My first retreat involved going by myself to a Canadian alpine ski lodge in the middle of summer. The setting was wonderful, with lots of hiking trails, and because it was off season, there were very few people around, skiers or otherwise. I simply went away for a week of solitude with my Bible, my journal, and a couple of books that I thought I might read. The experience was remarkable and very important, and its impact on my life included moving me toward training in spiritual direction and the work I now do as a retreat leader.

Spiritual retreats can and do take many different forms. Some are directed (involving daily meetings with a spiritual director), while others are not. Some are solitary, while others are with a group. Some are conducted in silence, while others allow for conversation. Some involve going to a retreat center or monastery, while others happen in a log cabin in the forest, a hotel room, or even a back yard.Getting away is a central feature of a spiritual retreat. Sometimes, of course, this is impossible, and one can certainly work out some kind of compromise retreat in a back yard or quiet room of one’s own house. But going off somewhere that will allow a degree of solitude and quietness has always been part of how people have approached spiritual retreats. Such retreats reach right back to the earliest days of Christianity. In the third and fourth centuries, a common pattern was to go to the deserts of Syria and Egypt, where early Christians would often meet with spiritual directors known as the Desert Mothers and Fathers. Jesus, too, regularly practiced this sort of getting away to meet God and himself in a deeper place than was possible in the midst of daily life, and he encouraged his disciples to do the same.