Reflections

Thanks to Suzanne Frank, a guest of GilChrist Retreat Center, who wrote to us, "I wanted to share this recent publication of my travel writing that appears in www.nowheremag.com. The peace and tranquility of your center contributed greatly to this and a manuscript I’m completing." Find more information about the celebration of the 25th anniversary of GilChrist here.

Thank you to Karin Larsen for sharing this collection of poems as we look back on the past 25 years at GilChrist Retreat Center, and as we look forward to the future. Find more information about the celebration of the 25th anniversary of GilChrist here.

After four months, GilChrist Retreat Center is open once again. 

In March, as we closed the door behind us with uncertainty and sadness, we didn’t know when we would return. We wiped the calendar—full of group bookings and personal retreat reservations—clean. The cabins, usually filled back-to-back with guests, would sit empty. But we committed ourselves to hold this situation with open hands and hearts, ready to learn and listen and wait and wonder. 

Each year, on the summer solstice, we share a reflection on the season by Parker Palmer. In 1995 Parker wrote a welcome for the Fetzer Institute's newly built retreat center, Seasons, which included a reflection on each of the four seasons. Here we excerpt his musings on summer in the Upper Midwest where he lives and where the Fetzer Institute is located.

We are heartbroken by the killing of George Floyd and the ensuing events that have unfolded in our country and around the world in the past week.

The Fetzer Institute’s mission of helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world compels us to address the challenging structural issues that have given rise to racial injustice in the history of the United States and in our present day.

A number of years ago a well-known writer and wisdom figure asked to see me. When she came in, she shared that she was having panic attacks so I set up weekly mentoring sessions for her. When she came in for her third visit, I suggested that instead of having the meeting in the office, we walk around the lake outside. My sense was that the beauty and activity while we were walking and talking together would put her more at ease so she would feel freer to let go and go deeper into what was behind her fears.

This note, from Kirstin Vander Giessen-Reitsma, head caretaker at GilChrist (our public retreat center) and her staff, provides both an update about the closure of the center as a result of the pandemic and a reminder of the “unexpected gifts” it offers.

To say that the COVID-19 pandemic has caused us all to feel distressed and uneasy would be a great understatement—indeed, this event, as it unfolds, is causing changes we could never have imagined, some temporary, and some perhaps embedded in our souls and our society for months and years to come. As we physically isolate ourselves and wait for COVID-19 to begin its inevitable decline, our hearts and minds can easily succumb to the fears rising within us as we try to navigate this strange new time.

In this moment, as many are rethinking how to observe important religious holidays, Rabbi Josh Feigelson, PhD, executive director of the Institute for Jewish Spirituality shared this reflection on celebrating Passover during the COVID-19 pandemic.

How can we celebrate our holiday of freedom when we are confined? That’s a question I’m hearing a lot this year, and one I ask myself.

What if this virus had a hidden agenda other than spreading fear about how it might compromise our health? What if, hidden in its drive to be contagious there was another message, urging to be heard?