W hen I gaze down upon hundreds of hues of green or up at a buzzard spreading its wings and gliding across miles in mere seconds when the scent of grapes heavy with juice creeps into my senses when the sunshine penetrates every cold dark place within me and the rocking motion of the horse lulls me and quiets all the noise inside my head I’m transported. I can sense the universe. I can feel Hashem His closeness His constant embrace. I feel loved I feel safe. And I feel… me. Alive and connected.

If you’re anything like me when you open a siddur or Tehillim and daven there are times you have more kavanah and times you have less. And then there are those times when you are so totally connected to Hashem so present. You feel with your whole being how real He is and you wonder what took you so long to feel this way and you spend the next week or the next year or decade trying to recapture those feelings that connection.

That experience is rooted in spirituality — ruchniyus. It’s the understanding that I’m part of something greater than myself and I feel simultaneously very big and very small. This feeling is heady and powerful and its intensity often makes me cry. Not tears of sorrow but of a realness so acute that I’m deeply moved and the tears just come.

The thing about spirituality is that you can’t go out there and aggressively grab it. You have to seek the connection lower your defenses and allow it to seep in.

Much like serenity.

Since my first day in Retorno I’d been hearing the word serenity an awful lot. Every single group opens and closes with the Serenity Prayer: “G-d grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change courage to change the things I can and the wisdom to know the difference.” Courage and wisdom were familiar concepts but I was having trouble wrapping my head around this serenity thing.

Until I met Henny.

Henny had abused drugs for many years; she hadn’t been fussy about which ones she used as long as it provided a means to escape from herself. When she finally decided to seek help well into her twenties she enrolled in Retorno’s residential program. After she graduated she found a job got married and then returned as a very successful counselor in the women’s residential program.

She’d since moved on and the day I met her was when she came “home” to visit her Retorno family. Henny and I were both invited to join a group on a trail ride and while we meandered around the countryside this is the story she told me:

“During a break between therapeutic groups I sat down on a bench and looked up at the countryside. It was a chilly spring day and the sun felt so good on my back. When I closed my eyes I heard the sounds of people talking somewhere a goat was bleating and the birds were chirping. Plus there was that special Erev Shabbos quiet — everyone nearly ready and not much else was going on. All of a sudden I felt awful. I was dizzy and nauseous the sun felt like a blowtorch and the birds were screeching at me. I tried to take a deep breath but the expansion of my lungs hurt. I was sure I was dying.

“I ran to my counselor stressing my imminent demise. After a quick check showed I was not actually at death’s door my counselor led me back to the bench.

“ ‘Henny ’ she said ‘you’re not dying. You’re simply experiencing a feeling you’ve never experienced before. It’s called serenity.’

“ ‘Serenity?!’ I said. ‘I’m dying and you’re calling this serenity?’ (Excerpted from Family First Issue 547)