The Restory Retreat Centre

  More Than Ourselves The Conversation Wendell Berry has been at the forefront of our thoughts these past few weeks. Today, we take one of his remarks - or observations - that surfaced in last week’s blog a little further. It is easy to live within the narrow confines of our own thoughts, needs, and plans, as if we were the centre of reality. Yet real life - and especially true growth - begins when we realize that we are not alone; that we do not learn on our own how to become better, wiser, and more fully human. To love is rarely a matter of romantic seclusion. Rather, it is the grueling, beautiful awakening to the reality of something - and someone - other than oneself. We are not shaped in a vacuum. The people with whom we live - with all their imperfections and the unexpected burdens they place upon us - often become our finest spiritual guides. Through them, we are slowly liberated from our self-absorption. This interconnectedness extends beyond our fellow human beings. It als...

What The Mystics Know 5) Heaven on earth For in him we live and move and have our being... ‭‭Acts‬ ‭17‬:‭28‬ ‭NRSV‬‬                               Then Jacob woke from his sleep and said,  “Surely the Lord is in this place—and I did not know it! ..... and this is the gate of heaven.” ‭‭Genesis‬ ‭28‬:‭16‬-‭17‬ ‭NRSV‬‬                    “.....because the Kingdom of God is within you.” ‭‭Luke‬ ‭17‬:‭21‬ ‭GNT‬‬                                The Conversation Elements From The Conversation "....die ganse dag is ene God." (....the whole day is all God) Jan Swanepoel                                               "...hy weet nie van afsondering nie sit nie skilderagtig geraa...

   Wider Than A Cough The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Video With love George and Matilda

Photos by George Angus    Welsh poet John O'Donohue spoke of the earthern wisdom possessed by the animals we share this earth with.  “The animals are more ancient than us. They enjoy a seamless presence—a lyrical unity with the earth. Animals live outside in the wind, in the waters, in the mountains, and in the clay. The knowing of the earth is in them.”  When we become more sensitive and attuned to them, through presence, awareness, listening and looking, by deflating our self-importance, we enter into their state of knowing. O'Donohue referred to this state of shared awareness and being as “interflow” . What I do know is that we are mostly missing out through the lives we live. George  

“…the wise man looks into space and does not regard the small as too little, nor the great as too big, for he knows that there is no limit to dimensions.”                                                                                        Lao Tzu It is often difficult to say what the reasons are in choosing the next book to read. In some cases it is obvious, like when you receive a copy as a gift and you cannot wait to open it on that very first sentence. Oh, I love first sentences! Other times though, there is almost a lull in the reading air with no sense of direction and a myriad of choices. During such times, I wait. It is exciting, trusting the bigger scheme of things that’s tapped into my essence and subconscious to make suggestions, or o...

The antipodes as depicted  in a manuscript  of  the "Topographia Christiana" (Kosmas Indicopleustes, 6th century AD) For some inexplicable reason the adults of my childhood were all in agreement that the end of any tunnel started in South Africa will be somewhere in China. How often have I heard: “If you keep digging here you’ll have to start learning Chinese. When you pop out on the other side of the earth all those Chinese will be standing around the hole looking in and you’ll have to explain to them what you are doing there.” Suffice to say that I kept my holes fairly shallow. It is the sort of information that you put away as you grow up only to be taken off the shelf again when you have children or grandchildren digging holes in the garden. This week I discovered that we are all a little off the mark with our calculations. By a few continents actually. And such digging through the centre of the earth right down from where you stand has a very fa...

House of Parliament, Sunset (1900, 1901) - Claude Monet (Claude Monet, the French impressionist painter developed cataracts as he aged, but refused to have them surgically removed.) Monet Refuses the Operation Doctor, you say there are no haloes around the streetlights in Paris and what I see is an aberration caused by old age, an affliction. I tell you it has taken me all my life to arrive at the vision of gas lamps as angels, to soften and blur and finally banish the edges you regret I don’t see, to learn that the line I called the horizon does not exist and sky and water, so long apart, are the same state of being. Fifty-four years before I could see Rouen cathedral is built of parallel shafts of sun, and now you want to restore my youthful errors: fixed notions of top and bottom, the illusion of three-dimensional space, wisteria separate from the bridge it covers. What can I say to convince you the Houses of Parliament dissolve night after night to become the fluid dream of...

Photo taken here at Barrowfield by Marinetha Naude “How are things going on earth?” Leo, an elderly angel, asks God. God smiles and fondly thinks back on the seven days of creation. A difficult, but fascinating task. “Now that you ask, I think I must go and have a look.” And God comes to earth on a sunny September day. The birds are chirping, a little stream is running downhill to a small village. In the fields, women are working who sings cheerfully. Songs about the harvest, about love, songs about wine. And God thinks: This must be Tuscany. And looks satisfied across the landscape. Walks along the road, down to the village. In the middle of the small town square, stands a peculiar building. A dome of bricks with a tower and on top of the tower a golden cross. God walks up the gigantic stairs in front of the peculiar building and comes into a cold, draughty space with, on its walls, all these remarkable figures, mourning women with floating little hoops above their heads, an awful...

If you would know the age of the earth, look upon the sea in a storm. The grayness of the whole immense surface, the wind furrows upon the faces of the waves, the great masses of foam, tossed about and waving, like matted white locks, give to the sea in a gale an appearance of hoary age, lustreless, dull, without gleams, as though it had been created before light itself.                                                                                                       ...