ORZC’s Women’s Retreat featured in local newspaper
May 27th, 2008
ORZC’s Women’s Retreat was featured in The Journal Times on Saturday, May 24. Reporter Lee Roberts interviewed Master Teacher Linda Somlai and Abbot Holly Johnson about the annual retreat. The article also included information about attending the retreat, which runs from June 5-8.
Here’s an excerpt:
It is a time for celebration, joy and laughter. It is also a time for quiet reflection and meditation — for creativity, spirituality and sharing of stories, meals and life experience. Most of all, it is a time for women.
The annual Women’s Retreat, which will take place June 5-8 at Racine’s Original Root Zen Center, is all of that and more, say those who have attended. And because it has been such an enriching experience for them through its 14 years of existence, they want to let other women know about it and invite them to join in.
Until this year, word of the Women’s Retreat was circulated mainly through members and friends of the Zen Center’s Buddhist community, according to Linda Somlai, a Master Teacher at the center who founded the retreat. Women of all ages, faiths and backgrounds are welcome and have attended the retreat through the years. But the wider community really wasn’t aware of its existence, Somlai said.
“As the years have gone by, members have asked their sisters, mothers, neighbors and co-workers to be a part of it, and it has been great fun to see them come with these different relationships,” said Somlai. “Last year, we had four or five mother/daughter relationships at the retreat.”
Past participants have ranged in age from 18 to 80-something, have practiced faiths from Catholicism to Judaism, as well as Buddhism, and have traveled from as far away as Kentucky to attend, Somlai said. None of that really matters during the retreat, though, because the annual experience is designed to help women discover their commonalities, rather than their differences.
“There is no age when we get together,” said Holly Johnson, an Abbot with the Zen Center who has attended the Women’s Retreat for about 10 years. “Things like body size, age and other statistics all go away when you are in the present.”
The original idea behind the retreat — that of creating a safe, trusting environment where women can feel free to express themselves without judgement — is what makes such connections possible between participants, Somlai said.
