 In 1998, while I was serving my first parish out in west Texas, I found out the nearest retreat center was about ninety miles away. I had no internet search to prepare me, no reviews to read, and no real idea what I was walking into. So one day I simply got in the car, drove down there, and walked through the door without an appointment.
The place was Christ the King Retreat Center in San Angelo. They gave me a tour, introduced me to a few staff members, fed me lunch in the dining hall, and sent me home that afternoon with an appointment for the following month — my first meeting with a spiritual director, along with plans to stay for two days. Before long, it became a monthly rhythm. After a while, the director there, Fr. Andy, told me about some Carmelite hermits living a few miles farther out. So I did what apparently had become my method for spiritual exploration: I drove over unannounced, rang the bell, sat down, and waited. Eventually a brother appeared. I did not actually say, “Take me to your leader,” though I admit the line crossed my mind. After we talked for a bit, he went and got the abbot, and the two of us visited for a while in the guest area. From then on, I would stay at the retreat center for lodging and direction, then stop by the hermitage on my way home to say hello. Eventually I asked about making a retreat with them. Instead of putting me in the guesthouse with everyone else, they brought me inside the enclosure and gave me a hermitage of my own — same as theirs. I lived their horarium. I went back for a week every year I was out there. I got to know them well. My Lutheran church treasurer, meanwhile, was not nearly as impressed. Every time I turned in mileage and expenses for the retreat center and the monastery, she would raise an eyebrow and make her objection plain. “We’re Lutherans,” she’dsay. “We don’t do retreats. That’s Catholic.” What Jesus Did With Solitude In one sense, she had a point. This practice did not grow out of Lutheran soil. It comes to us largely through monastic orders and older traditions of ascetic discipline, and the Reformers had real, careful arguments with those traditions — especially when withdrawal from ordinary life was treated as a higher calling, or when spiritual disciplines were made to sound like ways of earning grace. Those concerns still matter. We do not need to smooth them over or pretend they were minor. But retreat itself — quiet, deliberate withdrawal for the sake of prayer — didn’t start with monasticism. It started with Jesus. “And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.” — Mark 1:35 Luke says much the same thing: Jesus “would withdraw to desolate places and pray” (Luke 5:16). This wasn’t occasional. It was a pattern — mountains, gardens, wilderness, repeated throughout his ministry. If Jesus, who lived in perfect and sinless communion with the Father, still made room to withdraw and pray, then surely the rest of us should be slow to dismiss the practice. Answering the Treasurer So my answer to her — and to any Lutheran reader who feels the same hesitation — is this: the problem was never quietitself. The question is what we think quiet is for. Prayer is not a good work by which we earn God’s favor or prove our seriousness. Luther is blunt about this in the Small Catechism — prayer is simply talking to God as dear children talk to a dear Father. God speaks first, through his Word. Prayer is our response to that, not a transaction that buys us anything. A retreat simply gives that response room to breathe. It gives us space to look at our lives honestly under God’s Law — to stop managing the story we tell ourselves about ourselves — and then to let the Gospel land again as good news, not just familiar words we have heard so often that they have become background noise. None of this means daily life is spiritually inferior, or that the hermits had something figured out that ordinary parishioners do not. God calls people to serve him as parents, spouses, workers, and neighbors. Those vocations are not distractions from the Christian life; they are the places where much of the Christian life is lived. You do not step back from them because they are beneath prayer. You step back so you can return to them without running on fumes. And a personal retreat is never a substitute for the gathered Church around Word and Sacrament. Whatever happened in that hermitage stayed accountable to what happened the following Sunday — Jesus’s promises are anchored to the Divine Service, to preaching, to absolution, to the Supper, delivered through his called servants, not to whatever I worked out on my own in the desert. The fitting end of any retreat is showing back up to receive those gifts alongside everyone else. When a Retreat Is Worth Taking You do not need to be in crisis to take a retreat. But some seasons make it especially worth the trouble: a major change in