The Restory Retreat Centre

  Giving And Receiving The Conversation Elements From The Conversation And probably the biggest gift we can give: to give birth to God in our own lives and circumstances.  Music We wish you a blessed, beautiful Christmas.  With our love.  George & Matilda

Notes from a different drummer Learning the unforced rhythms of grace The practical How . The notes from the drummer have reached your inner ear. You are waking up. Now what? Don’t panic.  You’re not going mad, although it might feel like it. Some might even say you are rocking the boat. After all, there is the adjective different before the drummer whose music you are tuning into. And although there are days when you wish that your soul has never been stirred and things could be just as it was before, a seed lying dormant for years has cracked the soil.  Of course, you can choose the business-as-usual-route. You can play it safe and don’t let your life be disrupted. You can pull out the new seedling by its roots and turn the volume way down, silence the notes.To stay in your comfort zone is a very tempting possibility. Millions of people do it.  But if you want to live, you’ll have to tend to the new life that has sprouted in your soul. It ...

Poppy outside my window Photo by Matilda Today I'm going to start living like a monk not allowing the god Critic to dictate my song but to hear the gentle call of the Bird God, saying "Look outside your window! There's a second poppy blooming." It has exploded, pink shrapnel hanging in tatters from its detonating core. Another little bomb sits waiting to shake my world with a colour explosion. Being monk I will tend the plants that exploded like an orgasm. Taking deep delight in the birth of its seed and the beauty of its short life. Being a monk I will look out for love letters all day long, Listen for the Lover's song and stand naked and trembling for a touch, a soft wind hand stroking my face. I will explode like the pink poppy and bloom under this Spring Sun. Matilda

On our recent visit to Knysna we took a short trail through one of the magnificent indigenous rain forests. Aptly called The Garden of Eden, one cannot help but gape at the immensity of it all. Something happens to me when I enter into this type of cathedral: I become quite unaware of myself but feel myself totally immersed, totally one with Nature in her green skin. I am a cell, a branch, a leaf, a stream. I come home to this place of moistness. What strikes me as I flow through the arteries of this great Being, is how the main themes of life play out here quietly and beautifully. The birth of a fern leaf, bathed in a sliver of filtered sunlight beneath an ancient yellow wood tree brings me close to tears. From the decay of a fallen giant and the life forms engaged in this process, to the air thick with moisture and the sounds of the rain forest musicians: birds and frogs endemic to this place, I am reminded that everything is as it should be. Everything belongs. I belong. ...