The Restory Retreat Centre

  Spirituality In Conversation With Art “All Jesus did that day was tell stories - a long storytelling afternoon.” ‭‭Matt ‭13‬:‭34‬  (The Message)                               The Conversation Elements From The Conversation ~ ❖ ~ “When we move toward our own creativity,  we move toward our Creator.  When we seek to become more spiritual,  we find ourselves becoming more creative.  Our creativity and our spirituality are so closely interconnected  they are in effect one and the same thing.  Speaking of God, we often use the words “Maker” or “Creator”  without recognizing that those  are the terms for “artist.”  God is the Great Artist.  We are creations  and we are intended, in turn, to be creative ourselves.” Julia Cameron                               ~ ❖ ~ What if we were ...

  Simple Living "...give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with the food that I need, or I shall be full, and deny you,  and say, “Who is the Lord?” or I shall be poor, and steal,  and profane the name of my God. ‭‭                                                                                                                Proverbs 30:8-9‬ ‭ The Conversation  Elements From The Conversation Music We send our love and wish for you a simple life.  George & Matilda 

Images source: Kintsugigifts.com Ring the bell that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack, a crack in everything That’s where the light comes in                                                                                Leonard Cohen I know nothing, except what everyone knows – If there when Grace dances, I should dance.                                                                             W. H. Auden And God showed me that sin will be no shame, but somehow honor for humanity….. God’s goodness...

The afternoon knows what the morning never suspected.”                                                                                              - Robert Frost On my 50th birthday, I am sitting on a low stone wall next to Matilda and Jan Badenhorst. It is late afternoon in the Luneburg valley, with the sun low in our backs. Jan is busy telling us about his horses in his gentle, calm voice. The beautiful stallion strides past us, all power and elegance. Photograph by Matilda Clifford In the card Matilda gave me early that morning she quoted Wendell Berry: And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles, no matter how long,  but only by a spiritual journey,  a journey of one inch, ...

Photograph by George Angus When we moved to Barrowfield last year, we did so with too much stuff (See Matilda’s post Moving heavily ). There were mitigating circumstances as we stated before: it was years of living, by four different people and in different locations coming together – Matilda, me, Oupa Frans and my dad. There were two workshops, one pottery studio and four houses with all the tools and possessions associated with each. Add to that my father’s reluctance to move and our efforts to take into account that his belongings acted as a security blanket and all could not simply be taken away from him and you end up with all that arrived in Wakkerstroom and here on the farm at Barrowfield. And that despite everything that has indeed been sorted, discarded or sold. Too much. That is not the way we want to live. There is a dissonance between our possessions and our spirituality. We want to travel much, much lighter. Gradually things have settled in these past few ...

Painting by Johan Angus I can’t remember exactly how he was born. He arrived years ago like dew in the night – one day Roy was there. I do recall that it was during one of the most difficult and confusing periods of my life. Since then he stayed. He might be silent for weeks, but never do I have the feeling that he is far off. He is ever present in the wings. The origin of his name is a mystery too. It was not as if I decided to call him that. I met him as Roy. The same goes for his appearance. He is slender, with thin, flat hair. In his thirties, usually wearing a golf shirt and a pair of overall trousers. Mostly he sits. Not as if he’s lazy, more as if he is waiting and content in the knowledge that what needs to be done is being done. We meet each other in my journal. As I’ve said, he might be quiet for weeks and then, on any particular morning, he’ll be there on the page. On such an occasion my journal entry takes the form of a conversation: Roy: I s...

“I saw God the other day. He was a builder. I saw him plastering a wall at the coffee shop Nino’s in Rosebank, Johannesburg, at about eight thirty at night. I stopped for a good five minutes and watched him plaster. For that length of time, nothing mattered in the world. Not the conflict in the Congo. Not HIV/AIDS. Put it this way, if a truck came shuttling down on me at that very moment I would hardly have looked up, even if the driver were hooting. God was busy, you see?  And I was watching him. It occurred to me there and then, as that white man’s image reminded me of my late black father, that there is no better way to make colour acceptable than to do what you do extremely well. There is no quicker way to shut down prejudice than to be an expert at what you do. There’s no quicker way to bring out the God in you than to do what you do with intense honesty, love, focus, passion, concentration and total spiritual commitment. You see, Mandingo, God exists i...

I constantly have to deal with monkey mind. The Buddhists describe a mind that’s all over the place, jumping from one thought to the next, restless in a never ending chatter, as monkey mind. As Westerners we place a high premium on the intellect, complicated thought processes, an active mind. Our dominant tool, to a very large extent, with which we relate to our environment, is our head. We think. Much more than we think. In my own case the situation is aggravated by me being a Five on the Enneagram. In the unhealthy state, I tend to rely totally on my thought processes. I find safety in all the facts and information I gather. My brain is overused to the detriment of my other faculties and senses. Although this rational approach has its advantages – the majority of our achievements in the West attest to that – our over reliance on it costs us dearly. It became an over exercised muscle while the rest of our being and our other abilities atrophied. With effort we have t...