70 Men Across the ECC Connect for a Hybrid Retreat

On July 31 and August 1, approximately seventy men gathered for Wisdom’s Constraint and the Making of Sanctuary, an ECC retreat led by Terry Chapman and Jim Burns. Some came together in person at Richmond Hill in Richmond, Virginia. Others joined by livestream, gathering in small groups or participating individually from across the East Coast, other states, and Canada.

The weekend was more than a retreat on slowing down. It was also an experiment. The East Coast Collaborative stretches across an enormous geographical area, and many men who share an affinity with Illuman live hundreds of miles from one another. Could a retreat preserve the depth and relational quality of an in-person gathering while also including men scattered across this wide region?

Wisdom’s Constraint offered one possible answer.

The retreat began with a concern familiar to many of us: something in modern life is moving too fast. We live in a culture that often defines progress as more: more speed, productivity, competence, certainty, and control. These qualities can help us become responsible and dependable. Yet when they operate without limits, they can also wear down our relationships with ourselves, with one another, and with the living world.

Men may learn to push through fatigue, postpone grief, manage tension, and override the quieter signals of their inner lives. What appears outwardly as competence can gradually become urgency, reactivity, withdrawal, or exhaustion. The retreat invited participants to consider whether wisdom sometimes comes not through greater effort, but through constraint: an interruption of momentum that allows relationship to catch up with the pace of our lives.

Central to the weekend was the idea of relational stamina, the capacity to remain grounded, present, and connected when circumstances are complicated, unresolved, or painful. This does not mean abandoning strength, responsibility, or action. It means developing resilience rooted in relationship rather than relying only on individual determination and control.

Through teaching, silence, story, embodied practices, and small-group conversation, participants explored Sabbath as more than rest from activity. Sabbath can be understood as a rhythm that interrupts the endless pressure for more and reminds us that life is sustained by relationship. Pausing becomes a way of listening again: to the body, to one another, to grief and joy, and to the deeper movement of the sacred within life.

The hybrid structure created several forms of gathering at once. A central group shared meals, conversation, and retreat space in Richmond. Elsewhere, groups of men gathered locally to watch, reflect, and enter council together. Still others participated from home. Although the experiences were not identical, the technology allowed men separated by great distances to enter a shared rhythm and a common field of reflection.

This approach may hold important possibilities for the ECC. It allows men to remain rooted in local relationships while also experiencing themselves as part of a larger brotherhood. It can strengthen connections among councils, reach men who are geographically isolated, and create opportunities for ECC-wide formation without requiring everyone to travel.

The July and August weekend was only the beginning. From September through February, participating councils and regional groups will meet when and where they choose.  They will receive a field guide with summaries from the weekend retreat and for six monthly sessions.  They will also receive an on-demand video with material for that month’s gathering. A virtual gathering in December will offer participants an opportunity to reconnect, reflect on what is unfolding, and renew the shared journey.

During those same six months, ECC leadership will pause, entering a fallow period in which no new activities will be planned beyond those already underway. Board members and other deeply committed ECC men will focus on strengthening relational stamina, widening the circle of leadership, and creating space for relationships and Spirit to guide the discernment, planning, and implementation of future ECC activities.

Wisdom’s Constraint was a pilot, and there is much to learn from the experience. It demonstrates that our great geographic distances need not prevent us from gathering meaningfully. Through regional gatherings, local circles, individual participation, and continuing shared practice, a new form of retreat life may be emerging across the ECC.

In a time of acceleration, perhaps one of the most important things we can do together is pause, long enough to listen, reconnect, and rediscover a rhythm that returns us to life.