My experience of retreat is to have lots of ‘empty’ space for prayer and personal reflection in a quiet, usually sedentary place, which is not too physically demanding. There will, however, be opportunity for some gentle meditative walking. There will also be offered, perhaps, some teaching on Christian spirituality and growth, maybe from the mystics and saints of old. There will preferably be opportunity for daily worship, prayer and sacrament with the community offering the retreat space. There will be some aloneness, some shared community silence, perhaps even non-speaking meal times with some ‘good’, contemplative music. There will be opportunity in the quiet, steady rhythm of the day to confront personal weaknesses and insecurities as well as to identify more clearly strengths and gifts and graces. This is the way to listen for and hear the active, comforting and commissioning Word from God.
Sinai was almost none of these things. I hope I can leave it to others to write about the logistical, geographical and site specific ‘bones’ of this religious tour undertaken by 26 very different people from a broad spectrum of physical ability and theological and church backgrounds organised and led by Ruth Crofton. It could have been a recipe for disaster – it wasn’t.
Rather, a number of our pilgrims found themselves physically stretched beyond what they thought they were able to do – and succeeded. Seeing faces filled with joy and proper pride at accomplishment at such times was pure gift. Other people came to terms with physical limitations and wisely opted out of some trips into difficult terrain – sometimes omission is the courageous and Godly thing to do. Sometimes being alongside people we found difficult, at least some of the time, some of us dug into our reserves of patience and compassion and succeeded, often, in caring for the less socially able, thus helping them to feel wanted, perhaps even loved; and at least one of us made a huge journey into the experience of God’s personal, warm and encouraging love.
More personally, there were a number of highlights to this trip and a number of learning opportunities as well as some very welcome, tho’ unlikely coincidences (or God-incidents, perhaps?):
The pleasure of these unexpected encounters was immense as was the joy I experienced at being surprisingly captivated by a 6th C icon of Christ Pantocrator during a private group tour of the monastery museum. The unexpected numinous sense of being held and enthralled by the love of God through this icon brought a lump to my throat and tears to my eyes. Tho’ as properly embarrassed as a British man should be (?!) by such an experience it was a long time before I could move out of it to enjoy the other riches of Byzantine and ancient Christian treasures. Amongst these was the Codex Syriacus, a 5th C translation of the Gospels in Syriac and the oldest translation of the Bible into any other language – beautifully, perhaps miraculously, well preserved. Perhaps I’ll stop saying that I’m ‘not into’ icons and instead see what happens if I explore their use a bit more?
Another highlight happened because I was not able to fulfil my ambition to get to the top of Moses’ mountain on Remembrance Day. Dismounting our camels, most of our group left just five of us at the final camel stop and Bedouin café, about 2/3 of the way up. It was still a magnificent outlook and I was able to climb a little further to look down into Elijah’s basin, traditionally the site of his ‘still small voice’ encounter with God. Jan Maxwell reminded us that it was Remembrance Day and at 11am, British time, we held the two minutes of silence. There were few completely dry eyes at the end.
And in many ways I was challenged to listen, often without coming to any conclusion or resolution of question or conflict – for the underlying dynamics in other people, for the weaknesses in my own personality which will require some work over the next few months, for the movements and words of God amongst us, operating sometimes in spite of what we did and didn’t do. And I was led to celebrate the hard work, successes and achievements of other people as well as to dig out some compassion towards the failings of others which reflected my own failings and are thus more difficult to come to terms with – and to benefit from other people’s acceptance and care for myself, not least the gift of a new inhaler when mine went on the blink!
So was this a retreat? Well, not in the sense that I understand retreat to be, but God did bless those whose desire was to be with him – as he always does! Perhaps that is the prime criterion then; that we put ourselves into a place geographically or mentally and emotionally, where God can meet us to work his purposes out.
Would I do it again? I’ll need to think about that one when I’ve recovered from this one!
Barry Hutchinson
Revd Barry Hutchinson is Director of the St Cuthbert's Centre, Holy Island
Read Ruth Crofton's Sinai Diary
