[excerpt] You're driving to work one day, with a monster 18-wheeler riding your bumper, thinking about how you're going to meet that 3 p.m. deadline, and suddenly it hits you: This is not the way life is supposed to be.
The years go by quickly when you have a career and family to fill your days. Even vacations often seem just as hectic as daily life. But there is an alternative.
More people are taking advantage of a growing number of retreat centers in the area to take time out, to take stock of their lives, to find spiritual perspective and renewal.
It's a national phenomenon, according to the Christian Camp and Conference Association, a nonprofit organization of Christian retreat centers and camps. Facilities in its association served 7.5 million people in 2004, compared with 5 million in 1989 - a 50 percent increase in 15 years. Revenues for those centers totaled $885 million in 2004 - up 20 percent in four years.
Most retreat centers in this area are Christian-based, but possibilities range from those that offer a quiet place but no formal spiritual programs, to those with guided retreats, to solitary retreats, to those with non-Christian orientation.
"For some people it kind of opens a new world, a world inside," said Bhikkhuni Sucinta, a nun at the Carolina Buddhist Vihara in Greenville. "They stop looking around so much looking for peace and happiness outside."
Although the nearest Buddhist retreat center, the Southern Dharma Retreat Center, is in Hot Springs, N.C., Christian retreat centers are plentiful across the Upstate as well as in the mountains of North Carolina.
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