In her book, Invitation to Retreat, Ruth Haley Barton defines retreat as a “strategic withdrawal” from whatever is not working in our lives—to “gain perspective and set new strategies.”1 Last week I drove my Jeep in search of “someplace quiet” and pulled off at the sign to a monastery pictured above. A sign on the door welcomed “dear friends who wish to enter in silence.” So, I considered myself to be a “dear friend”, and sat in the solitude of that place for over an hour. For decades I have found solitary places for reflection at the end of each calendar year. There, I gain perspective by remembering God’s faithfulness in the past, and I seek new strategies for wholehearted living in the future. Don’t be misled. I am not ultra spiritual. That’s why I need times of reorientation. The value of “retreat” is this: there is an unseen battle for our allegiance where the busyness of life, culture, and expectations of others (and self) make for weary travelling. But in times of strategic withdrawal we remember that taking God’s hand at the gate of the year is better than light and safer than a known way. This is beautifully written in a poem by Minnie Louise Haskins (see video clip).
1 Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat (Intervarsity Press, 2018), 11.
The Treasure: “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He shall direct your paths.” (Proverbs 3:6, NKJV)
If you’d rather read than watch the video, here’s the full video transcript:
Greetings from Montana. I certainly have left Pilgrim, the camper, back in Virginia in that locked in paddock but I’ve gone beyond the fence and I’m actually way off the beaten path today hiking a trail south of Livingston, Montana. It’s beautiful here; it’s cold. There’s actually snow on the trail – and I just wanted to pipe in and remember at the beginning of the year this great saying called The Gate of the Year. It goes like this:
And I said to the man that stood at the gate of the year, “Give me a light that I may travel safely into the unknown.” And he said, “Go out into the dark and put your hand into the hand into the hand of God. That shall be better to you than light and safer than a known way.”
Well, when we get off the beaten path like I am today, sometimes it can be a great place of reorientation, of reflection, of seeing where the real path for our lives is going to lead. So I encourage you at the beginning of the year (with me as well); we don’t know what lies ahead but we know we have a great God who says, “You don’t need to get stuck looking back at things in the past. Learn from them … but look! Don’t you see? I’m doing a new thing. Don’t you perceive it?” So, I hope you find many new things that are wonderful and match the beauty of the Creator who created all of this. Happy New Year to you.
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