Glendalough

Tuesday, 5th of April Amina went on a retreat to Glendalough. I was expecting it to be different... All the othr retreats we did in previous years were spent inside singing songs and thinking about our past but this year we were outdoors and we got to walk around for the duration. We walked around a labyrinth, it was a design found on the bottom of the stone. It's hard to describe but it's a design that swirls, sort of like a maze but it's a path of stones, rather than not being able to see your way out. It symbolised your life. Sometimes you feel lost and you think you're at the centre of your life but then a few steps away you don't know where you are. There were some others things like that to symbolise different aspects of everyone's life. The tour guide was so nice and she used a lot of metophors to help us reflect rather than sing songs or sitting down to concentrate. For example she said to think of the round tower as a " tower of your life" , you have so many stages in your life, the same way the tower has lots of floors. Also, she said when you're older you will have a better view of the world, the same way you would from the top of the tower. When I thought about it, it made a lot of sense! We went on a walk uphill and everyone thought it'd be a nice little stroll but the hill seemed to just get steeper and steeper. It actually wasn't that bad looking back but at the time everyone thought it would never end. It was a good day and a nice change to the usual retreats we have!