Coracle news
Retreat Day, Pencaitland
Posted Tuesday 09 February 2010
I discovered ‘retreat’ several years ago when Bridget MacAulay took the Mums group away for the day. I remember to this day sitting in the garden in the middle of Edinburgh, away from family and responsibility for the day. Almost like Wordsworth and his daffodils I can go back there to that still place. I knew I had found a new way of being with God.
Since then going on retreat, mostly for one day or at the most overnight, is something we have built into the calendar. It is to be part of the continued practice of Coracle to organise retreats in various forms.
In November we went to the Carriage House in Pencaitland for the day . My memories are as much about community as individual retreat. We often use the lovely Bield retreat centre near Perth where everything is so beautifully taken care of for you.
Here we had to bring and prepare our own meals as we each brought a contribution, all helped putting things out and tidying up. I found this gave a different kind of rhythm to the day – perhaps less time for quite reflection (although we did that too) but it gave time for being together, serving one another.
We also took a walk together through a gorgeous winter landscape, at points dwarfed by sentry lines of trees………
To reflect we used readings and pictures from the book ‘Gift from the Sea’ by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. These are reflections on certain shells she found by the seashore. how their shape, patterns and life cycle bring to mind patterns of relationship and stages of life…
The double-sunrise - mutually exclusive relationships, pure, simple, exciting and unencumbered. The oyster bed - the physical and material struggle to achieve a place in the world, to make oneself part of the community of human society. Argonauta - leaving the shell for the open seas, ‘two solitudes protect, touch and greet each other’.
We ended up saying together a liturgy and with time for joint reflection. For me a powerful moment was when each person in turn lit a candle around the sea themed centre piece put together by Mags and Jane. What came to me was a sense of each person’s own journey with God but brought together as an act of worship.
Kirsty Hook
