Michael Floyd, a graphic artist at the New School in Greenwich Village, went to Kripalu soon after the disaster, which he watched, in horror, from his window at work. There were many others from New York there during his stay.
"I was grateful to be at a place where when people ask you how you are, they know what that means," Floyd said. He'd been to Kripalu before, and sought the chance to get "back to nature a bit."
He took a hike in the mountains and got back to practicing yoga, which he said helped give him determination and focus. "I realized that even just being able to get away to the mountains for a few days involved a certain amount of freedom," he said. "I started to understand what President Bush had been saying about this country's resolve."
Affordable choice
The Dominican Retreat house in Virginia, which offers retreats for women and men and is run by the Congregation of the Dominican Sisters of St Catherine de' Ricci, does not want financial considerations to keep people away. The cost of a retreat is US$230 for a weekend, but the sisters' policy is to turn no one away. Mass is celebrated and confession is heard on each retreat; attendance is optional.
"One of the things we do as Catholics," Berney said, "is be prepared. We know not the time or the hour. We try to be ready."
Christine Cable of Annapolis, Maryland, has gone to the Dominican Retreat every year for the last 15 years with members of her parish and will go again this year. Part of the reason, she said, is that there "you have a chance to be ministered to. Inside the house is not quite silent, but close, so that you can slow down enough to listen to God." Each year the sisters adopt a theme from Scripture for the talks offered on retreat weekends. This year it is from Deuteronomy: "God is with you on your journey."
Numbers of visitors have been hard to predict. The Healing Center of Arizona, a nondenominational retreat center of geodesic domes set in the landscape of rock and juniper in Sedona, is usually busy this time of year, but bookings have been abnormally slow the last few weeks, said its founder and director, John Paul Weber. Overcoming logistics has been an obstacle for travelers after the disasters, and some people have canceled their reservations for visits to the center. "If they are afraid of flying," Weber said, "we help them with that."
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