The Restory Retreat Centre

Meaningful Rest? The Conversation Elements From The Conversation A good yardstick for a period of rest:  Creative Piece If we look at Danish painter Carl Vilhelm Holsøe's (1863-1935) 'Interior, Light of Spring', a woman sits, alone with the light. She has no list. She is not busy balancing the finances, or doing anything "useful", even though the book is on the table. She just sits. Not someone who is wasting time, but someone who is busy resting in her own humanity. Perhaps our winter here on Tafelkop is our own Holsøe interior, where the greatest challenge is to learn that our value does not lie in the book on the table, but in the light that falls on us through the window. Music As always, with love and the longing that you are doing well. George & Matilda  

  Rest and Work The Conversation Elements From The Conversation " “The world is being destroyed by industriousness.” Dendermonde  advocates a life of "appropriate laziness and modest industriousness"  instead of destructive haste. Music Eddie Dalton sounds like an old river on its way to the sea.  As always, with our love. George & Matilda

   Avoiding  Mistakes The Conversation Elements From The Conversation ~ ❖ ~ Wise words from an old Hasidic poem: Take special care to guard your tongue  before the morning prayer.  Even greeting your fellow, we are told,  can be harmful at that hour.  A person who wakes up in the morning is  like a new creation.  Begin your day with unkind words,  or even trivial matters —  even though you may later turn to prayer,  you have not been true to your Creation.  All of your words each day  are related to one another.  All of them are rooted  in the first words that you speak. ~ ❖ ~ Music The “deep river” feels like the current that carries you when you stop struggling. It’s not about change through effort, but through surrender to what really matters.  As always, with our love. George & Matilda

Pause We are tired. The week was and the weekend is very busy and there was little time to just catch our breath. We need it. That's why we create this moment of silence first and foremost for ourselves, but we like to share it. Nothing deep. Just peaceful. So that, when that little gap in your day opens up, you can put your feet up, pour a cup of tea and take a deep breath. ~ ❖ ~ Clearing   Do not try to save the whole world or do anything grandiose. Instead, create a clearing in the dense forest of your life and wait there patiently, until the song that is your life falls into your own cupped hands and you recognize and greet it. Only then will you know how to give yourself to this world so worth of rescue.   – Martha Postlewaite                                                             ~ ❖ ~ With much love. George & Mati...

Sensitive To The Inner Voice The Conversation Elements From The Conversation Music Schubert's Serenade expresses something of the soul's depth and variation, which often cannot be captured in words, but is communicated in and through beauty. Our longing for you: soulful days becoming a soulful life.  With our love.  George & Matilda

Matilda's Silent Retreat “Then Jesus was led by the Spirit into the wilderness.....”       Matt 4:1 (NIV)                        Idwala Retreat Centre The Conversation Elements From The Conversation At eye level and below. View from Matilda's room. Music 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

  Rest Amidst A Busy Life   The Conversation  Elements From The Conversation  Music In die movie Shawshank Redemption , Andy (Tim Robbins) comes across a record with opera music in a box of donations to the prison library. Among the tracks on the record is also the Duettino Sull'aria (the letter duet) from Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro . In an act of defiance, he locks all the doors of the library and plays the aria over the central loudspeaker system. As if under a spell, all the prisoners stop whatever they are doing, and stare at the large loudspeakers overhead. Thinking back on this experience, Red (Morgan Freeman) says: “I have no idea to this day what those two Italian ladies were singing about. Truth is, I don’t want to know. Some things are better left unsaid. I’d like to think they were singing about something so beautiful, it can’t be expressed in words, and it makes your heart ache because of it. I tell you, those voices soared higher and farther t...

Increasingly I find that I am not alone in my perception of what seems to be the necessary, but time-wasting activity, of resting. Even by unthinkingly calling it an activity, I in effect defy its purpose, that of regeneration through non-activity. Why do we feel so guilty when we try to rest? Our minds rushing ahead to what has to be done, what needs to be done, how to do it, when to do it. I often give up on resting and get up to start the doing, robbing myself of something life giving. Like not drinking enough water to hydrate my cells , I dehydrate my soul by not getting enough rest. I promise myself, of course, to go to bed earlier tonight. For somehow, a night’s sleep can be justified. And for most of us that is mainly what resting consists of: going to bed at a reasonable hour and sleeping till duty calls at daybreak. But to purposefully REST? To have a regime almost, like a gym program, to schedule time to settle down, to become quiet and to find peace? That ranks very low on...