On Retreat
May 10th 2008 07:51
I’ve just been on a Retreat at a place called Karitane. We were only away from Friday evening till four this afternoon; long enough, and well worth doing.
Karitane is the birthplace of the Plunket movement. Before Sir Truby King, the founder of the Plunket movement, opened his first hospital, here in Dunedin, in December 1907, he cared for 13 sick, emaciated babies at his own home, a cottage in Karitane. (The Plunket movement is a New Zealand institution: babies have been well cared for, monitored and generally kept in good health as a result of it for around a hundred years.)
I don’t know whether the place we’ve just stayed in was the ‘cottage’ but it was certainly another home that was used for mothers and their unwell babies. I certainly wouldn’t call it a cottage: it’s a long building with some nine or ten rooms all in a row. Originally some of these rooms were actually two rooms – they’ve been opened up to cater for visitors like us. Parallel with the rooms is an equally long closed-in verandah, full of large windows so that heaps of light gets in. Through these windows you get a view of the bay at Karitane – it’s like a second beach next to the main one.
And the beach is accessible from the building. You go down a fairly steep path full of ruts and dips, and come to several steps lopped out of the side of the coastline. These are fairly treacherous too, but negotiable.
And there is the beach: a wonderful rock-strewn piece of coastline, with white sand, pebbles and stones, seaweed tossed about, a strange tall rock like a miniature lighthouse, and a great feeling of openness. I spent the first part of my retreat this morning down there, delighting in God’s creation, talking to Him, and listening to what he had to say to me.
I took a couple of books with me on the retreat, but didn’t get near either of them. Not that we were pressed to be doing things all the time. There was just no need to distract myself with books other than the Bible, or my notebook.
A great time away. Need to do it more often!
Karitane, but on a rather dull-looking day
Karitane is the birthplace of the Plunket movement. Before Sir Truby King, the founder of the Plunket movement, opened his first hospital, here in Dunedin, in December 1907, he cared for 13 sick, emaciated babies at his own home, a cottage in Karitane. (The Plunket movement is a New Zealand institution: babies have been well cared for, monitored and generally kept in good health as a result of it for around a hundred years.)
I don’t know whether the place we’ve just stayed in was the ‘cottage’ but it was certainly another home that was used for mothers and their unwell babies. I certainly wouldn’t call it a cottage: it’s a long building with some nine or ten rooms all in a row. Originally some of these rooms were actually two rooms – they’ve been opened up to cater for visitors like us. Parallel with the rooms is an equally long closed-in verandah, full of large windows so that heaps of light gets in. Through these windows you get a view of the bay at Karitane – it’s like a second beach next to the main one.
And the beach is accessible from the building. You go down a fairly steep path full of ruts and dips, and come to several steps lopped out of the side of the coastline. These are fairly treacherous too, but negotiable.
And there is the beach: a wonderful rock-strewn piece of coastline, with white sand, pebbles and stones, seaweed tossed about, a strange tall rock like a miniature lighthouse, and a great feeling of openness. I spent the first part of my retreat this morning down there, delighting in God’s creation, talking to Him, and listening to what he had to say to me.
I took a couple of books with me on the retreat, but didn’t get near either of them. Not that we were pressed to be doing things all the time. There was just no need to distract myself with books other than the Bible, or my notebook.
A great time away. Need to do it more often!
An archive photo of Plunket nurses holding babies - this doesn't look like the building we've been in, although it's similar in style
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