Ship Island: the Contemplative Writing Group’s recent Day Retreat

This entry arises from the Sacred Conversations in Contemplative Writing Group’s Ship Island Day Retreat, held on April 18, 2026. This post, submitted by Shane Steinkamp, begins with an reflection of the retreat, photos included, followed by a piece of writing that issued from Shane’s pen (or do you write in pencil Shane?) on the Island, in response to one of the retreat prompts.

Seven participants made the crossing, gathering under the thoughtful facilitation of Alisha Johnson Perry and Ellen Prewitt. The island received us as it always does; without demand, yet wholly capable of holding what we brought with us.

The day unfolded in two movements. In the morning, participants were offered a small guidebook, not as a map to be followed, but as a finger pointing.  Some may have followed it, while others may have sought their own paths.  The structure was light by design. Each person entered the contemplative space on their own terms, finding their own rhythm between word, silence, and the subtle instruction of the island itself.

In the afternoon we gathered again beneath the pavilion, bringing back what had been seen, heard, and written. The tone shifted into a shared field of listening. Words that had been formed in private were spoken aloud, received without correction or commentary, held in the same spirit that shaped them. What emerged was not performance, but presence, continuing the introspection and extrospection of the morning’s quiet work.

Ship Island proved to be an able keeper of such a day. There is something about that place - the openness, the horizon, the way time loosens its grip - that invites a different kind of attention. It makes room for insight.

We look forward to future gatherings and invite you to join us when the crossing is made again.

My reflection below arose from one of the prompts, a Strolling Exercises type of contemplation: “Stroll the beach, observing the landscape for 10 minutes. On your way back, choose one of the following exercises—“ Since a large part of my personal contemplative work was (and will be) done on Ship Island, the “Time’s Wisdom” option immediately caught me because it’s the type of ‘looking back to see the future’ perspective shift that appeals to my introspection. It read: “On your way back, you spy your eight-year-old self. What are they doing? They invite you to join them. What do you do together? They continue down the beach. What do you do when you are on your own?”

(Confession: While the majority of this was written by hand on the island, refinements were made when I typed it into my permanent journal.)

Reflection:

I know what he’s doing, because I know what I did.  My eight year old self has walked down the beach past the distance he told his parents he would go.  To be fair, the parents weren’t too worried.  It’s an island.  Where is the kid going to go?  But he’s WAY past the agreed distance because only once he goes this far is he the King of this Place; there are no laws but what he decrees.  At eight, he thinks he is the king of this place, but he does not know that he has crossed the threshold into the Temple of Oblivion - a place ruled by spirits he has not yet learned to see and that he is still unable to hear.   He has stripped off his shorts and is rolling naked in the sand.  By some mad instinct he is trying to make a connection that he would not learn to make until he was almost twenty.  Sun. Sand. Salt. Skin. He is still trying to use his body to connect to the natural world.  He doesn’t understand that he needs to use the natural world to connect to his body.  He has never been in his body, so this idea is still alien to him.  He is still only living in his mind.  He has not learned to awaken the greater consciousness of his body, nor any of the other consciousnesses of which he is possessed.  

I do not know how to explain it to him.  It’s not necessarily that his method is wrong, but his technique is insufficient.  So I say no words, but take off my shorts to enter my body and roll naked in the sand.  My technique is perfected over the decades, and in the blink of an ‘I’, the seer and the seen are not two.  I am not in the World.  I am the World.  There is no second thing.  My eight-year-old self and I are an indispensable commingling of eternity.  But he doesn’t see it yet.  

He picks up his shorts and moves down the beach. He is seeking.  Always seeking.  He doesn’t understand yet that seeking is gathering in; enlightenment is letting go.  Once I am on my own, I invoke a thing that the child I once was will not understand until he is almost thirty; I vanish.  I stop translating myself into meaning.  I am a thing void of description. A wild animal?  Words do not adhere to me.  I am both home and at home.  No matter where I go, there I am, but not.  I invoke the spirits of this place, but I am this place - until there is no more ‘I’.  The Wayfinder has read the Scripture Written on Creation until the Reader has disappeared, and only the Relationship remains.  I feel like I should go back and tell him things that a child would understand.  But it would be a strange magic trick to him.  An explanation too simple to understand.  That there is a place where the world stops arranging itself around you. It isn’t a step away. It’s only half a step.  I have not gone anywhere, but I have stepped out of the agreement that keeps me apart from the world. It’s not a turn of the foot or a perfect intention. It isn’t a stepping into, but a stepping out of. A single movement in the dance with Eternity.

That child will go back to his parents. They will scold him for being late. They will feed him and house his body, but they do not know how to care for his soul. He will have to find his own way through dark forests, lost until he discovers he does not need to be found.

There will come a day when he stops asking where he is supposed to go. The question falls out of his hands like something he has carried too long. The forests are still dark, but now he can see. He walks barefoot on unmarked paths whispered up from the Earth. He listens without needing an answer, and in that silence he comes to know that what was lost was only hidden by the need to be found. That he was never outside of it; only outside of himself.

One day, between two steps, suddenly he knows. Not a turn of the foot, not a perfect intention. He vanishes.  After that day, what is seen in the World of Men is only his shadow. The rest of him does not live there.  He has unfinished business in The Temple of Oblivion.  

Shane