The Restory Retreat Centre

We humans need a year to end and the accompanying start of a new one. In nature too Winter gives way to  Spring. There’s Birth and Death. Start and Finish. Sunrise and Sunset. These are all thresholds of sorts. And these are the more obvious ones; the ones we consciously anticipate and experience and hopefully have the chance, wisdom and time to plan for. A new year especially gives us a chance to try again. To start over. To leave things behind and to begin anew in this brand new unlived space consisting of another 365 and a quarter (I think) days. But there are also the more subtle doorways during the course of one’s life. When we move form one stage to another not really aware that we have stepped over a threshold. It is often only in retrospect that one realises this. Or notices this in others. The period of my  driving kids to school—a whopping 21 years - has just ended with the event of my youngest son becoming the proud owner of a driver’s license and  his v...

How does one tell about Prague? Three weeks of Prague? You try but know you’re not doing it justice. Also one doesn’t show too many photo’s. Someone else’s travel pics are hardly ever gripping stuff. So, you tell about the historical background, the art, the music that’s everywhere: on market squares, street corners, bridges. In churches and chapels. You tell about the dark periods of war and communism that left  scars throughout the city. About the river, the legends, the funeral of Vaclav Havel. You marvel at the many many sculptures everywhere: on bridges, against walls, inside walls, on rooftops. Sculptures as pillars for roof structures, sculptures that grace the corners of buildings, or crown them. Sculptures kneeling, praying, dancing, suffering. You tell about a strange sculpture of a dead horse hanging upside down from it’s legs with the knighted St. Wenscelas sitting on it’s stomach. It hangs from the ceiling of an Art deco palace where a movie theatre shows po...