10/23/2025
Retreat life is a kind of wondrous, self-enhancing, experiential learning experience. It’s where strangers or semi-strangers live together for a short period of time and engage in activities that promote a particular intention or theme. This is my reflection of my recent retreat in Sedona called Door to Spirit. As always, synchronicity plays an essential part of it all. Invariably, you become more aware of events that seem coincidental, but they are not.
I came away with a renewed belief in the power of community. Like Alan Watts said, “healing occurs in the group, not in isolation”. My particular take away was the way the men helped me and the other women along the way while hiking and crossing streams. They were always there to help you along. Not to intrude, not to impose, not to control, not to fix. They were just there. Gentle, tending to. They were “tending” to the women while we were presented with challenges.
The other take away was the way the married couples treated each other. They were respectful of each other; gentle with each other and playful. It re-ignited in me the belief in love, in our ability to learn to love, with all its calamities and complications.
Thirdly, the laughter. Little by little, strangers began to talk to each other, to meet in small one to one encounters and little by little, the kind of initial awkward tensions began to drop gently and laughter, real laughter, not nervous laughter, began to happen. Sporadically, and it increased in frequency. There was a transformation of sorts within each person and within the whole group, and then, joy emerged. The joy that comes from laughing at each other, laughing with each other, laughing at what was said, loving, loving laughter, loving one another.
