Good day Tomáš and Lenka,
thank you for the way you looked after me 🙂
It’s been two months now since the end of my retreat. So I’ve had plenty of time to think and absorb the experience. My experience of the dark retreat will most likely, like everyone else’s, be quite different and personal. So then…
I announced the dark retreat to my family
About eight months ago, after a year, I decided that I would fulfil a kind of dream and go on a dark retreat for a week. When I said at home that I had really booked a date, they were very surprised; until then I had only talked about it. Questions and various ideas came from them and from me too – how would I eat there, how would I shower, that I wouldn’t be able to read there :).
Over the following six months a few people asked me what I was going to do there for such a long time. I replied that I would think, enjoy the peace and the time. Sometimes they asked me what the point of it was. I didn’t really know; I only knew it would be something extraordinary that a person doesn’t just experience every day. As the date of the retreat approached, the questions mounted up about whether I was looking forward to it and whether I was nervous. I didn’t really understand that, because I wasn’t thinking about it; I was letting it take its course, so that I wouldn’t end up disappointed. But while I was waiting for the date of the dark retreat, my life changed quite a lot. Three months before the start I experienced circumstances that brought me to faith in Jesus Christ. I became a Christian. During the three months that followed I made many changes in my life that I had been planning to make after the retreat. After 5 years I stopped smoking cigarettes, smoking marijuana, drinking alcohol. I had been doing that literally every day. I found responsibility for my life and above all for my decisions. For a person has it very good: they can choose, but they then also have to bear responsibility for how they decided. My life, and in fact my thinking about life and my perception, changed. Every morning I woke up became a gift from God, and every moment a chance to decide to be closer to God or to separate myself from him. It wasn’t easy at first; sometimes I felt the urge to have a cigarette and get drunk.. in the end everything led to a realisation, a great realisation of what I truly, inwardly need, and not what I supposedly want.
Time passed and I suddenly found myself a few days before the start of the retreat; I hadn’t even properly realised it, because of how my life had changed it had gone by really fast. I talked about the retreat with a female friend who had told me about faith, and thanks to her inspiring story, which is really powerful – I won’t write it here, but if I could, it would be better than what I’m writing here now; it would probably make half of you reading this cry and lead the other half to a real change of values in life. She told me that this is not a path a Christian should take. I thought about it and it occurred to me that I would experience repentance there. Moments in which a person becomes aware of their sins (acts against God) and confesses them to God, because what is said and truthfully confessed can be forgiven. So it occurred to me that it would be a good opportunity to turn away from sin and turn towards God.
When I was on the way with my parents, we stopped off in Kutná Hora to walk around the town and enjoy a bit of its beauty. We arrived in the town and an “old” acquaintance (70 years old) was texting me; we had met when I needed help with treating atopic eczema, and he helped me and my family a lot. He’s a Catholic Christian and we’ve known each other for about 3 years. For those two years I somehow hadn’t taken much notice of his faith, but I’ve understood a lot since. At the start of our meetings that gentleman helped me a lot; through prayers and herbal teas the eczema on my face disappeared within a month, and so I then felt much better among people. He was texting to ask whether I was at home, as he’d like to drop by; I wrote back where I was and where I was going, and he immediately bombarded me with information that it wasn’t a good idea, that it wasn’t the path for a Christian. I was a bit taken aback by it; I had the chance to choose, and information was reaching me that suggested I shouldn’t go there.
My decision was that I would go there and that I would stay there right to the end. I didn’t tell my parents anything about what my believing friends had told me; Dad didn’t even know I believed. When we arrived I was pleasantly surprised by the setting and the atmosphere. One little gem was that 3 Tomášes met there – 2 for the retreat, 1 who lives there permanently :). I went into the dark a few minutes later than I could have.
