Clearly I am back from retreat. It was an excellent time – so excellent in fact that I do not know where to start in writing about it.

Over the three days we looked at the story of The Prodigal Son and used bits from Henri Nouwens ‘The return of the Prodigal’ which was written as he meditated on the painting of the same name by Rembrandt.

I gained so much from the three days which I think I am going to share over the next few days on this page. For today, though, I want to just give you a taster. The Marist Centre itself was set in really beautiful countryside. The village has a few houses, a school, the centre and a pub (which itself was a great place to be).

I love visiting catholic places as they always generate some form of reaction within me. Each room had a crucifix with Jesus on it. At one time I had a burning desire to sneak around at night and remove all the figurines and replace them with banners saying ‘He is Risen!’. Of course I didn’t!! Elsewhere there were lots of Mary ‘things’. The mission statement included the words ‘with Mary as our example’ which I wanted to change to Jesus.

All of this though, challenges my ‘evangelical-ness’ and that is why I love it so much. Places like this force me to consider the stuff that we have basically kicked aside in our churches for fear of being labeled ‘dodgy’. Take Mary for example; I do not believe we need to pray to her as some do, but we have certainly denied her the attention she surely deserves. Out of all the women in Nazareth, God chose her to be the mother of his son. That’s a pretty amazing thing and surely puts her up there with Moses, Isaiah and the rest of them. But although we would regularly look at those other characters we rarely look at Mary.

So – being at a catholic retreat centre really forces me to look at my faith afresh and, I think, in a more complete way.

The place itself was great too – I particularly loved the chapel which I hope you can experience just a little from the pic.