This week has been the Benefice retreat. It was to have been at a retreat centre in Devon led my Rev’d Jane Horton the diocesan prayer and discipleship coordinator.
That was obviously cancelled but instead we decided a virtual retreat on Zoom might be the answer! I was especially pleased for a number of reasons:
- the cost
- no travelling
- no socialising or quiz evenings…. ( I really am under my genial exterior, a crusty old codger!)
- and many more…..
However – I was and stil am walking between 3 and 5 miles each morning, sometimes in silence, sometimes with David Suchet reading the Bible to me (Recently Acts…. again) or music. Here follows the path to a small revelation…..
The short revelation was that the information from the sessions and the discussion had gone in somewhere and I had a series of questions and thoughts that would need another month of morning walks to unpack. That was a treat- its always good to have something to chew on!
I missed the lunch experience after the last session – which some will find unsurprising, but in fact I needed to talk to Mandy Wells about Safeguarding courses online for Spiritual Directors and for those who would need them before licensing / re-licensing. We will be running a couple of Zoom sessions for Spiritual Direction but we await the new National ZOOM materials for everyone else.
I would recommend the ZOOM retreat experience without any reservation- it is such a flexible format that you can make of it what you want or indeed, need. You just have to accept that real life can and will intervene- especially if you are naturally busy.
