Retreating

I spent the weekend with a group from my church at Ladywell Convent in Godalming - about ten miles from home, and a world away from my day-to-day life. I didn't envisage going with church, having had it in my head that it was something I'd have to do alone, but actually it was a great group and we got on very well. It was a beautiful weekend to do it, and I've returned feeling thoroughly refreshed and generally positive in ways that are very difficult to explain.

Here, shamelessly copy/pasted from my personal journal, are some things I learned:

- I can get there from the wrong side of London in under two hours;
- Jeffrey John is awesome;
- the thing in my head that tells me that nobody likes me and the people that claim to love me are either deluded and lying is a bad thing, and is itself lying. It looks like a tapeworm.
- Julian of Norwich knew what she was talking about.
- sometimes it is a really good idea to take a box of tissues in with you to the Eucharist;
- nuns actually do conduct their lives to the music of Rodgers and Hammerstein;
- I do not need to be so afraid of myself;
- I do not need to assume that, just because I want something, it must be bad for me;
- I do not need to be so afraid of other people;
- even bad art can be effective;
- the difference between this weekend and others was not that I didn't do much, but that I didn't feel guilty about not doing very much...

Completed. I must do this again.