Give up all the other worlds, except the one to which you belong. - David Whyte
We live in a time between stories. For many, our old stories that tell us who we are and what life and the world is about no longer serve us well. A new story is emerging, but is not yet here. We know it is time to let go of much from our past to fully enter the new. It is time to cast off.
One practice that can help us say "good-bye" to what life has been is the "death lodge," often part of the preparation for a vision quest. The main focus of this retreat will be a long solo time on the land. Once you find a place that draws you to do this work, you then build a little lodge. Lying in that lodge you will invite people and other beings and landscapes one by one from the past for a final visit and conversation.
In the death lodge we may say good-bye to what no longer serves us and our world -- ways of loving and hating, places of home, social roles that gave us pleasure and definition, organizations and institutions that shaped and limited our growth. As we say good-bye we express our gratitude, love, forgiveness, and grief to each. In addition to this prolonged solo time (fasting from midmorning Saturday, sleeping out overnight, to Sunday morning before breakfast) our time together will include ceremony, ritual, and council.
Leader: Jim Hall, longtime member of Rolling Ridge Study Retreat, lives at Dayspring Retreat Center where he and his wife try to live simple, soulful lives in communion with the rest of creation. In recent years they have been exploring the world of nature and soul with Bill Plotkin and other guides in programs of the Animas Valley Institute.
For more information contact Bob Sabath at 202.531.7572 or bob.sabath@gmail.com. Cost of the retreat is $150, and includes food, lodging, and retreat materials. Registration is limited to 16 people. Scholarships are available.
To register, complete the online payment and registration forms, or download the registration form and send the $150 retreat fee to Friends of Silence, 120 Jubilee Lane, Harpers Ferry WV 25425. Make out the check to "Friends of Silence" and note that it is for the "Casting Off the Old World Retreat."
Online Payment Form
Online Registration Form
Directions to Still Point (PDF)
Things to Bring (PDF)
Sweet Darkness
When your eyes are tired
the world is tired also.
When your vision has gone
no part of the world can find you.
Time to go into the dark
where the night has eyes to recognize its own.
There you can be sure
you are not beyond love.
The dark will be your womb
tonight.
The night will give you a horizon
further than you can see.
You must learn one thing.
The world was made to be free in.
Give up all the other worlds
except the one to which you belong.
Sometimes it takes darkness and the sweet
confinement of your aloneness
to learn
anything or anyone
that does not bring you alive
is too small for you.
-- David Whyte