Sailing retreats provide quiet place to get close to God
BARRIE, ON - A pastor's love of sailing and solitude led to the idea of a spiritual sailing retreat.
Les Galicinski, executive director of Deposits of Faith, had been the pastor of spiritual formation at Barrie's Harvest Bible Chapel when he started his own sailing retreat.
"By nature I'm more introverted and enjoy being alone," says Galicinski. Leaving port around 5 p.m. each Sunday, Galicinski would sail to another port on Lake Simcoe and stay the night. Getting up early the next morning, he'd spend time in a personal retreat of solitude and reflection.
"I'd only be away for 24 hours but it felt like I'd been away for a whole weekend."
After about five or six years of taking these personal retreats, Galicinski "began to think 'this is great,'" described what he was doing to others and began taking people with him.
"But now we were engaged in conversations and it lost the dynamic of a personal retreat. So I added stipulations, saying for the next two hours we'd have a time of solitude.
"It turned the excursion into a spiritual retreat and conversations were [centred] more on what God was saying to us in our times of solitude."
After some changes in his personal life - including beginning work on a doctorate on discipleship - Galicinski began Deposits of Faith. The ministry was born from his desire to mentor pastors and leaders, helping them to refresh, renew and rediscover theological foundations. The sailing retreats became a way to meet that goal and he's now in his third season of taking up to six retreatants (either all one gender or couples) out onto Lake Simcoe in a 34-foot sailboat.
"It's a unique setting. Lake Simcoe is about the size of the Sea of Galilee. To get to the other side takes about three or four hours depending on the wind," he says. Agreements with another yacht club on the lake means they can pull into a harbour and use those facilities.
But the retreat isn't simply a cruise. Participants are expected to share in the duties of running a sailboat, such as anchor watch, helm duty, cooking, cleaning and crewing.
"Our aim is to make the actual excursion itself a metaphor for the journey of self discovery and increasing intimacy with God," says Galiciniski. "The function of the keel, wind and sail all have spiritual parallels - lessons people can reflect on making sailing an analogy for life."
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