Retreatant Ruby's writing features in poetry journal

"With some poems, I have an idea, then I sit down and consciously try to write. There’s effort involved. Whereas with a select few - which are all my favourite poems that I’ve written - they arrive, they just pop into the mind, it’s very dreamlike."

"I read one poet describe this process as being like a visitation, and I think that’s what it feels like.”

The poem arrived on the penultimate day of the retreat. Said Ruby: “I was wandering around…we had a rest break and it just popped. Then you have this little scurry where you try to quickly write down this thing that has pressed into your consciousness.”

“It’s almost like you look at it and you think, ‘did I write that?’ It’s a really strange experience. That was one of those poems. Once I was back home, I chose the line breaks, and came up with a title - which was inspired by how the retreat teachers had spoken about our inter-being with various earth matter and life forms."

Ruby was a Sharpham newbie

This was Ruby’s first Sharpham retreat - and her first mindfulness retreat, although she had attended our Weekly Online sits beforehand and had a developing meditation practice.

“This was my first opportunity to be in a group meditating with other people, with such experienced teachers, and in a setting that valued our relationship to nature as being a key part of the whole practice of meditation,” said Ruby.

“It just appealed to me…the combination of woodland, which is an environment I really love, and the meditation. There was a lot of joy,” she said.

She said she found the whole experience transformational, from walking on the land and the silent periods, to time in community and spent around the fire.

She said it was “an experience that I think is really powerful and rare.”

“It feels so different to ‘ordinary life’ but it has profound impacts that definitely carry over into life after retreat, I would say”.