Faith. Fuelled. Fit?
Runner’s Challenge, Lee Abbey, Devon
LEE ABBEY is going Tough Mudder on its first running retreat, where the highlight of the autumn weekend is a Saturday 5k hill-run and 5k mud-run through the rugged, coastal 280-acre Lee Abbey estate. Retreatants are warned that this will require a certain level of fitness, but the upside is the chance to “explore God’s call to worship him with our whole bodies”.
“It’s an idea I’ve been sitting with for a couple of years,” the lead chaplain, the Revd Tom Collins, says. “We’re always looking for different ways to enable people to engage with the estate and engage with God.”
Faith. Fuelled. Fit? is aimed at people who go in for events such as park runs and want to connect fitness with their faith. Mr Collins hopes it will “open up a new space” for people who wouldn’t opt for something more reflective.
The starting-point for the retreat is the “greatest commandment”, to “love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind”. Teaching during the retreat will reflect on what it means to be full-bodied in the worship of God.
If the body is not as an object of worship but a gift from God, Mr Collins says, the question is then: “How do we steward it well?
“Most people have something that impairs their function, but even then we can worship God with our bodies.” Now aged 44, Mr Collins explains: “Fourteen years ago I went through cancer treatment. My body should be in the grave, but, thanks to an expert medical team, I’ve had many more days, and strength even to run. So, I run as an act of defiance while I still can, praising God for this precious gift.”
When: 18-20 September
Where: Lee Abbey, Lynton, North Devon EX35 6JJ
Cost: From £140pp
Contact: Phone 01598 752621; visit leeabbeydevon.org.uk/visit
Psalms and Stretches
Foxhill House and Woodlands, Cheshire
RUTH CARPENTER, a dancer, devised Psalms and Stretches to draw on biblical poetry in a way that enhances physical as well as spiritual well-being.
The retreat co-leader Pip Jacobson explains: “Physical and mental health are known to be connected, but Ruth recognised that spiritual wellness was missing.” The movement sequences she created are “a great way to learn these ancient texts and channel them from our heads into our hearts”.
What does this look like? A psalm and its themes will be introduced to groups of 12-15 participants at Chester diocese’s woodland retreat centre by another co-leader, Gill Morgan, who also leads a meditation on it. Then the group learns the movements.
Ms Jacobson, a Pilates instructor, gives an example: stepping back into a lunge with arms up can represent praise; going into a plank can represent giving thanks to God for his strength; lifting the hips high into a pike can represent comparing God’s love to mountains; and finishing standing with head bowed can represent supplication and surrender. Participants repeat the sequence several times, sometimes speaking the psalm, before the session ends with meditation and prayer.
Between sessions, retreatants can explore the centre’s grounds. The retreats tend to attract mainly women, and most have a link to a church community.
All the movements can be modified to suit different levels of ability or fitness, including, for example, for people who need to use a chair. Participants are given a questionnaire to fill in before starting that covers heart health, joint issues, blood pressure, medication, and so on.
“The emphasis throughout is that God created us in his own image. So we bring our bodies, that are perfect in his sight, to worship him,” Ms Jacobson says.
When: 8-9 June
Where: Foxhill House and Woodlands, Frodsham WA6 6XB
Cost: £140 pp
Contact: Phone 01928 733777; visit: foxhillchester.co.uk/whats-on/retreats
Meeting God in Creation
Abernethy Kilmalieu, Scottish Highlands
THE Abernethy Kilmalieu centre sits on the shores of Loch Linnhe, in north-western Scotland, enveloped by hills, coastline and ancient woodland. The nearest town, Fort William, is 20 miles and a ferry-ride away.
Abernethy’s stated mission is to love God, people, and the outdoors, and retreatants — about a dozen each retreat — talk about the strength of community that they encounter.
“A foundational scripture for what we’re about would be Luke 5.16, where it says, ‘Jesus often withdrew to lonely places to pray,’” explains the director of Kilmalieu, Dr Steve Aisthorpe. “There’s a framework of prayer throughout the day; morning and evening we’d be gathering for prayer that would usually be outside, unless the weather’s absolutely terrible.” Walking serves as a prompt for prayer.
“We’d go to different parts of the landscape and allow our prayers to be shaped by particular elements of the landscape,” he says, such as the beach, the woods, a hill, a river. On the beach, for example, retreatants may be asked to reflect on a biblical account of an encounter with Jesus on a beach.
Richard TipladyKingairloch ridge walk, Abernethy retreat
Because levels of fitness differ, a choice of walks is given daily, as well as the option to explore the centre’s grounds and make use of the labyrinth or art room. Participants may be lucky enough to spot eagles, warblers, pine martens, or otters.
While this is the first “Meeting God in Creation” retreat, feedback from a participant on a similar event last year said that the daily excursions had given them “a heightened sense of seeing — an awareness to notice, wonder, and realise when out and about”.
When: 1-5 June
Where: Abernethy Kilmalieu, Ardgour Peninsula, Fort William PH33 7AD
Cost: From £480pp; reductions may be available on request
Contact: Phone 01967 411222; visit kilmalieu@abernethy.org.uk
Alive: Prayer and Fitness Retreat
Parcevall Hall, Skipton
THE Revd Jenny Savage also quotes the great commandment to “love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, and all your strength,” but reflects: “I think we do it with our minds, but perhaps not with our bodies.”
