The Restory Retreat Centre

  Quiet In The Turmoil The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Music In opera you often get silences intertwined with a more tumultuous background. Song To The Moon  by by Antonin Dvorak is  a beautiful example.  With love. And the longing that our love will reflect something of God's expansive love.  George & Matilda

Meditation Practice The Conversation Elements From The Conversation May you experience the abundance and the presence of Christ when you become still. With love. George & Matilda  

  We Begin Again The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Music As last year, so this year - with our love.  George & Matilda

    How To Start   The Conversation  Elements From The Conversation  “There is a secret place.  A radiant sanctuary. As real as your own kitchen.  More real than that. Constructed of the purest elements.  Overflowing with the ten thousand beautiful things. Worlds within worlds.  Forests, rivers. Velvet coverlets thrown over featherbeds, fountains bubbling beneath a canopy of stars. Bountiful forests, universal libraries. A wine cellar offering an intoxication so sweet you will never be sober again. A clarity so complete you will never again forget. This magnificent refuge is inside you. Enter. Shatter the darkness that shrouds the doorway… Believe the incredible truth that the Beloved has chosen for his dwelling place the core of your own being because that is the single most beautiful place in all of creation.”                            ...

  Meditation In Practice This week's post is very lean and stripped. The focus is on the meditation practice.   The Conversation Love. George & Matilda

  The Importance Of The Quiet Practice The Conversation Elements From The Conversation  The eye is the lamp of the body.  If your eyes are healthy, your whole body will be full of light.  But if your eyes are unhealthy,  your whole body will be full of darkness.  If then the light within you is darkness,  how great is that darkness!                                                                                      ‭‭Matthew‬ ‭6:22-23‬ ‭NIV‬‬ ‭‭                                                                           ...

    Reality   The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Music With our love. George en Matilda

  It is said that Calvin Coolidge, or Silent Cal, the 30 th  US president, didn’t work himself to a stanstill.    Taking into account that he generally slept 11 hours a night, supplemented by daily naps and some  three-month extended vacations, the conclusion that he worked a maximum of 4 and a half hours a day doesn’t seem too far-fetched. And the times he was in the Oval Office, he often pulled out  the bottom drawer of his desk, put his feet into it and counted the cars passing by on Pennsylvania Avenue.   When he passed away in 1933, Gertrude Stein reportedly remarked: “Coolidge dead? How can you tell?”   In 2 Kings 6 we are told of another leader, King Jehoram of Israel. With his city under siege by the Syrian army and Samaria experiencing a terrible famine, he walks on the  city wall. While doing so, he hears the horrific story of two mothers who started eating their children in an effort to stay alive. On hearing that he tear...

Photograph by George Angus We hear the beginning. And see the end. Only occasionally do we witness the middle where everything happens.   It starts with worn-out pick up lines, shaken by the dozen out of a box: “Hi gorgeous! How was heaven when you left it?” “Well, here I am. What are your other two wishes?” “Aside from being sexy, what else do you do for a living?”   On and on, right under our window. Up to a point where we lean out and shout: “Please! Enough already!”   The end is messier. No, really. Like in dirty. Where you can only explain it as a mixup of vowels and bowels. Poetry in motion of sorts, I guess.   You are lucky if you catch him in the middle. Unaware, totally taken up by being smitten.  Leaning against the love of his life, his soulmate, his purpose for living. Whispering short affectionate phrases, staring into the eyes staring, nibbling on a beautiful forehead.   What puzzles us is how he knows there is love to be found in the bakkie m...

The Hope That You Have   In these days   verse 15 in 1 Peter   constantly  announces itself  to me : “Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. ”   ( NIV ‬ ‬ )   The people Peter  wa s writing to  we re  liv ing  dispersed as a small  minority in the northern parts of Asia Minor ,  nowa day s known as  Turkey.  They ha d  it difficult, because they just d idn’t   fit  into their society.  As believers they were seen to be different and such people  never have it easy.  For that reason Peter describes them as  forei gners and exiles.   And yet,  despite their difficult circumstances, they  possessed  something that fascinated those around them . Those people came up to them and said: “We know for a fact that you have a difficult life.  And yet,  you ...