness, God would only be giving us permission to do the same (which is tragically, due to our mistaken images of God, exactly what has happened!)." Richard Rohr ~ ❖ ~ "It is about as hard to absolve yourself of your own guilt as it is to sit in your own lap. Wrongdoing sparks guilt sparks wrongdoing ad nauseam, and we all try to disguise the grim process from both ourselves and everybody else. In order to break the circuit we need friends before whom we can put aside the disguise, trusting that when they see us for what we fully are, they won't run away screaming with, if nothing wors
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