I won’t say it is my favourite place on a late Saturday afternoon – a huge supermarket in one of the Johannesburg suburbs. Earlier in the day I attended The Jesuit Institute’s development day for spiritual directors and prayer guides in Auckland Park. While being there Matilda sent me a text and asked that I get a few things for the family gathering on Sunday. Now, who am I to resist the love of my life? As is often the case buying groceries, you somehow get temporary companions walking with you up and down the aisles. Total strangers in sync loading their trolleys or baskets. He did not exactly fall into the category of one of my grocery travel companions, although we were in the same store at the same time. His route was too haphazard to qualify. Using his grocery trolley as a walker, he shuffled bent over from shelf to shelf, putting everything on his list - nowhere to be seen - on the little seat of the trolley. He would cross your path at the bread stands, disappear...
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.