The “Alive: Prayer and Fitness Retreat”, which runs at the diocese of Leeds’ retreat centre, Parcevall Hall, mixes spiritual reflections by Mrs Savage, the chaplain and a former PE teacher, and exercise and weights classes led by a personal trainer, Katherine Hogg. Afternoons are free for rest or exploring the 24-acre Arts and Crafts-influenced Parcevall Hall Gardens, and its Stations of the Cross, as well as the nearby Dales.
The prayer and fitness retreat is geared for different ages and levels of ability. Some people attend with their carer; a mother in her eighties came with her daughter. “As we never have more than eight people, Katherine can tailor her support to individual perspectives,” the director of Parcevall Hall, Dr Helen Reid, says.
Bringing the whole body into the prayerful worship of God is accessible to anyone, Mrs Savage says. The retreat could work for people in the early stages of dementia, though the organisers would appreciate advance notice.
“You can only move what you can move; but to do that in conjunction with prayer can be very rewarding,” she says. People feel better after exercise, “and we all feel better after we’ve taken some time away to retreat. If you put the two together, you feel truly alive.”
When: 20-22 November
Where: Parcevall Hall, Appletreewick, Skipton, North Yorks, BD23 6DG
Cost: £235pp
Contact: Phone 01756 720213; visit parcevallhall.org.uk
Walking Retreat
St Beuno’s, Denbighshire
AT THE top of North Wales, St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre offers walking retreats for groups of 10-15 retreatants. The retreats, which run once or twice a year, are for “those who feel most alive in the natural world, and would like to integrate prayer into an experience of walking the hills,” the centre’s deputy director, Alexandra Harrod, says.
Each day starts with prayer, followed by a walk of up to eight miles, with opportunities to stop, pray, walk in silence, or use poetry and nature-themed Psalms to appreciate creation.
The Jesuit priest Gerard Manley Hopkins studied at St Beuno’s in the 1870s, when it was St Beuno’s College, and wrote most of his lyric poetry about the countryside there. The centre draws on this, offering the chance to “reflect on some of his poems, up some of his favourite hills,” Ms Harrod says.
After the walk, there’s mass, supper, and time to reflect in an area set aside for walking retreatants to reflect together.
Tim McEvoySt Beuno’s
Although St Beuno’s is a Roman Catholic retreat house, the retreats tend to attract practising Christians of all denominations, as well as “people who may be searching,” Ms Harrod says. They’re between their 30s and their late 70s — anyone “healthy enough to cope with our extremely steep hills”. People hoping for something less strenuous can take a prayer walk on their own, use the centre’s labyrinth, or walk around the grounds.
“Jesus and his disciples did a lot of walking, and there are lots of famous walks in the Bible,” Ms Harrod notes. The walking retreats are about “walking in company, in creation, giving you a different perspective, and maybe a different sense of companionship with others along the journey as well.”
When: 19-22 July
Where: St Beuno’s Jesuit Spirituality Centre, Tremeirchion, St Asaph, LL17 0AS
Costs: From £249pp; bursaries are available
Contact: Phone 01745 583444; visit beunos.com
Circle Dance Delights
Othona West Dorset
OTHONA’s circle-dance retreat has been running for nearly 20 years, and regulars keep coming back, reports the Othona warden, Tony Jaques.
Sessions are open to all abilities, and are based around traditional European folk dances. Each day comprises two dance sessions, with free afternoons, and the centre can take between 14 and 30 retreatants, who are of any faith or none.
Othona, on Dorset coast west of Weymouth, describes itself as “an open and inclusive community rooted in the Christian tradition, and drawing on a wealth of other inspirations”. Most of those who attend are women, and most are retired.
The sessions are book-ended by morning and evening prayers with the resident community in the centre’s chapel.
“We are embodied creatures, and I think the gift of life to us is through our embodiment rather than just our thoughts and feelings. We’re not just brains on sticks,” Mr Jaques says.
The dances, led by Kathryn Penny, a dance teacher, are a mixture of energetic and meditative. “Circle dancing by its very nature is, for many people, a form of body prayer. It certainly emphasises community, because you are all linked, holding hands, moving in unison,” Mr Jaques says.
“Despite some of us sometimes having two left feet, for many people it also brings a vivid sense of a wider connection into the cycles of life and the whole of creation and the Creator. . . At the end of each dance, there’s a silent pause — prayerful without any particular words being said — that’s as important a part of the dance as the movement.”
When: 22-26 June
Where: Othona Community West Dorset, Burton Bradstock, Dorset DT6 4RN
Cost: £431pp standard rate, £362pp reduced rate; £500 benefactor rate for those supporting those who need a reduced rate; 25 per cent off for two adults sharing.
Contact: Phone 01308 897130; visit othona.org/west-dorset
Circle-dance retreat at Othona West Dorset
Wild women do
Scargill House, North Yorkshire
WOMEN who like to mix their teaching and prayer with outdoor pursuits such as forest-bathing, star-gazing, and archery, take note: Scargill House, in North Yorkshire, is offering an outdoor retreat called “Wild women do. . .” in July. Although it is fully booked, the chaplain, the Revd Annie Naish (ex-Lee Abbey), says that it is worth joining the waiting list in case of cancellations, and they will be running it again in 2027.
Contact: Phone 01756 760500; visit scargillmovement.org