This is a long weekend with the author of ‘Following Jesus in the Great Outdoors’ (Grove, 2023), Dr Richard Tiplady. Richard is passionate about his faith and an avid walker and mountaineer. During this retreat, we will be reflecting and learning, but also getting outside and experiencing the Great Outdoors for ourselves or participating in alternative retreat activities in the house or grounds.
Spiritual experiences are not rare on mountains. In his writings, John Muir reflects frequently on what might be termed ‘spiritual encounters’ within nature. In The Living Mountain, Nan Shepherd writes of her Cairngorm wanderings as bringing an awareness of ‘the essential oneness of all things’. Richard will help us to consider what a Christian ‘take’ on the mountain experience looks like, exploring how this provides an experience of healing and a foretaste of the salvation that God offers us in Jesus Christ. As the nature writer Robert Macfarlane says, ‘we see the mountains not as they are but as we are’. So how as Christians might we see and experience the mountains?
Kilmalieu occupies a stunning position on the shore of Loch Linnhe. It is a renovated eighteenth-century hunting lodge with a mixture of comfortable single, twin and family bedrooms. Food is home-made and consistently praised for its quality. Guests have access to a small library, art room, lounge, chapel, gym, games room and sports hall … and, of course, the stunning hills, coastline and woodland that comprise the 3000-acre estate.
