Silent Retreat at Loyola Hall - shhhhh

The Gates looked surprisingly welcoming as two wearyish travellors arrived after a long day at work and a semi long drive, closed as they were and the rain pouring down, it seemed a fitting start to the four days we would spend here, coming from a noisy traffic and pollution filled environment, to a quiet (actually quiet doesn't entirely capture it... still and silent are slightly better). yet welcoming home for a few days. An oasis of tranquility amongst the cacophany of sounds and attention grabbers that is modern England. So after a hurried fumble in the wet, with codes to open the gates we were allowed to enter.

Our God is a God of surprises... the first being that we didn't get to share a room, the second that despite my earnest searching for a Jesuit retreat, i got the only retreat director that wasn't a Jesuit... the third being my assumption that female retreatants would be with a female director and vice versa. After a quiet chuckle to myself about the thought that I had come 'without expectations' i settled in to just enjoy whatever was in store...

Which was pretty much a whole load of still and peaceful times. Getting re-acquainted with the self and recognising where God was dwelling within... in which thoughts, in which desires, hopes, dreams etc.

Great food (and enough to make even the mega-monastra appetite shudder at the thought of another meal... already?), Walks and runs around the grounds (Ok, So i ventured a little further afield for one run - had to see what was outside the gates in the light of day...) Art work amid the maze of corridoors running here there and everywhere around the building, And an art room complete with clay to use for sculpting, A variety of spectacularly different prayer rooms, Sculptures placed around the grounds in various wee prayer grottos and things, various mystical and magically secret gardens hidden in the fog...

In fact the fog that descended for our last couple of days there deserves special mention of it's own. Very cool, as i hope you can appreciate from these pics...

So what did i ponder? Well, it being advent, i was thinking of christmas... given that is the season of the Birth of Jesus, i was thinking of one of the first places I encountered 'Jesus' as a child, both in my family, and in my first childhood church. I opened my eyes at the end of that thought and gazed around me at the chapel i was sitting in... And was astounded to note many of the same architectural features of that first church of my memory pane, in the chapel i was sitting in, half a world away... The Jesus in the little red glass, the tall windows, the kinda random stained glass, the stations of the cross set into recessed panels (though I realise they are wooden recessed panels in Holy Cross Church, Miramar), it also had the high ceilings with recessed downlights. Quite extraordinary i thought.

Then as I was walking through the gardens i came across this:

which made me think of this:

The Road Not Taken

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that, the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I marked the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
wo roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Perhaps my most lasting memory of high school english... which i thoroughly enjoyed and should perhaps have looked further into... but which naturally leads on to thinking about decisions made in the past, and decisions to make in the near future...

Anyway, was a thoroughly good time for us both.

God Bless you, wherever your thoughts and decisions take you!