Retreatant - A Photo Essay (Part 1)

Images and thoughts about going on retreat

I’ve been on retreat over the last week. Hence no notes or posts or even interaction with those who have kindly liked, followed or subscribed over the past few days (sorry about that but heartfelt thanks!). Part of going on retreat is recharging your batteries and part of that is switching off social media and giving your brain and your spirit some room to restore themselves and do their respective things. So that’s what I did.

This is a ‘Part 1’ post because I only arrived back yesterday afternoon and I haven’t had time to properly review my images or indeed fully collect my thoughts. So there will be a ‘Part 2’ when that has happened over the next few days.

The retreat was held at the Monastery of the Community of the Resurrection (CR) in Mirfield, West Yorkshire (UK). The Community is Christian and the monks - or brothers - live their lives guided by the Rule of St Benedict. I was on retreat with some members of the Church of England church that I attend, The Church of Our Lady St Mary in South Creake, Norfolk (UK), led by our Rector, Fr Clive Wylie SCP.

CR was warm, welcoming and homely; still, quiet, peaceful, prayerful and spiritually engaging, not to say challenging. Yet absolutely down to earth - no airs, no graces, just a community of devout and committed brothers doing exactly what they were set on earth to do.

I’ll offer more of my thinking about Mirfield and our retreat in ‘Part 2’ of this post, and many more images to fully build the story, but for now I thought I’d leave you with some initial images from the week (Fujifilm X100F / Provia Standard film simulation).

I do hope you enjoy these photos and that they encourage you to tune in to my next post, which will give a fuller story of my time with CR at Mirfield.

Please do comment if you wish and/or maybe take a moment to share my post or subscribe using the buttons below. Thank you as always for reading.