I’m an alcoholic, and my name is Dottie Shore. Hi. Hi. Thanks so very much for having me up here. You know you have a beautiful country up here, don’t you? You have a lot of rain, too, and you can keep the rain as far as I’m concerned, but it is beautiful. Have they got a fire over there, or what is it? You see the fire? It is burning, but Is it a fire? I hope not. Yeah, it does– it does appear to be a fire At any rate, how many of you here tonight have been at a retreat before? Raise your hands for me. Most of you have. Well, let me tell you what I think I can help you with so that you can get the full enjoyment out of this retreat. I’ve been very privileged to lead a lot of retreats, and I’ve kind of done it by, uh, you know, trial and error till I found out what for me has been the best. Now, first we’re gonna look at the word retreat. Retreat means to fall back, uh, walk away from, um, change your course of action.

Uh, it also means, uh, um, a retreat when you blow a retreat in the, in the services. It means it’s time to go to bed. It’s time to retire. So if you’ll think about the word retreat and retreat for these next few days we’ll be here together, away from everything. Above all, as men, please retreat from your job. Please leave your job down the hill down there. Also, retreat from your families and your finances and your home and your lawns and your cars and just pull back, kick back, and try not to think about these things if you can help it. They’ll flit through your mind. Don’t do a lot of forcing, but when they come, just say to yourself, “It’s not time to think about this now. I’ll think about something else.” You can make it a fun retreat, or you can make it a, an escape. You can sleep all the time you’re here. You can, uh, do a lot of praying and meditating, which I hope you’ll do.

So many people say to me, um, “How do you know when God talks to you? How do you know? You know, you ask for God’s will. How do you know?” Well, most of the time we don’t shut up long enough to listen to Him, and if you can kind of pull back and just, uh, listen to the still, small voice of God, let Him speak to you. Now, when you’re walking, and I hope you’ll take some walks, and I hope you’ll enjoy this outdoors, um, if you see somebody walking, if they don’t acknowledge you, don’t speak to them. Leave them alone because so many times we’ll be walking and maybe meditating or just, uh, looking at nature, and someone will come up, and we’ll start to talk about mundane things, and you’ve lost what was there. Now, I don’t mean to have walk around and be silent and, and be in a deep meditative mood. I don’t mean that, but give yourself some time while you’re up here to do that. Now, tomorrow, when I imagine everyone will be here, you don’t have to do anything I suggest. Please know that.