The Restory Retreat Centre

Photograph by George Angus Very early morning. I’m sitting in my chair in front of our bedroom window, my journal in my lap. We’ve opened the windows during the night, but the curtains are still drawn. I’m listening to the dawn, letting the sounds bring the day into view. I can hear that it’s overcast. It is quieter than a sunny morning when the sounds are filled with energy and activity. On such days the opening notes are an octave higher, there are more and they are louder. Impatient, it has no consideration for those still in bed.  But this morning is more tolerant, subdued. It has time. It is the type of dawn that will write a note to the rest of the day, asking it to take it a little slower. It is just here, on the other side of the curtains, quietly waiting. I would have seen the daybreak filled with mist that has descended from the mountains around the house and has moved up the river to fill our yard and stand amongst the trees, by the absence of sound. ...

Photograph by George Angus For a while now I’ve been walking around with a printout of a poem by Wendell Berry in my journal. I had it in a file on my computer, totally forgot about it and while I was searching for something else I discovered it again. On face value it is a beautiful poem, but it was as if it somehow struck an even deeper chord in me. I found it difficult to describe why exactly that was the case. So I made the printout and read it every now and again, meditated on it and wrote in its margins. I wanted to get out of the way so that it could work its magic on me in every way it pleased. Words 1.    What is one to make of a life given    to putting things into words,    saying them, writing them down?    Is there a world beyond words?    There is. But don't start, don't    go on about the tree unqualified,    standing in light that shines    to time's end beyond its summon...

Photograph by George Angus “I am not saying that we should love death, but rather that we should love life so generously, without picking and choosing, that we automatically include it (life’s other half) in our love.”                                                                                    Rainer Maria Rilke I pray that you may have your roots and foundation in love, so that you, together with all God's people, may have the power to understand how broad and long, how high and deep, is Christ's love.  Yes, may you come to know his love - although it can never be fully known - and so be completely filled with the very nature of God.                                   ...

Dag Hammarskjöld, Secretary-General of the United Nations from 1953 to 1961, died in a plane crash while still in office. Widely praised and respected for the work he had done, h e is the only person to have been awarded a posthumous Nobel Peace Prize. After his death, a journal that he kept was found in his house. He referred to these entries “as a sort of a white book concerning my negotiations with myself – and with God.” The journal was published under the title Markings and in the years that followed became a spiritual classic. A remark by W.H. Auden in his foreword to Markings, haunts me lately. He said that Hammarskjöld’s journal is an account “of the attempt by a professional man of action to unite in one life the via activa and the via contemplativa .” For me, this phrase captures one of the central issues of the spiritual life. The attempt to unite in one life the way of action and the way of contemplation. Experience shows that we often tend to overemphasize one of ...