Staff on Retreat

One of the strange things about working in a Catholic school is their strange sense of "spirituality" and religion. I have managed in the most part to deal with it, having learned fairly quickly the correct way to cross myself, and stopping myself from cringing each time, in the interests of political correctness, and in an endeavour to show support to more feminist sort of issues, they say "In the name of the Creator", instead of "In the name of the Father". I can sort of adapt to all these strange things, even the fact that as the teacher I have to greet every class with "Good morning ____ (e.g. Yr 8) and may God bless you". But I simply can not grasp the concept of the 'retreat'.

My idea of a 'retreat' would be to go on some sort of Bible camp or something, you know, a weekend away where you spend time praying, singing worship songs, reading the Bible, and talking deeply and meaningfully about your faith with others who are like-minded. And I enjoyed quite a lot of that sort of experience when growing up. But that is not what a Catholic retreat is. No sir-ee.

Instead, you go off for a day of whishy-washy faffiness. Where you skirt about the true issues of what it means to be a Christian, and just look at what it means to be vaguely 'spiritual' instead. Its a pile of bollocks, I can assure you.

So today, imagine my great joy and delight (sarcasm dripping there, can't you hear it) at the concept of spending a full day on "Staff Retreat". Poking my eyes out with a knitting needle would be much more enjoyable.

Or so I thought. Fortunately today we got to choose which workshops we endured, and luckily, I got my choices in quickly, which meant that I actually got those choices. So, for my first workshop, I went on a tour of the Mercy Heritage Centre, which is a Catholic Museum attached to the school, and for the second workshop, I was on "Finding God in the Cinema" which was about finding 'spiritual' moments in movies. This basically meant that we got to watch a load of movie clips and then 'discuss' them. Not a bad one, actually.

So on the whole, although I still feel like poking my eyes out at the thought of "Staff Retreat", it wasn't so bad today... but slightly surreal...