Place for God A Guide to Spiritual Retreats and Retreat Centers

A Vacation for the Soul I'm amazed that it took me so long to go on a personal spiritual retreat. For years I had heard of the practice, one with a pedigree stretching back centuries in spiritual tradition. People I respected raved about the benefits. And I knew I sometimes wanted more than sightseeing and visits with distant relatives. I dreamt about a vacation for my cramped soul. I needed a holiday that actually had something holy about it. But in all, it took ten years for me finally to turn my itch for a spiritual getaway into a reality--ten years from my first halfhearted attempts to my actually going. Had I known then what I know now, I never would have taken so long. When I began my first efforts, I was juggling two jobs, struggling to meet a book deadline, and anxious about a career change I was laying plans for. I felt called to the hundred and one worthy things I pursued but restless. My schedule seemed both to intensify my need to get away and put it out of reach. Still, friends told me about a Mennonite couple who ran a retreat center amid acres of Michigan woodland, not far from my Indiana town. Their reports tantalized me. I need this, I told myself. I would walk the hiking paths of the woods in silence, eat from a well-stocked refrigerator, dip into a library of books on prayer, and simply find rest for my soul. No agendas. No deadlines. And plenty of spiritual elbowroom. The couple who ran the center would get me started on my time there, and then get out of the way. In the tradition of Elijah, Moses, Jesus, Anthony and the desert fathers, Thomas Merton, and countless other spiritual models, I would find a quiet place for a combination of soul work and spiritual rest. I would be like Henry David Thoreau trekking "to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach." Going away in itself would refresh me, I thought, to say nothing of the spiritual atmosphere of a woodsy hermitage. I would, like the sixth-century saint, Benedict, and the many others who followed his path through the centuries, recover for a time a more sane rhythm of work and rest, activity and retreat. And though I had small children at the time, my wife urged me to go: "We'll do fine by ourselves for a couple of days," she said. The way was clear. I called and reserved my spot. Then I noticed something odd. As the date to leave approached, my feelings grew more mixed, more uneasy. I could name reasons: The pace at work seemed to increase. The deadline for a chapter of the book I was working on loomed larger. Even without getting away for a couple of days I knew I could not get my work done. But what finally held me back was even more mundane: On the day I was to leave I woke up to a dusting of snow on the ground. I knew I could brave the cold. I could have driven the few hours without any great risk, but the weather report tipped the scale of my ambivalence--to the side that said, Don't go. I balked. I called and canceled. It seemed more responsible to stay put and simply slug away. Going on a retreat had the feel of a luxury, a whim or option. I never made it to the hermitage in the Michigan woods. Over the years, I thought about trying again. I moved to Tennessee and learned that the Abbey of Gethsemani, the Kentucky monastery of the renowned monk and writer Thomas Merton (a kind of hero for me), was only three hours away. I would love to go, I thought. But still I hesitated. I was up to my ears in publishing projects, a new job, the same pressures. But finally, one summer, for reasons I can only guess, I decided the time had come. I booked a retreat at the abbey several weeks in advance and eagerly awaited the August day when I could finally go. Yet once again something conspired against my going. Days before I was to leave, my wife's father, hospitalized from a heart attackJones, Timothy K. is the author of 'Place for God A Guide to Spiritual Retreats and Retreat Centers', published 2000 under ISBN 9780385491587 and ISBN 0385491581.