vocation — a new job, a move, a marriage, a birth, retirement. A decision Scripture does not answer directly, where you need to sit with it under the Word instead of waiting for a private inner voice to settle it for you. Plain exhaustion after a hard season, the kind Jesus had in mind when he said, “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matthew 11:28). The weight of a sin you have been carrying quietly, when you need space to pray Psalm 51 instead of skimming past it. Or maybe nothing more dramatic than wanting real time in Scripture without your phone within reach. How Long, and Where Every time I made the drive to the hermitage, it took roughly a day for my mind to catch up with my body. The first several hours were usually restless — bored, half-anxious, still running the parish in my head. That is normal. It is what unwinding sounds like. The Carmelites did not fill my time with a schedule of activities. They gave me a cell, folded me into their horarium, and let the discomfort run its course, because they knew the second day was often where the real quiet began. You do not need a hermitage for that. But if your schedule allows two nights somewhere — a cabin, a retreat center, a church camp — take them if you can. The first day often empties you out. The second day is when you may finally bepresent. If two nights isn’t realistic, scale down and it still works. A half day, three or four hours, at a park or a quiet library room. A full day off, spent at a state park or an empty sanctuary or a bench by water. What to Bring Keep it simple. Bring a physical Bible, so you are not reading Scripture on the same device that buzzes with everything else. Bring the Psalms. Bring Luther’s Small Catechism, especially for meditating on the Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer. A hymnal with the daily offices — Matins, Vespers, Compline — is helpful. So is a notebook. If you want a companion voice, bring something like Luther’s A Simple Way to Pray, Gerhard’s Sacred Meditations, or a serious spiritual author you trust. How to Spend the Time Do not over-schedule the time. Let the day move gently between Word, prayer, and rest. Luther wrote A Simple Way to Pray as a letter to his barber, Peter Beskendorf, who’d asked him how to pray well. His method takes a single text — a Commandment, a line of the Lord’s Prayer — and works it four ways: what is this teaching me, what can I thank God for in it, what does it show me I need to confess, what can I ask for on the strength of it. It’s simple enough to use on a walk. Use the daily office if your hymnal has one — Matins in the morning, a midday prayer, Vespers in the evening, Compline before bed. Get outside if you can. Take a long walk. Pray the Psalms out loud if no one is nearby. And if you arrive exhausted, sleep. Rest is not a failure to be spiritual enough to stay awake. It is a gift (Psalm 127:2), and often it is the first thing that has to happen before anything else does. A full day might run something like: Matins and a passage worked through with Luther’s method in the morning; a long walk with the Psalms at midday; free reading, journaling, and a nap in the afternoon; Vespers and a last round of thanksgiving in the evening; Compline before sleep. Treat it as a shape, not a checklist. Coming Back I do not visit that hermitage anymore. I moved on from that parish years ago, and the annual week is now something I remember more than something I do. But the pattern it taught me has stayed: step away, get emptied out, let the Word and the silence do their work, and then go home a little more ready to love and serve the people actually placed in front of you. That is what a retreat is for. Not proving your devotion. Not climbing some spiritual ladder. Not becoming the sort of Christian who needs a hermitage in order to be taken seriously. Just quiet enough, and long enough, to let God’s Law show you what you actually need and his Gospel meet you there — and then the drive home, back to your spouse and kids, your work, your neighbors, and the pew where the treasurer is still keeping an eye on your mileage receipts. And somehow, even then, the whole thing keeps being worth it. “For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: ‘In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and in trust shall be your strength.’“ — Isaiah 30:15 Rev. Dr. Steve Stutz Ordained Lutheran Pastor · Intentional Interim Minister · Certified Spiritual Director La Porte, Texas · Houston Area [Contact] · [LinkedIn] · [The Marginal Note on Substack] The Marginal Note — Theology for people who are still paying attention. Free monthly newsletter. Subscribe at Substack. ©2026 Steve Stutz. All rights reserved. Brief quotes welcome with attribution; full reprints require permission. Details at https://www.stevestutz.com (bottom of page)
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