In general, the word “retreat” means, “an act of moving back or withdrawing”. However, “retreat” is also the name given to a gathering of people who have sought peace and solitary away from the rest of the world. So why should anyone, in general, bother to go on a retreat? Well, there are many different reasons as to why one might want to go on a retreat. Perhaps they wish to pray for hours, and come closer to God. Perhaps the stress of their daily life is too much, and they need to have a moment of quiet. A person might want to ponder a problem, or solve a puzzle. Maybe it a little bit of everything, and one is simply seeking to enjoy themselves away from everything else going on.

At St. Philip, I believe we implement retreats for all of those reason, and more, combined. Though the classroom is a great place of learning, there is a type of learning that cannot be taught there. There is a knowledge that can only be gleaned outside, with the people you’ve come to know. Our retreats are meant to bring us closer to God, and to each other. They are meant to give our academic brains a break, and allow for our emotional sides to take charge. They are to teach us about who we are, and about what we would strive to become. In school retreats, I feel as though there is a give-and-take situation. Though the activities we perform might not always be considered to be the most entertaining task, we need to look past the surface to see the deeper meaning. For instance, on the most recent retreat that the 8th grade attended, the students were asked to draw 2 timelines; one of their lives up to that date, and one of their lives to come in the next ten years. Though this activity was presumably meant to persuade the students to reminiscence on their past, and prompt them to think about what they would like to accomplish in the future, I feel as though there was also an underlying theme here. I think this was also a prompt to think. I’m not sure if this only pertains to me, but after and during the activity, I thought about my life. I began to think of how things could change in such a little amount of time, and uncertain I was of the future. This activity helped me explore the feeling I’d had throughout my life and about the future, and this wasn’t even the outright meaning behind the activity.

So, in a way, I suppose I’ve partially answered my original question again. We go on retreats to go deeper than we sometimes allow ourselves to be, to think. I find that in the hustle of  everyday, with everything going on in my student and personal life, I forget to really think. Not reason, but just wonder and ponder and explore all the inner corners of my mind. Retreats take us away from the hustle so that we may achieve such a goal as thinking. Of course, retreats also bring on a number of different things besides thinking, and I find all of them to be beneficiary. We have to remember that life is not all about work, or play, or any of that; sometimes, one simply needs to disconnect for a moment, to review themselves and their lives, and refresh themselves.