My friend, Anonymous, is probably going to make some comment as this weekend I am going on retreat again. But its not a YFC retreat this time.

With SEITE training we have 7 weekends away each year, and one of those weekends is the course retreat which happens to be in silence from Compline Friday to Compline on Saturday.

I have no problem with silence, in fact I enjoy it, although I do think it is alien at meal times and you only need to look at someone slightly differently to produce a smile and stifled giggles. Indeed I am going to wear my new purple hoody with hood up so I can make no eye contact and can fulfill my duty to eat silently.

I am currently reading Finding Sanctuary by Abbot Christopher of The Monastery fame, as this is the book that the Moot community are reading at the moment. Interestingly in one of the chapters the Abbot asks the question ‘how long should you be silent to start with’. His answer is not 24 hours … but a very surprising 5 minutes!!! He does then go on the say that to achieve this 5 minutes will probably take around 15 but even so, I can’t help but think 24 hours is too long to move to from nothing.

My group is on worship duty so each of us has prepared a worship slot for the weekend. I get to do evening prayer tomorrow just after dinner and so have prepared a track and brief meditation to get us thinking about who we are and preparing ourselves for silence.

So a weekend of quiet is ahead … I feel even more guilty hat usual about leaving Sarah and the children. The Church of England … working at keeping families together!