The Restory Retreat Centre

  Advent: Peace “Will you not revive us again,  so that your people may rejoice in you?  Show us your steadfast love, O Lord,  and grant us your salvation.  Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet;  righteousness and peace will kiss each other.” ‭‭Ps 85‬:‭6-7‭‬, ‭10‬ NRSV‭                                       ‬‬ The Conversation   Elements From The Conversation   Music With our love. George & Matilda

  Painting: The New Born Child, by Georges de la Tour I cannot tell you how the light comes. What I know is that it is more ancient than imagining. That it travels across an astounding expanse to reach us. That it loves searching out what is hidden, what is lost, what is forgotten or in peril or in pain. That it has a fondness for the body, for finding its way toward flesh, for tracing the edges of form, for shining forth through the eye, the hand, the heart. I cannot tell you how the light comes, but that it does. That it will. That it works its way into the deepest dark that enfolds you, though it may seem long ages in coming or arrive in a shape you did not foresee. And so may we this day turn ourselves toward it. May we lift our faces to let it find us. May we bend our bodies to follow the arc it makes. May we open and open more and open still to the blessed light that comes. —Jan Richardson               

Years ago, while still living in Gauteng, I told Matilda that my big wish is to live in a place where, when you switch off your bedroom light at night, it must be pitch dark. I do not want to see lights of any kind. Least of all security and flood lights. I am definitely not striving to be anachronistic, singing the praises of the Stone Age, but electric light in all its forms symbolizes for me a type of infiltration and colonization. In our human advances, we no longer plant flags when arriving on  terra nova , we switch on a light. On moving to Barrowfield my dream came true. The stars are bright and near, the Milky Way arching majestically overhead, everything wrapped in black velvet.  I felt spoilt, immensely privileged. The date my ideal world was shattered I cannot pinpoint exactly. But one night, on stepping out of the front door to check on the kiln in the pottery studio, a pinprick of light in the far-off distance, maybe 30 km away...

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...

Notes from a different drummer Learning the unforced rhythms of grace I will give you treasures from dark, secret places;  then you will know that I am the LORD  and that the God of Israel has called you by name.                                                             Isaiah 45:3 (Good News Bible) The practical How . The notes from the drummer have reached your inner ear. You are waking up and gradually you realise something is being born. There is no reason for panic. But it can still be a very confusing experience. And it can be made all the more difficult if you are not introduced to some strange companions that will accompany you on the journey. You are sure to encounter them and should you not be told that they are to be expected, their presence can indeed lead to anxiety and fu...

Barrowfield night sky Photograph by Frans Marais On settling here at Barrowfield, there were quite a few boxes that were on our initial wish list that we could mark off: silence –check; nature –check; workshops – check; beauty – check; gardening – check; definite change of seasons - check. These were all elements that we regarded as important when we started searching for a place to establish The Restory. Often based more on instinct than knowledge, we knew these things to be important factors in helping people to get in touch with God, themselves and life in general. Nothing mind-blowing or extreme. Actually very simple, but also very basic to being human living on this earth. In the years preceding our eventual scouting and exploring I often talked to Matilda about another element on the wish list as well – darkness. I often said to her: “Wouldn’t it be nice to live somewhere that is absolutely dark when you switch off your light at night.” Once, on travelling at night fro...

It's a fact: darkness isn't dark to you....                                                                                      Ps 139:12 (The Message) At this stage so many things happen all at once that I deliberately choose to only look right in front of me – there’s the sale of the farm, preparing my dad for the move to a retirement village, packing up the workshops at Rietfontein, getting the workshops up and running at our place in Wakkerstroom and moving everything down there, get everything in place to put Matilda’s house in Pretoria up for rent, the packing and moving of all our personal stuff, attend to the health of Matilda’s dad and determine whether we should find him other care facilities, get our house in Wakkerstroom to our liking and do some alt...