A Retreat Story

At the end of our monthly emails I invite people to reflect on their own times of retreat and share them with me. This month Pam Bull has written a beautiful reflection on a recent retreat she attended at Launde Abbey. If you have a retreat testimony you would like to share do please get in touch.

I have a favourite Retreat House! Launde Abbey, nestled in the beautiful Leicestershire countryside, the retreat house of the Leicestershire and Peterborough dioceses.

For many years now, I have managed a couple of days there, twice a year.

The food is great (don’t even think about fasting!) the rooms are warmand comfortable, the grounds are beautiful, the chapel services welcoming and the mobile phone signal is helpfully intermittent! There are plenty of preserved quiet spaces even when the house is quite busy.

I have learned to go with no agenda – except to be still and quiet. I take my Bible and maybe a book, some hand sewing, and my wellies forwalking in the countryside and tramping the labyrinth behind the walledgarden.

My visit this May was particularly timely. I had been busy and when oneday I found myself cleaning the house (while taking on the phone to a friend) at 8am – and then doing the ironing at 8pm in order to fit in all I felt I needed to do… – It finally dawned on me that I was trying to do far too much!

And God, in His grace spoke to me at Launde, through a picture I had taken with me – Romola Parish’s beautiful and enigmatic embroidery of a little boat – entitled Peregrini, or travellers. Pondering whether the boatwas coming or going, whether the sail was being hoisted or taken down, whether the glowing sky was sunrise or sunset… God suddenly shocked me with the realisation, ‘THERE ARE NO OARS IN THE BOAT!’ Thelittle boat was completely dependent on the breath of His wind. And it was time for me to rest in that too. No more striving. No more furious rowing. No more exhausting over-filling of my diary. A clear message to me in a vivid and memorable picture.

The return from Retreat into inevitable routine and responsibility, jobs to do and people to see – can often be tricky. But it is my experience that the benefit of time away does indeed overflow into the weeks that follow.  

And I keep that little picture propped up where I can be reminded eachday of what God said to me.

Pam Bull.