Madeleine L'Engle writes: "Every so often I need OUT; something will throw me into total disproportion, and I have to get away from everybody—away from all those people I love most in the world—in order to regain a sense of proportion."1

Often, she says, she needs to get away completely, to her special place, a small brook in a green glade.

Like her, we wish for the kind of freedom we had as children, a carefree spirit, a jubilant heart. Refreshment is what we're after: playfulness, simplicity, a clear space, a time in the wilderness. In Hosea we read:

Therefore, I will now allure her,
and bring her into the wilderness,
and speak tenderly to her,
From there I will give her her vineyards,
and make the Valley of Achor a door of hope.
There she shall respond as in the days of her youth,
as at the time when she came out of the land of Egypt. (Hos. 2:14–15)

A separate time with God has powerful appeal. We long for time in the open with wildflowers blowing and blue sky stretching overhead, with birds calling and green trees sighing. We may wonder, is such a gifted time stored up for us anywhere?

In the country of God's affections, such a time and space are ours for the asking. God is waiting for us, expecting us, offering us a time of restoration. What we're looking for goes by the simple name: retreat.

There may, however, be something in us that resists or holds back from the experience of retreat. We may schedule the retreat, and then balk at it or stall in some way. These fearful, self-deceiving impulses are what sometimes keep us from prayer; we need to break away from such constraints and begin.

Spiritual formation involves a fundamental choice. Choosing to live for Jesus Christ may mean adopting a certain style of life, or, perhaps more properly, a rule of life. We take on a series of spiritual practices that will open us to God's work in our lives.

This choice leads to dialogue with God; warms our hearts for friendship with him. Retreat offers the chance for a fresh start in the spiritual life. No doubt, if you are ready to make a retreat, you have made such a start once before, possibly more than once.

This need to begin and begin again is universal; it is basic to the disciplined life. In his sermon entitled "Christian Repentance," John Henry Newman writes, "The most perfect Christian is to himself but a beginner, a penitent prodigal, who has squandered God's gifts. . . ."2

Perseverance is needed to live out our fundamental commitment: to serve God, not randomly but over the long run. Not unlike a marriage or a religious vocation, this way of life is transforming; it will change us. Over and over we must make clean breaks, fresh starts, and new beginnings.

The philosopher Søren Kierkegaard wrote a long treatise titled Purity of Heart is to Will One Thing. His notion of single-heartedness is a clue to the decisive nature of the spiritual life. To will one thing is to will over and over, beginning again and again, cutting loose from our past selves and stepping into the new drama of self-giving that is the disciplined life. Closer in time to us, the pastor and writer Eugene Peterson has written a book with a title that is a splendid metaphor of the spiritual life: A Long Obedience in the Same Direction.

As Paul the Apostle has it, we are running a race. We are taking on a kind of training that will shape us into the image of Christ. Retreat, which could be called a decisive moment extended in time, offers us a great opportunity to seek this kind of formation. We are choosing a specific opportunity for grace, a disciplined way that will give us direction. Yet this choice is realistic, not so outrageous or mock-heroic that we can't accomplish it. Retreat is a general commitment to friendship with God: one that, despite false starts, stumbling, and all the different aspects of our humanity, will nevertheless act, by grace, to form us in Jesus Christ.

Think of the spiritual life as a pattern, a series of concrete actions that will gently move us toward transformation in Christ. The disciplines themselves, however, are not transformative. The transformation in us is God's work. It is a work of grace.

That deeply transformative grace comes to us not through our own doing but as pure gift. And yet something is demanded from us: the free gift of ourselves, our submission to the gentle rod of Christian discipline, our willingness to be transformed, our yielding to the grace of God. In the end our yes is what's required. We have to say, "Speak, Lord, your