The following is the message I delivered at Quaker Meeting this morning:
So I was talking with my friend Rafi, who is a practicing Buddhist, about the recent month-long silent retreat he just came back from. I asked Rafi how it went. He replied that it was great but that he wished that he had just two weeks more. And he meant it. He felt that six weeks was just enough time to process what he wanted to work through, or get himself to the state he wanted to attain.
I also have been travelling. For just a little more than a week I was in a remote village in Northern Europe, with little contact with the outside world. I could barely even manage seven days without internet and mobile phone access and not crack up.
I've been practicing this faith we call Quakerism for some time now. But I think I still have a ways to go, learning how to simplify and slow my life down.