A Year of Pandemic
by Justine Johnson of Kirkridge Retreat and Study Center
It feels odd to think of the last year as just that: 365 days of the earth rotating. In this past year, I have said to many communities through the Zoomiverse that it’s felt like 48 years since we gathered people at Kirkridge, and yet, in a snap of the fingers, here we are, a year into the world as we know it.
This year has grown us in many ways, some painful, and some that became opportunities to deepen our commitments to our values and our communities. Ben and I gathered a couple stories from this year that remind us of the unique value of retreat centers in a pandemic.
A collection of retreat centers were highlighted in a Fetzer Institute video we shared last fall. The video identifies how we’ve responded to these turbulent times. As Marnie Jackson from Whidbey Institute says, “we've been jarred out of our habitual ways of gathering and if we don't rebuild new ways of gathering and new ways of moving forward, we lose the potential for there to be positive outcomes from this crisis.”
During an RCC community call in May of 2020, Michael Shewburg shared with us the work Five Oaks Retreat Centre in Ontario, Canada, was doing to support migrant workers who needed a place to quarantine before beginning work in the nearby fields. Listen to this podcast on Contagious Hope as he shares his reflection on pivoting during a pandemic.
Mark Piper of Cenacle Retreat & Conference Center in Chicago shared an update in the National Catholic Reporter about the Retreat Center Collaboration connecting across centers, missing our guests, and gathering “in anxious solidarity, praying this long goodbye.”
Hollyhock created a short documentary, There’s Always Growth, directed by Bill Weaver, to tell the story of their experience during the pandemic. Program director Ling Lo felt “so much grief of letting go of every single program. Every single program was a little dream.” As the realities of 2020 became more clear, Ling found that her “understanding now of resilience is a lot more fluid, a lot more flexible. It’s being able to ebb and flow through ever-changing conditions.”
Ben Scott-Brandt, program manager for the Retreat Center Collaboration, reflected on the pandemic year in a blog post for Commonweal. “After the scramble of the early days of the pandemic, I’ve found a greater capacity in myself to sit with the questions. Questions of land, justice, healing, transformation, spirit, community, identity, and collaboration are woven into each of our conversations.”
Since the onset of the pandemic, we’ve held 30+ community calls and grown our collaboration to include 125+ retreat centers and 20+ allied organizations.
Here’s a screen-grab of the RCC Steering Committee, on virtual retreat in the middle of the pandemic last August, holding up the symbolic threads that weave our work and communities together, across the physical distance.
We’ll keep updating this “year in reflection” post with snippets of stories of retreat centers through North America. Have a story to contribute? Please share with us at retreat.center.collaboration@gmail.com.