At the end of a retreat at The Barn, we hold a closing circle where retreatants share their reflections about their experience and where it leaves them as they prepare to go back to the world at large. A word retreatants often use during these closing circles is 'magic'.
Typically, they are referring to the ties they have formed - or perhaps discovered - exist between them. A mere six nights earlier, they had been strangers, in some cases trepidatious and doubtful about what it will be like to live and practice in community with ten others. By the end of the week, however, we hear retreatants speak about how rare it is to find spaces in the world where it feels possible to dwell fully: to sink into in the present moment and the wholesome truth of all that we may find within it. To live together with the wilful intention to refrain from causing harm and with reverence for each other as supported through our choices and our actions. To feel held and listened to in such a way that honesty feels riddled with existential risk. And to have known a way of loving co-existence, characterised by a constant exchange of generosity through sharing food, tending the garden, feeding the cats and chickens, taking care of The Barn itself, sitting in companionable silence with each other and – not to be underestimated – finding a childlike and mischievous sense of fun.
As precious and affirming as it is to hear retreatants describe their time at The Barn in this way, I wonder at the rarity and the ‘magic’ of it. Each week, a new constellation of people arrive with their own unique histories and loads. They talk about the ways in which they feel unsatisfied with, perhaps actively harmed by, the state of the world outside. They describe feeling trapped in certain expectations, demands, roles, separation, burnout and disillusion that lead to a feeling of fracture and dislocation in their personal relationships and those with their workplaces, neighbourhoods, policy-makers and the more-than-human world.
And there is tremendous pain laden in the words and the stories that are shared over the course of each week.
What amazes me is the transformative effect people say that living and practising in community on retreat has and how consistent this is. It is not a marvel constrained to one time or group but seemingly it exists across all time and space. It makes me wonder if what happens on retreat is not so much ‘magic’ in the sense of conjuring up something that can’t be found anywhere else but of remembering the truth of our nature, our essence, and finding it in ourselves through each other.