Invitation to Retreat Quotes

“If the churches came to understand that the greatest threat to faith today is not hedonism but distraction, perhaps they might begin to appeal to a frazzled digital generation. Christian leaders seem to think that they need more distraction to counter the distraction. Their services have degenerated into emotional spasms, their spaces drowned with light and noise and locked shut throughout the day, when their darkness and silence might actually draw those whose minds and souls have grown web-weary.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“Relinquishment is a synonym of surrender, and it is what David is talking about in Psalm 46:10 when he says, “Be still [literally, let go of your grip], and know [experiential, full-body knowing] that I am God.” Another way to say this might be “Let go of your grip and experience letting God be God in your life.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“Henri Nouwen reflects on this in his book Reaching Out. In his early quest for an authentic spirituality, he observed in himself a frenetic chasing after answers from external sources, resulting in an unsustainable pace of life. He finally concludes, “Maybe my own deep-rooted fear of being on my own and alone kept me going from person to person, book to book, and school to school, anxiously avoiding the pain of accepting responsibility for my own life.” On retreat we stop avoiding the pain of the disconnect between our deepest desires and the way we”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“Many of us have no idea how addicted we are to human striving, hard work, and performance-oriented drivenness until we actually stop. This may be one of the most shocking realities we face while on retreat: There is a direct correlation between the discomfort we feel when we cease our relentless human striving and our addiction to activity and achievement as a way of staving off feelings of inner emptiness. In fact, we could almost predict that those who are most uncomfortable with the nonactivity of retreat are probably most addicted to activity as a way of avoiding inner emptiness and shoring up their sense of self with external accomplishments. To say no to our compulsive doing is uncomfortable in the short term, but relinquishment is the invitation.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“We aren’t rest-filled people who occasionally become restless; we’re restless people who sometimes find rest. HENRI NOUWEN”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“I was not born into a world relatively unaffected by technology like you were. Rather, I was thrust into a world that had already succumbed to its disastrous effects! I have heard it said that the Internet was going to make the world a smaller place, and indeed it has. It has reduced the world from seven billion to just one! Just you, hiding behind your screen, interacting with others hiding behind theirs. The days of legitimate human interaction have been forever tainted by social media. The schedules of our workdays have been compressed tighter by the interventions of e-mails and cellphones. Our lives have been faker and faker, busier and busier and we have yet to realize that within, we are broken, weary and”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“of reflection, or calm or spirituality. “Multitasking” was a mirage. This was a zero-sum question. I either lived as a voice online or I lived as a human being in the world that humans have lived in since the beginning of time. And so I decided, after 15 years, to live in reality. And so he “quit the web,” throwing his life and his career up in the air.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“began to realize, as my health and happiness deteriorated, that this was not a both-and kind of situation. It was either-or. Every hour I spent online was not spent in the physical world. Every minute I was engrossed in a virtual interaction I was not involved in a human encounter. Every second absorbed in some sort of trivia was a second less for any form”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God

“At some point in our Christian life, many of us realize no one ever told us how to deal with our wounds that are still there—buried deeper than ever—but still there.”
― Ruth Haley Barton, Invitation to Retreat: The Gift and Necessity of Time Away with God