The dark retreat gathered strength after lights out
When I switched off the light, it finally gathered that strength. Everything I had decided on was suddenly there. For the first two hours I had the feeling I wouldn’t fall asleep. I sat on the bed and enjoyed it. But then I told myself I’d have plenty of time, so I tried sleep as well. I don’t know how long I slept, but it was pleasant. When I woke up it was no longer the way it had been right at the start. It was strange. During the first few days I ate everything I had brought with me, and I always really looked forward to the food they brought me. It was delicious.. My experience of the darkness was that day by day I sank deeper and deeper into my thoughts, my thought processes, my behaviour and attitude to life; day by day it filled my space.. it wasn’t particularly pleasant for me…my old life kept coming back to me; over those five years I had drunk a fair amount and had many experiences, mostly pretty crazy but joyful ones… I was weighed down by what I had left behind… every day it got to me more, until I was really immersed in it.. somewhere around the middle of my retreat, I think it was Wednesday, I was falling asleep while praying to God to give me some sign, some revelation in a dream; I prayed quite heartily until I fell asleep… suddenly I was dressed in sports clothes, holding a floorball stick in my hand with my indoor shoes hanging from it, and I was standing in front of the sports hall we have next to the halls of residence… I was waiting for floorball to start… it began to rain.. out of nowhere a beautiful sound began to resound everywhere; it was a sound that warmed my heart so much that my whole body was brought into a tingling, soothing warmth; the rain turned to snow .. I threw the floorball stick away and ran after the sound; it was something like an organ but far more powerful and more beautiful.. I immediately ran up to a large temple that resembled a church; there were big wooden doors, which I opened, and I saw crowds of people, standing in a queue and slowly shuffling towards a big wooden table where about 6 old ladies were sitting.. after watching for a while I saw that people were walking away from them with a plate of soup… it seemed strange to me, I had thought there would be some concert or something… I joined the queue and moved forward… I looked around a lot at the walls and so on, until finally there was no one in front of me, just the table and the old ladies… when I took the last few steps I saw that the old lady who had been serving the food had already taken a plate herself and was ready to eat, but as I stepped up and she noticed me, she immediately pushed the plate towards me so that I could have her portion… I knelt down beside her and told her I wanted to ask her something… ,, Are all these people here for the food? ” .. she replied: ,,Not only for the food, but above all for salvation…” it filled me with peace, now I knew… so I hugged her and told her she was doing her work very well..
When I thought about that dream and told it to someone, I realised the many meanings that the memory of that dream holds for me.. The fact that a person believes in Jesus Christ as saviour is an important milestone for them, from their old life to a new life in which they surrender their life to God and turn away from their own desires towards what God would need them to do, so that they use their qualities as he wishes… and it isn’t just so that a person feels good and is nourished by that, but above all so that a person comes to salvation..
The dark retreat is my responsibility
From that moment I felt a bit better, and I was already looking forward to the end… to sum up, I bore the responsibility for having gone into the dark; with hindsight I can honestly say that it isn’t exactly the right path for a Christian, even though I came to certain realisations there… I was weighed down there by my past, and I felt very strongly that however good a person thinks they are, before God we are all sinners; we shouldn’t stagnate, there is always something to improve and there always will be… but after a week like that an incredible view of the “darkness outside” was waiting for me; I got up about half an hour earlier than planned and gazed at the moonlit landscape while eating a very good, sugary-ripe pear; the colours, the smells, everything was perfect, and after a week I’d had a rest from my own head… that was a great relief
The next few days were quite hard for me, because that friend and I stopped speaking… over the following few weeks I went through great pain and separation … during which, after a quarter of a year, in a single day I smoked a packet, drank about 10 beers and had a joint – to tell you the truth, it didn’t help; all the worse was my personal disappointment at my decisions
I then promised myself that I would never smoke cigarettes or weed again, and that I wouldn’t drink for a year, dated from 12 June 2016, so as to live a year in faith and strengthen my relationship with God, and whether I drink after that or not I’ll decide then.
Two months have passed since the end of the dark retreat and my faith keeps growing stronger; but what I’d also like to write to you is that that young lady and I would like to get married; we very much wish to be together for the whole of our lives, and slowly but surely it is coming true for us, even though it’s such an incredibly tense and uncertain path that it leads to a lot of reflection, decision-making and realisation, to a great change of heart… we really love each other very much, but we’re not even going out together yet; we’re giving ourselves plenty of time; first it’s important to become firm in faith, to put God in first place, then we’ll see whether we’ll be together, whether it’s meant to be; I very much hope so, because we suit each other, and God willing, a few months after the new year we could already be going out together; it will be a year since I came to believe… perhaps it seems strange to you; it seemed that way to me too, but with each day I understand it more and more: God exists, and when you surrender your life to him, he’ll help you achieve what you truly need
Take care
best wishes, Tomáš ( 20 ) 🙂
God be with you
