Retreats Revisited

I attend retreats.

I was the only student of my instructor, a part time Florida resident. At the moment I am the only year-round teacher south of Orlando on the Eastern coast of Florida. In order to maintain touch with the T’ai Chi Chih community in person, I must attend retreats.

Retreats allow me to find companionship, communicate, commiserate and recommit. I have never questioned the purpose or the semantics. I have never sensed a retreat in anything other than a positive way, except, perhaps, the unreasonable fear that someday Pam Towne will think I am stalking her and hit me with a restraining order.

The other day, while reading Barry Boyce’s editorial in the August issue Mindful, I was forced to question the very term retreat, which forced a new insight into both the form and function of the occasion.

Barry was writing about meditation as a retreat into one’s self, as well as personal and group retreats where the participants enter into a number of avenues for self-enhancement. It was insightful and extremely worth reading in context. However, his last two sentences struck me, much in the way you slap your forehead in wonderment and jealousy when you come across a concept that is brilliant as well as obvious.

Barry wrote, “…And that is not a retreat. That is an advance.” Wow. Go on, slap your forehead here. Makes you think, eh?

Have you ever left a TCC retreat in fear? Anxious? Have you ever hesitated at the exit, looking carefully left and right before sprinting in a squat run to the car? Have you ever just nonchalantly piled into the car, turned on the radio and not thought about anything? No, I think not.

I may not be able to change the label for these gatherings, but I am going to suggest an idea for the next time you attend an assembly of TCC practitioners: Was it a Retreat or a Recharge?