Keeping the Seventh Day

by Chris Koellhoffer, IHM   August 17, 2025

When I’m away for retreat ministry, I love to take in the neighborhood surrounding a retreat center. Fortunately for me, many of the places where I serve as a guest director during spring and summer months are near the ocean. As a “Jersey Girl,” this nearness to the sea always feels like a homecoming of sorts, and a revisiting of the many weeks my family spent soaking up sun and surf every summer. Once I cross a bridge, smell the sea air, and listen to the cry of the gulls, I’m home.

Being in the neighborhood of the Atlantic Ocean invites reflection on how the landscapes of our early lives, our formative years, shape us and create a sense of home and the familiar. For me, it’s the sound of the surf; for others, the majesty of a mountain range or the stillness and hidden life of a desert, or a campground surrounded by forest and lakes, or a lush tropical paradise. These sacred natural places offer us renewal and a chance to restore our souls.

While walking in the neighborhood that surrounds the retreat center here in Stone Harbor, I noticed a sign over the front door of a condo. I smiled as I read “The Seventh Day.” I’m wondering if the seventh day might be a reference to the Genesis story, where God enters into the divine labor of both imagining and then creating shapes and forms: flowing bodies of water and the creatures that spend their lives in them; birds who move effortlessly through the air; the brilliance of a night sky filled with stars; solid ground, flat or mountainous, sandy or clay or limestone; every finned and furry and feathered animal; and finally, the human family walking on two feet. Then I picture the Holy One doing what many an artist, poet, sculptor, composer does: resting a bit, savoring what has been created, entering into a very long gaze, and then saying, “Oh, wow! This is really good!”

Perhaps we’ve experienced the inevitable consequence of returning home after vacation or retreat. After being immersed in the Wow! of creation for a few days, a week, or even longer, the challenge, as we pack up to head home becomes this: how to hold the peace and the beauty and the slower pace that offered us time to tend to body and soul now that we’re heading back to “the rest of our lives.”

In “Don’t Come Back Soon,” one of his posts for Unfolding Light excerpted here, Steve Garnaas-Holmes wondered about exactly this as he prepared to head home from a break.

He writes, “Back from a week in a cabin on the coast of Maine.  I’m all slowed down.  The thing now is not to jump back up into fifth gear and start hurrying and fretting and multitasking and plowing all night long.  Don’t come back from vacation and fill up with stuff.  Stay a little vacant.  Keep the empty place.  Stay slow.  Keep paying attention, keep being deeply present.

The thing as I rise from prayer is to stay in prayer. The purpose of prayer, or vacation, or sabbath, or sleep, is not just to come up for air so you can go back into the fray but also to slow yourself down so what you go back into isn’t a fray….

Go on vacation, or into prayer, or on sabbath, early and often.  Go there now.  And don’t come back soon.”

Thank you, Steve, for your reminder to hold on to the peace we have taken in. May our re-entry after any time away be gentle. May we keep in our hearts glimpses of beauty and remembrances of the community we find in the natural world. May we discover and practice ways to abide there for a very long time.

Takeaway

Sit in stillness with the Holy One.
If you’ve returned from time away, pause and reflect on how your re-entry process has been going.
If you’re about to depart for retreat or vacation, pause and be aware of what you might be bringing home with you.
If you have no upcoming travel or trips on your calendar, pause and practice already now an awareness of the natural world around you.
Name for the Holy One what you most appreciate in the created world.
Give thanks for the loveliness of God’s creation.

Featured Images:  Jaime Dantas, Unsplash; Jon Tyson, Unsplash

NOTE:
Thank you for your prayer for all who are part of a directed retreat at Villa Maria by the Sea Retreat Center in Stone Harbor, New Jersey, still going on as I write. The retreat concludes on Monday and I’m continually grateful for the many ways you support me and my mobile spirituality ministry.

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