17th November, 2025
Retreatant Neil Turner completed a three-day Find Your Peace silent retreat in Sharpham House earlier this year and had this to say about his experience:
I find myself surprisingly emotional at the leaving meeting and circle; an upwelling of metta for all those on this shared experience.A delightful and unexpected outcome, a natural reticence to return to normalcy, a heightened sense of wanting, needing, to retreat, retreat in the hermitic sense, to find some place of peace and quiet to better understand, to speed up the process of learning while slowing down the process of life.
For my prejudices, for my critiques, for my darkness, this ends well; today ends well, and today, this moment, the ‘just this’ is all that really matters. Yesterday a story, tomorrow a dream, now, in this moment, I am wonderfully alive and deeply grateful for that luck, my lucky life.
Thank you fellow retreatants; like a book amongst many on a shelf, this one revealed itself to me and, whilst at first, I struggled to understand its message, at the turning of the last page I find myself refreshed, challenged, more curious, happier…and that is good enough