A Reframing Retreat

One of my favorite parts of my job at church has been leading lots of retreats. I’ve created retreats for Christian Education leaders, with sessions on teaching practices and art journaling. I’ve led retreats for youth leaders from area Lutheran churches. Confirmation retreats (whole weekends once), due to everyone’s crazy schedules, gradually shrunk to one night, until finally they stopped. In their heyday, though, the preteen Confirmands enjoyed them: ropes courses and silly games and night walks with flashlights.

We had a Mother-Daughter retreat at the Jersey Shore one year—don’t recall much about programming but I do remember we decorated flip flops (more fun than it sounds!) On March 8th I returned from a terrific Women’s Retreat in Lewes DE, in the very nick of time, just before everything shut down. We held one Family Retreat with parents and kids in the Pocono Mountains, back in 2011. This one was such fun that I’m not sure why we never did another one. Our theme was “Encounters with Creation”; we looked at the ground outside through magnifying glasses, wrote down everything we observed, then shared in family groups.

As we all essentially are on retreat right now, isolated from our job sites and neighbors and familiar routines, I’m trying to combat my free-floating anxiety with a reframe: this is just another Family Retreat! But instead of focusing on birds and bugs, we’re concentrating on other creatures--us. I observe my grandsons: doing fine, sleeping better than usual and eating more (which for Aiden—as opposed to Nana—is a GOOD thing), their imaginative play a joy to behold.  I check on my grown children, Sher and Yaj in person, the rest via email, text and FaceTime. It’s been a real blessing (I’ve talked to Patrick more in the past three days than in the previous month). I appreciate my suddenly long-distance friends—it’s so great to still be able to laugh and share life, even remotely. And Steve and I actually enjoyed our anniversary, watching The Two Popes on the sofa instead of Company on Broadway (the original plan.)

Working from home is a huge challenge I know, especially with little ones running around. I get that this is not a retreat the way a relaxing getaway might be—but nonetheless, it IS a major change of pace, and for those of us who don’t have to venture out to our jobs, maybe a chance to spend some of what would have been time stuck in traffic, working on our inner lives.

So today, I invite you, at some point, to light a candle. Play some soft music. Get lost in a good book. Get back in touch with YOU. Take a little time to reframe, and reflect, and “retreat.” While circumstances may be forcing us into this unsettling new situation, by pressing “pause” on our regular lives, even briefly, we are giving ourselves a real gift--time to consider the questions: who am I (really)? And what matters most?