The Restory Retreat Centre

  Existential Health Wonder, Self-Acceptance, Purposeful Living The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Creative Piece As a visual expression of this transition to our "second life," an existence stripped of demands and masks, American artist David Best breaks through the usual boundaries of art. His layered, intricate wooden temples are not built to serve as lasting monuments, but to stand as temporary spaces where people can write their deepest losses, guilt, and obsolete roles on the walls. As Best himself notes, it is not about the technical craftsmanship of the structure, but about the space it creates for the human soul to free itself. And even when an installation like this one in the Renwick Gallery is not allowed to be burned on site, the structure is stripped by hand afterward and the written messages taken to the desert to be burned there in silence. Thus the flames and the spaces strip away all the noise of everyday life, leaving us with only the pure wond...

  The Unexamined Life (?) The Conversation  Elements From The Conversation  Music "Bird Song" is about a world that has been so thoroughly "examined," paved over, and stripped of its mystery that we are left with a paralyzing silence. It's a cry for re-enchantment. The "examination" here is the hyper-rational, concrete-pouring progress that has led to a spiritual and ecological crisis.    · "sing me a song and put me back to sleep / from the trees, breathe life back into me" This is a desire to return to a dreamlike, unanalytical state. She isn't asking for a lesson, but for a lullaby—a song that ends thought, not provokes it. It's a wish to be re-connected to the natural, unconscious world ("the trees") to be healed.  May horizons that stretch wide open for you. With all our love. George & Matilda

  After The Retreat “About eight days after saying this,  he climbed the mountain to pray,  taking Peter, John, and James along.  While he was in prayer,  the appearance of his face changed  and his clothes became blinding white.   Meanwhile, Peter and those with him were slumped over in sleep.  When they came to, rubbing their eyes,  they saw Jesus in his glory  and the two men standing with him.  When Moses and Elijah had left,  Peter said to Jesus, “Master, this is a great moment!  Let’s build three memorials:  one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah.”  He blurted this out without thinking...  When they came down off the mountain the next day,  a big crowd was there to meet them....” ‭‭Luke ‭9‬:‭28‬-‭29‬, ‭32‬-‭33‬, ‭37‬ ‭(The Message)            The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Music The title of the album is "Into Silence", but this track reminds ...

  Death, And My Life "Man, who is born of a woman, is few of days...." Job 14:1 (ESV)                                       The Conversation Elements From The Conversation With our love. George & Matilda

  Into The Silence The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Music This blessing, after a line by Alfred Lord Tennyson: May your eyes be homes of silent prayers. With our love. Always.  George & Matilda

  Easter As Message  Listen carefully: Unless a grain of wheat is buried in the ground,  dead to the world,  it is never any more than a grain of wheat.  But if it is buried, it sprouts and reproduces itself many times over.  In the same way, anyone who holds on to life just as it is destroys that life.  But if you let it go, reckless in your love, you’ll have it forever, real and eternal.                                                             ‭‭John‬ ‭12:24-25‬ ‭(The Message)   Our Conversation Elements From Our Conversation There is death, destruction, grief, sighs and tears.... Scars of a war, Kyiv, Ukraine, Feb 2022 An old, hauntingly beautiful folk song from Ukraine  (Click on the link to listen) Plyve Kacha  The lyrics, translated into English:  A duck swims upon the Tysyna ...

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.                                   ...

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 ...

Mily, as photographed by Frans Marais I have a cat. No, wrong assumption: The cat is not mine. We cohabit, Mily and I. She loves me like cats do: by choosing my lap for a nap or perching on my hip until I wake to walk her to her bowl. She shows her contentment with our arrangement by sleeping in utter abandonment, stretched out, totally vulnerable totally trusting. I am afraid that I love her too much. That someday she will not be here anymore and I will so miss her weight on my hip as I awake to her purring. She is irreplaceable not being owned by me. She will have shared all of her life with me. That is all. Matilda

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. ...

So this then: What is this? Surely not nothing. Not a detour en route to our goal? Is it a test? A trial? What is it that I need to grasp for this struggle to end?      I ask these questions all the time while caring for my father. It takes every ounce of energy, every inch of determination I have, and most of my time. Trying to live with awareness, staying in the moment, I have to say: This is the dark side of the moon. This too is what it is about. Not only the being present to the pristine beauty and exiting newness of our new home and surroundings, the luxury of fresh air and quiet, but this: this struggle. This getting to know who I’m not. What I cannot cope with. Cannot change. Cannot handle. Have to handle. Have to face. Myself.      My shadow, in the guise of my father, sits opposite me reflecting whatever it is I am feeling at any given moment. He mirrors it all the time: when I’m irritated, he snaps back at me, when I’m sad, he hangs his head....

Photograph by Suresh Gundappa It doesn’t interest me if there is one God or many gods. I want to know if you belong or feel abandoned. If you know despair or can see it in others. I want to know if you are prepared to live in the world with its harsh need to change you. If you can look back with firm eyes saying this is where I stand. I want to know if you know how to melt into that fierce heat of living falling toward the center of your longing. I want to know if you are willing to live, day by day, with the consequence of love and the bitter unwanted passion of your sure defeat. I have heard, in that fierce embrace, even the gods speak of God.                                                             David Whyte

On our recent outing into deepest Johannesburg (see  Tasting adventure ) George felt like trying on some hats and sunglasses at a quaint African market. Maybe it was the invigorating Afro-Jazz music in the air that prompted this impromptu shopping spree. Or maybe it was simply his incomparable ability to be amazed at just about anything that meets his gaze. It reminded me of the words of one of our favourite poets, Mary Oliver: Instruction for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it. Matilda

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 ...