Refreshment for the soul

The Carmelite Retreat House in Preston has been described as a fountain of love and a haven where weary women and men can use its peace and quiet to listen again with their hearts.

‘This place should be on prescription,’ said Maria, after a few quiet days here at Tabor, the Carmelite Retreat House in Preston. Perhaps she was expressing a deeper truth than she realised: retreat houses today need to be centres not just of prayer but of nourishment and ongoing refreshment – places where the heart can feel at home and at ease, where the spirit can be itself, free from masks, roles and ruthless expectations.

Today, the great need is for places of welcome and hospitality that ask no questions and encourage us in the search for personal authenticity and a deeper relationship with God, as an antidote to the overstretched, tense, anxious world in which we live. We need such places of peace and stillness, grounded in a rich tradition of prayer but free from any desire to impose that tradition on others.

Tabor is unusual in being a drop-in centre in the middle of a city – an accessible place of monastic simplicity and peace, home to a small community of Discalced Carmelite Friars, probably the only male order to have been founded by a woman, Teresa of Avila, together with her companion John of the Cross. She was a deeply contemplative and yet vivacious, passionate woman, grounded in common sense and a wholesome spirituality with no time for stuffiness and ‘sour-faced saints’.  Her spirit and the tender, welcoming, ecumenical spirit of the friars of Tabor colour every aspect of the house.

‘It’s a bit like a fountain,’ said one retreatant. ‘I’ve got six children so I can’t go off into the desert for weeks on end, but I can pop in here on a regular basis to be refreshed and renewed. It’s had quite an impact on my marriage: the more whole I’ve felt, the more I’ve been able to love.’

I have seen people walk through the door of Tabor trembling with fear,   searching for love and meaning in their lives but cowed with guilt and shame; guilt about living on the edge of religious institutions, shame at being fully human and alive, fear of being judged and rejected. The antidote, time and time again, has been love. ‘Love is the only house big enough to hold all the pain, uncertainties, paradoxes and ambiguities of the human heart,’ to quote Fr Eugene McCaffrey, director of the Tabor Retreat House.  In the Carmelite tradition, this love is everything.

The focus of retreat work today is to help people find better ways of being human, to encourage them to listen to the heart, decode the tapes that limit its horizons and get rid of the baggage that prevents the heart from letting itself be loved. There is no need to be afraid: God loves us just as we are. We don’t have to do anything to please him or to win his love but if we do let him love us, we will be transformed.

At Tabor, we create a new retreat programme every six months in an attempt to be as flexible as we can in listening to the Spirit and responding to the needs of those who arrive on our doorstep. We have found that certain titles have a big response and continue to strike a chord with people: ‘Walking on the Edge’-when religious structures no longer offer meaning and support ; ‘Pathways to the Heart’-exploring the inner journey through art, music, dreamwork and journaling; ‘The Wounded Heart’-the spirituality of imperfection; ‘The Pain that Heals’-transforming our pain and inner darkness; ‘Do Not Be Afraid’-nothing can separate us from the love of God; ‘Finding God, Finding Myself’-reflections on the spiritual journey; ‘Lord of the Dance’-dancing our way to the heart of God.

The model for retreats here is a person-centred process of drawing out a response, often using images, music, poetry and scripture as a focus and facilitator of the faith journey.  It was Karl Rahner who said that the problem today is to find the art of drawing spirituality out of people rather than pumping it into them, and that the art is to help people to become what they are.

In the tradition of Carmel, we regularly invite people into periods of silence and contemplation to take a long, loving look at themselves and at the God who is in love with them. ‘This place is besotted with God,’ said Daniel O’Leary on a recent visit, ‘and all this comes only through silence.’

There is an ease with the feminine in the Carmelite tradition that colours the atmosphere of Tabor: the quality of welcome, the womb-shaped oratory, and the enrichment of writings of women like Teresa of Avila, Thérèse of Lisieux, Edith Stein and Elizabeth of the Trinity.

I feel privileged, as a woman, to have been invited to work at the heart of a Carmelite Retreat House, planning and shaping at grass-roots level and sharing the retreat ministry with the friars. This is an innovation for the Carmelites and the general feeling is that it’s the way forward.

The contemplative atmosphere of Tabor attracts far more women than men and I often wonder how we can encourage more men to come on retreat. It has been suggested that women relate more easily face to face and that men relate shoulder to shoulder. Cardinal Basil Hume said: ‘It is a feminine trait to listen, to receive, to watch. Perhaps that is why more women pray than men. Perhaps that is why among contemplatives there are more women than men – it is the “feminine” that listens and waits.’

Women speak of taking love, confidence, courage and freedom away with them from Tabor. They speak of feeling happier, calmer, gentler on themselves, of feeling more affectionate and passionate towards their partners, more patient with their children. ‘The children have noticed I am happier and calmer and have more to give them,’ one woman said. ‘I can accept them as they are because I know God accepts and loves me just as I am.’ Men speak of the stimulation of new ideas, the challenge of moving from the head to the heart and seeing with different eyes.

I heard a story of a friar who returned to his monastery after an Ignatian 30 Day retreat. Over porridge the next morning, he was interrogated by a grumpy old member of the community who complained, ‘We’ve been working like slaves while you’ve been swanning around doing nothing! And look at you! You don’t look any different!’ ‘You’re quite right, I probably don’t,’ was the reply. ‘But you do!’

Published in 'The Tablet' 17th June 2006

Jennifer Holden, a former broadcaster for Radio 4 has had wide experience of working in retreat ministry and is a member of the retreat team at Tabor, the Carmelite Retreat House in Preston.

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