The Chaplain’s Office and the Health and Wellness Center will offer a co-ed Soul Care retreat this weekend, April 10-12, at St. Augustine’s House, a Lutheran Benedictine monastery in Oxford, Michigan.
“It’s designed to give busy Hillsdale students a change to slow down and rest with Jesus,” Rick said.
Retreatants will spend two nights and one full day at St. Augustine’s, entering into the rhythm of the monks who live there. The retreat costs $30 per student and has a limited number of spaces available, as the group from Hillsdale cannot exceed the number of residents at St. Augustine’s (around seven). Though signups for this semester’s retreat closed April 8, interested individuals can RSVP for future retreats by emailing college chaplain Adam Rick.
The retreat offers valuable quiet time amidst the noise of term papers and assignments, according to Rick, who will accompany students to St. Augustine’s House.
Rick said the Chaplain’s Office has offered semesterly retreats to St. Augustine’s in cooperation with Brock Lutz, director of Health Services, for more than a decade. Lutz usually accompanies Rick and the retreatants, though he will not be attending this semester.
“I first learned of the house when I came to campus in 2016 from Brock, who had been there before,” Rick said. “It’s peaceful, cheap, and at this point Hillsdale students are well known by the house and are welcomed there.”
Junior Lexi Travis has gone on three Soul Care retreats and said they offer both personal time and communal interaction with the other students and the residents of St. Augustine’s.
“For breakfast and lunch, you eat in silence, but at lunch they play an audiobook. At dinner, everybody talks, so there is that communal aspect,” Travis said. “You’re all praying together, so it’s not isolating, if that makes sense, but there is a lot of time for you just to think, or take a walk, or read, or journal.”
Travis encouraged students to take advantage of the retreat, emphasizing the importance of finding peace amidst the rush of the spring semester.
“I think that life is very busy here, and people have a lot going on, and I think it can be kind of uncomfortable to pause on that and see what’s going on in your heart and soul. But I think that’s a good thing to do,” she said.
Travis’ advice to those attending is not to overpack and thereby turn “the retreat into another to-do list item.”
“My encouragement would be that if you’re bringing three books and all your reading supplies and all your letter-writing stuff, pick one, and leave space to think and pray,” Travis said.
