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More and more of them are trying spiritual retreat to counter the ills of a constantly accelerating society. But believers or not, are we all made for such a step aside? Return of experiences.
In the background of his smartphone, Pierre Maudet chose a photo of the Abbey of Sénanque, lost in the lavender in bloom. A memory of the spring of 2019, when the man who was still a Geneva State Councilor left for a week in retirement. However, this choice is not part of a process of faith. This not very practicing Protestant follows the advice of his entourage: to extract himself from the “media fracas” he is going through. It is therefore alone that he goes to Provence in the Cistercian monastery totally cut off from mobile telephone networks. He lives there to the rhythm of the seven daily offices which begin at 4:15 a.m. An opportunity to finally take time for him and even to reopen the Bible: “I notably reread the Gospel of Mark: the questions of power, the authority of Jesus, his relationship to his disciples, nourished my introspection. » A real homecoming and a real breath which allow him, on returning, to “slow down the pace”.
A story that is no exception. A privileged stop on the highway of overwork, the spiritual retreat is gaining ground among people expressing the need to recharge their batteries. However, are we all ready to try the experiment?
“My first retirement was anxiety. I was not prepared to experience the silence, it was heavy. I was 22 years old and I was expecting a mystical experience”, recalls Geneviève Spring, spiritual companion at the Chuv. But that didn’t put her off. “Today, retirement is a need. It allows me to be fully myself. I can do a job of re-reading my experience, involving emotion and the body, ”she explains.
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If silence is golden for retreatants, it does not prevent it from asking to be tamed. “I was going through a difficult time. I registered for a retreat in Versailles (F), without even realizing that it was taking place in silence. I had only one desire: to leave. But I was too far from home. I stayed and I did well, ”shares Anne Schneider. Today, she has about twenty retreats on the clock and about ten as an accompanying person, in Granchamp (NE). An inner reconquest that costs: “You have to be able to introspect as much as to confront your shadows,” she continues.
For others, the path is less winding. “The retreat is part of a process of faith that dates back to my childhood. As you put gas in your car, retirement and meditation allow me to fill up on interiority to continue my journey”, illustrates the specialist teacher Jean-Marc Ischer.
The need for distance
“People are in dire need of pensions. With the pandemic, work has invaded the place of residence. They need spaces where to disconnect, refocus, where to share their doubts as much as their hopes”, comments the Vaud pastor Alain Monnard resident of Crêt-Bérard (VD), place of retreats intended for believers but not only.
Clearly, the demand is there. “I was facing an overflow in my daily life. I felt the need to take time for myself, withdraw and live my spirituality to the full,” explains Vaudoise Marie-Claire Chavan. Crêt-Bérard, Vaumarcus (NE), the monastery of Bose (I): each time, the silence allows him to be more attentive to his feelings and to the biblical texts.
“The experience of mindfulness meditation in connection with the Christian faith makes it possible to approach the sacred texts by listening to the body and the heart rather than to the intellect. Silence is inhabited,” observes Lia Antico, neuroscience researcher and Catholic teacher of mindfulness meditation. And to try it, for many, is to adopt it. “There are three types of participants: committed Christians, new seekers in search of meaning and followers of secular meditation.”
Democratized asceticism
“Asceticism is a mode of access to the sacred which has become more democratic. It seduces people in search of a reconnection with themselves and/or nature”, confirms François Gauthier, sociologist of religions at the University of Fribourg. And for good reason: contemporary religiosity rhymes less with “the idea of a truth than with a quest for meaning that passes through experience”. In this, our contemporaries are reconnecting with practices dating from the first Christians, which were gradually abandoned by ecclesial institutions. With the difference that “the imperative of meaning is today turned towards the individual and no longer towards the community”.
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Spiritual retreat, not necessarily easy – Christians of the world – Journal Chrétien