Reflections from the Retreat October 2026
I was walking back on my usual Saturday walk, after swimming at Levera Beach, and I realised that I had truly settled back home. I had been back to the UK for the Summer, and it was a fantastic time seeing friends and family and especially having quality time with my children and Mum. I had also really valued being back in the British countryside. I hadn’t realised how much I had missed this until I felt my excitement at seeing a squirrel run down an oak tree for the first time in a long while!
But now I was back home – the place I am calling home for the foreseeable future, and it had taken me a while to settle back down. I had unpacked, sorted the house out, been busy with jobs but I realised on this walk that I had now settled back down, not just physically, but in my spirit.
This little corner of Grenada has a way of helping me to slow down, to let go of the busyness and to enjoy the silence – to give me time to reconnect with myself, with nature, with the Divine and to hear my soul again. I had been back a few weeks, but it had taken that long to reconnect with that deeper place within me. I hadn’t lost touch with it totally in the UK, but it can get lost in the surface busyness and my focus had been on the relationships around me and rightly so, but now it was time to reconnect with the relationship within.
As I walked, I pondered on the lists of jobs that shape my day-to-day work here – and then I wondered ‘am I listing or am I listening?’ I had never noticed the similarity of these two words and how easy it is for me to get busy with lists and be ‘listing’ instead of ‘listening’ to the guidance and wisdom that can direct my days. I need both and it reminds me of an image we use in Contemplative Fire- the trellis and the rose. The rose needs a firm structure on which to grow but it also needs the freedom to grow naturally, following its inherent and individual path. I need my lists to keep me on track with what has to be done, but if I just follow my lists, then I can go off centre. Like a ship ‘listing,' I could get burnt out or stagnant. I need the routine and the trellis of lists, as well as needing the listening to where I am being called and knowing which direction I should follow on a day-to-day basis.
This is perhaps more important than ever at this time, as I move into a new phase. It is an exciting time for me because the retreat house has opened this month and it is a significant beginning and the next major step on this ongoing journey. This is why it is so important that I still make that time to listen and not just ‘list.’
One of the ways that I listen, is to be aware of what I am drawn to pay attention to in nature. I have found that what I notice in the external landscape can be a reflection of what is occurring within my internal landscape.
Not surprisingly at this time, I have become more aware of little seedlings. Noticing the fragile plants which often have just two shiny new, green leaves, appearing a few inches above ground. They are starting out and I resonate with their brave appearance and cheer them on, as I also put my head above the surface and let people know that I’m here! Signs have gone up at the end of our road, as in the photo, directing people to Hummingbird Retreat. They also welcome me home, whenever I return. Like the seedlings, I am no longer hidden but starting tentative steps to show people I’m here.
Another change in nature that I am very aware of, is how the Levera beach has changed. Having lived here for a few years, I realise how much the local beaches change over the years. The strong Atlantic waves crash against the beaches with such force that at times they erode the beach to almost nothing. In the UK, I am used to beaches being covered at high tide and then reappear at low tide but here they have micro-tides which hardly change at all. Instead, the beach can look like it is at low tide for months and then almost disappear, as if covered by a high tide.
At the moment, the large Levera beach where turtles were nesting earlier this year, has almost disappeared. So much so, that I can no longer walk along the beach for my Saturday morning swim, but walk through the palm trees and down to the far end to swim. At other times the sargassum weed builds up and covers the beaches and this brings new sand with it. Over time the weed, which appears to be a nuisance, is actually rebuilding the beach and restoring the lost sand. So, the boundaries between sea and sand have changed – it’s the same place but it looks and feels quite different.
Nature is constantly changing in so many ways and at the moment I resonate with these ‘shifting sands’ of change. The house is entering the phase of life for which we have been working towards for years; for it to receive an ebb and flow of visitors and events as the retreat house becomes fully functioning. But this brings a sense of ‘shifting sands’ to the solitary home I have enjoyed for the last few years. I will need to keep centred and living from that still place that grounds me, as I adapt to living in a place of ‘shifting sands.’ This will be a time of me adapting to others living in the house – guests that come and go and assistant retreat house managers who stay longer and help to shape what is growing here. I am used to people staying here, but so far, they have been friends and family, and they were visiting my home. There is a transition now, as people start to come who I don’t know and they are coming on retreat. This will be a time for me to set new boundaries for myself and others, to navigate these changes to ensure that this work is sustainable and successful long term.
So, saplings and shifting sands are helping me to recognise where I am at and what I am being called to, for now. As you take a country walk, or perhaps a walk in a nearby woodland or park, what do you notice and what resonates with you? Could it be reflecting something of your inner world or what the Divine might be highlighting for you?
I will close with words from one of my favourite writers - the Irish poet, priest and philosopher, John O’Donohue. He loved his Celtic roots, and he would see the sacred in the Irish countryside in which he lived. After describing the beautiful, rugged mountains of Conamara in Ireland, he shares these encouraging words about beginnings:
On this primeval ground I feel I have entered into a pristine permanence, a continuity here that knew the wind hundreds of millions of years before a human face ever felt it.
When we arrive into the world, we enter this ancient sequence. All our beginnings happen within this continuity. Beginnings often frighten us because they seem like lonely voyages into the unknown. Yet, in truth, no beginning is empty or isolated. We seem to think that beginning is setting out from a lonely point along some line of direction into the unknown. This is not the case. Shelter and energy come alive when a beginning is embraced… We are never as alone in our beginnings as it might seem at the time. A beginning is ultimately an invitation to open toward the gifts and growth that are stored up for us. To refuse to begin can be an act of great self-neglect.
Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over.
Sometimes the greatest challenge is to actually begin; there is something deep in us that conspires with what wants to remain within safe boundaries and stay the same… Sometimes a period of preparation is necessary, where the idea of the beginning can gestate and refine itself; yet quite often we unnecessarily postpone and equivocate when we should simply take the risk and leap into a new beginning…. Part of the art of living wisely is to learn to recognize and attend to such profound openings in one’s life.’
(John O’Donohue To Bless the Space Between Us: A Book of Blessings)
