From The Innkeepers

On Retreat

It is February. We have reached the home stretch of winter. The daylight is returning little by little, and by the end of the month we will have gained more than an hour of light. Hopefully this brings the same sense of optimism to your heart as it does to mine.

While it’s easy to complain about everything that makes winter terrible, at this point I am sick of my own complaining. Every day is cold and gray, and there is simply nothing new left to say. So I have been trying to find ways to appreciate what winter is instead of what it is not.

For many of us in Michigan, this winter has been one of the coldest and harshest that we can remember. Here at the Inn, after being immersed in the beauty of the land during late summer and fall, the abrupt change from lush and vibrant to stark and white was a bit of a shock. That shift of scenery aligned with a similar change of pace in our work schedules. We hit the ground running in late August and found our way as new innkeepers through our first busy season, and then suddenly, we were done, with no bookings on the calendar until mid-January. This small group retreat center found itself on retreat.

Ironically, I found that while I so enjoy offering the Inn as a place of rest and retreat to others, when given a stretch of time to do the same here, I struggled to embrace the practice of retreat for myself. After 25 years of commuting on busy highways to a teaching job where I had to be “on” all the time, rushing from one task to the next, my nervous system is still learning how to let its guard down. While the old me dreamed about being able to stay home during the harshest weather of winter, once that wish was granted, the new me felt restless with that reality. Coming from a system that praises people for maintaining a punishing level of productivity, I felt guilty about not having much to do.

At first, I tried to stay busy. There was Christmas to decorate for, and organizational projects to complete. I found furniture to rearrange and business tasks to do. Even with no one dictating my schedule but me, I miraculously stressed myself out so badly one weekend with the to-do lists I had created that Aaron ordered me to take the day off and rest. I realized I had not taken a single true day off since we got here. My husband is not one to give orders, so this one carried some weight. I relented. I spent the afternoon in bed with a movie and a tin of peppermint cookies, napping on and off. It was actually lovely. Since then I have tried to be more intentional about balancing the work of creating a peaceful retreat for others with practicing a bit more of what I preach.

Retreat is a word that often carries a negative connotation. When used as a verb, we tend to associate it with weakness or fear. Sometimes we retreat from what scares us; the knights’ encounter with the killer rabbit in Monty Python’s Holy Grail comes to mind. (“Run away! Run away!”) But we also retreat from what harms us, what taxes us, and what wears us down. When we allow ourselves to pause and step back, even briefly, we give ourselves a chance to recharge and remember what matters most.

The poet David Whyte speaks to this in his essay on rest. He reminds us that “to rest is not self-indulgent; to rest is to prepare to give the best of ourselves, and to perhaps, most importantly, arrive at a place where we are able to understand what we have already been given.” Rest is not just a reward for exhaustion, but a necessary practice that helps us show up more fully and gratefully in our lives.

When our first group arrived in mid-January after our long winter retreat, I felt an energetic lift. The house came back to life with things to be grateful for: a pile of shoes by the door, laughter at the dining table, creative hearts and hands making beautiful quilts in the meeting house. What struck me most was how grateful they were to be here. This group has been coming three times a year for many years, and they thanked us repeatedly for keeping the Inn going. What they were really saying was thank you for continuing to provide a place where they can retreat and recharge. Their gratitude was a powerful reminder of the value of retreat for others, even when it can be hard to trust the value of retreat for myself.

When we allow ourselves to retreat, we step away from the constant pressure to produce and perform. David Whyte writes, “Rested, we are ready for the world but not held hostage by it; rested, we care again for the right things and the right people in the right way.” As innkeepers, caring for the right things and the right people in the right way is our ultimate goal. After this winter of retreat, we are ready to do just that.

With gratitude,
Erin, Aaron, and Ryan
Keepers of the Rustic Gate