Retreat

Over the years, I have been to the above Abbey a few times as a stop with guests. It is a place about three hours drive from home and a great chance to stretch your legs. The grounds are beautiful and has been a picnic spot for us. They also have a chapel that one can visit as well as a gift shop. One of their amenities is that you can stay there for a retreat to get away from your hectic life and live life as a monk, at least until you get back in your car and drive off.

So recently on a spur of the moment decision, fresh from shipping our eldest off to college, my wife and I headed there for an overnight stay. We got there about 9:30 in the morning and checked in at the front desk.

This is a picture of our actual room. Lest you think two people shared that small bed, I'm actually standing just inside the door and right next to the second bed. There were no queen beds with plush mattresses, which I guess I didn't expect living the life of a monk. The mattresses were really thin and the furnishings were spartan but it had quietness in spades.

The monks pray every day, before and after every meal with an extra prayer thrown in at 4 a.m. and 8 p.m. They would file silently into the chapel and recite their chants of various psalms for 15 to 30 minutes and then file out to eat their meal or go back to work. On the premises, off limits to visitors, they have quite extensive gardens and a woodshop for building coffins and urns. Older readers will remember some pictures of those things I have shown before from their retail shop just down the road aways.

We were kept mostly separate from the monks other than at prayer times so we ate our meals with a few other pilgrims such as ourselves in a small dining room in the basement that featured many of the vegetables they grew on site. Above is the window I sat by while eating my three meals (lunch, dinner and breakfast the following day) in silence.

After their post breakfast and post lunch prayers, the monks all headed out to do their various jobs that keep the abbey running. The people who run the retreat also encouraged us to do work in our own ways, such as bringing something to sew or to do some writing. I chose the latter for my morning work session and for the afternoon work session, my wife and I walked around on the parts of the grounds open to the visitors. The grounds are beautiful and quiet and so relaxing to stroll around.

We spent a total of 24 hours at the retreat and I must say, despite the thin mattress and coarse linens, I had the best night's sleep I can remember in years. There must be something to being away from electronics and the many distractions that fill a modern household. 

Although they provided books to follow along with the psalm chants, I had a hard time following what they were saying most of the time. After the second of eight prayer sessions, I left my book in my room and just listened to and enjoyed the beauty of their voices. I liked that a lot better and it always seemed as if their prayer time was over far too soon. 

The dining room we used for our simple meals, didn't have any signs saying if you could speak or not but everyone mostly ate in complete silence. Off to one side, they had a smaller room with the above sign hanging on the door, I guess for those who felt they simply had to talk while eating, probably with larger groups. But if that wasn't your thing and you really dug the silence, they had another room for you as evidenced by the sign below.

All too soon, our short retreat was over and we were back in our vehicle driving back south again, albeit much refreshed. To top it all off, our daughter's college lay between the retreat and home so we stopped there and took our daughter our for lunch before heading home. It was a great couple days.