In Retreat-






 
  Normal
  0
  
  
  
  
  false
  false
  false
  
  EN-GB
  X-NONE
  X-NONE
  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  
  MicrosoftInternetExplorer4
  
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
  




 /* Style Definitions */
 table.MsoNormalTable
	{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
	mso-style-parent:"";
	font-size:11.0pt;"Calibri","sans-serif";
	mso-fareast-"Times New Roman";
	mso-bidi-"Times New Roman";}


I once attended a weekend at an Osho centre in Dorset which wasn’t at all bad, but I thought a comment by another attendee at the wrap-up said much: why is it when I do things like this I feel great, but it all fades away after a few days?
This was (and less commonly these days is) something monks and nuns acknowledged with their closed orders –the sense of well-being that comes from opening ourselves up to the spiritual dimension is often short-lived. A fragile thing, it is crowded out by the stuff of life, so the only way to sustain it, they believe, is to avoid distraction. In a way Islam seeks to address this issue with distraction – its five-times daily prayer – an attempt, almost, to disrupt the disruption, and at the back of my mind I wonder about checking out that Sufi place featured in the Channel Four programme The Retreat. Maybe… but that doesn’t resolve the essential problem (short of converting to Islam, which of course has all sorts of other implications): the here and now. 
I could try meditating of course, or simple prayer. Although I don’t believe in what Nick Cave would call an interventionist God, I recently entered a small side chapel at my local church, got down on my knees and bowed my head in communion with what I nonetheless consider God – that greater connection. This seemed to help me at a time of high anxiety but on the whole I’m not the praying type, and neither has meditation ever really done it for me – I’m too impatient, to be honest.
Another reason why I’ve never regularly prayed or meditated outside church is because it feels a bit like “dial-up” spirituality to me, when my experience of the sacred has always tended to be more constant – “wireless-broadband” if you like, in that’s it’s always on, even if, paradoxically, I don’t necessarily notice. 
Churches, mosques, temples are human structures, more: societal constructions designed for structured worship, to contain, if you like, our divine experience within the boundaries of the group, whatever that may be. I love to attend my Unitarian church for the sense of fellowship and the often inspirational sermons, but when I walk away my spiritual identity doesn’t stay at church: it leaves with me. 
I think we need to be aware of what church meant – it was as much to sustain and contain spirituality as connect individuals with God. Traditional church attendance has dropped not least, I suspect, because neither the persecution that built the first churches, nor the power of the church to impose its own vision, any longer exists. 
Along with the structures and rituals that formalise the orthodox religious experience – be it Christian, Muslim, or Hindu – it also of course seeks to dictate what is and is not spiritually acceptable. 
Prayer, meditation, singing is in – all preferably under the roof of the church, mosque or temple, and within the particular creed of the faith. Going for a walk, a swim, a run, shopping on the other hand is by implication largely ruled out as authentic spirituality. 
Yet I have had some of my most profound revelations sitting beneath a beach umbrella on a week away. Even while waiting for my partner to choose the right kind of shoes (certainly a form of meditation for her) I have journeyed to other spiritual realms…
It’s true, at the moment I am fighting to retain my spiritual essence amidst the pressure and office politics, which is precisely the kind of space church can provide, but a walk around the block can also help, or a pint with a mate. Why shouldn’t these moments of peace, reflection and intimacy count for anything less, spiritually, than a million Hail Marys? 
So maybe it’s not a Sufi retreat or spell on Kodiak I need, just a holiday. And there’s nothing necessarily any less spiritual about that, although I may indeed get a haircut. A very shor haircut.