SPIRITUAL RETREAT


Tennessee. The subject of his talk was ‘Tidying Up’, from the book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. As you can imagine, that short talk by John slowly became the center of my spiritual retreat. As Barry was driving away, I looked


in our garage to see what I could throw away. We have a habit, which I have insisted upon, of throwing away something from the garage every Tuesday when the garbage goes up the hill to be picked up. You would have to see our garage to understand why this is so important. The first thing I noticed was something I notice every time I enter the garage… the corner!


Lightening up: a very different kind of spiritual retreat


Spiritual retreats don't have to be all about meditation, quiet and withdrawal from the everyday. Joyce discovers the sacred joy of tidying up.


by Joyce Vissell W


hen I think of a spiritual retreat, I imagine a lot of meditation, quiet walks,


no computers or media, listening to gentle music, and withdrawing from the busyness of the world. Several weeks ago, Barry left for


eight days to raft the Owyhee River in very remote Southeast Oregon. He had wanted to raft this river for a long time, and had just found out that this year the abundance of rain provided enough water for a spontaneous late spring trip. Typically, every year, Barry leaves for a week doing some kind of an adventure by himself. I am generally OK with this, and plan on having a spiritual retreat for myself. Even though I had work planned, I cancelled it and planned to have


84 MARCH | APRIL 2018


a spontaneous spiritual retreat. I thought I would work in my garden as that brings so much pleasure to me. I imagined myself meditating long periods in the day, reading my abundance of spiritual books, going for long swims at the gym, and sitting peacefully on the garden swing on the deck Barry made for me. I pictured turning off all media and going within for a beautiful retreat. Some of that happened, but a different type of spiritual retreat emerged.


AN UNEXPECTED TURN The night before Barry left, while he was busy packing up, I opened my Facebook. The first thing to appear was a short talk given by our friend, John McClean, a Unity minister in Nashville,


THE TIDY-UP BEGINS The corner holds boxes of random tiles from the building of our house twenty- five years ago. I have often wanted to throw them away, but Barry insists that we should keep them to replace broken tiles. Well, twenty-five years have passed and not one tile has needed to be replaced in our house. We both agreed to donate them. I called Habitat for Humanity and other places, but no one wanted the tiles. So there I was on a Tuesday evening


once again staring at the dreaded corner. Each tile was very heavy, but I got the idea that if I carried perhaps a few at a time to my car, I could drive them to the garbage can. One hour later, the tiles were in the garbage can. I then totally cleaned twenty-five years’ worth of dirt from the area and was delighted to see the concrete floor once again. An absolute thrill of joy passed


through me. I skipped around in the garage, I was so happy. I then stood outside in the sunset and felt a warmth of spiritual presence around me, like I had just meditated for hours. My joy was bursting from me. My next adventure was the closet


in the room that used to be our oldest daughter’s bedroom. I used that closet to store wedding presents that were given to Barry and me forty-eight years ago. These were expensive things; crystal candle holders, silver


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