The Gift of No Agenda

This feels a little like a thank you note.

Recently, I was invited to spend a weekend at a friend’s farm. The WhatsApp group was boldly titled “Suffolk Farm Retreat”—which sounded very official, almost spa-like. I imagined timetables, workshops, maybe even a gong bath or two. But the small print (a.k.a. my friend’s warning) made it clear: this was not a retreat in any traditional sense. No schedule. No programme. No agenda. Just “come along and hang out.”

I’ll admit—I was sceptical. Most of the gatherings I’ve joined in recent years have had a purpose: a theme, an intention, or a learning arc. I wasn’t sure what a “no agenda” event would offer. Would it be too loose, too unstructured, maybe even dull?

And yet, by the end of the weekend, I was surprised at just how much I had received.

What emerged was not nothing—it was everything.

Decompression in Nature

The first gift was space to exhale. Walking among orchards, soaking in sunshine, letting the land hold me—it reminded me how much nature softens the edges of a busy mind. There’s a healing that comes when we stop trying to get anywhere. It echoes what Thich Nhat Hanh reminds us in Peace Is Every Step : sometimes just walking slowly, breathing fully, is more than enough.

Connection Beyond the Familiar

Another gift was community—not the kind of community built only around shared identities or beliefs, but the kind that stretches us. People had travelled in from across England, and even further afield—one participant had come all the way from Sophia, Bulgaria. I met people I might never otherwise encounter. They carried different perspectives, different positions, and yet in our conversations I found my own stance questioned, softened, and enriched. As bell hooks writes in All About Love, true community requires us to move beyond comfort and into curiosity.

Bonding Through the Everyday

It turns out that community isn’t just about conversation—it’s about cooking together, washing dishes side by side, laughing over burnt toast. Ordinary tasks became small rituals of belonging.

Embodied Acceptance

Another unexpected joy was noticing how body positivity wasn’t a concept we spoke about, but something we simply lived. Sunbathing in the orchard, dipping into the jacuzzi, letting bodies of all shapes and sizes simply be—glorious, imperfect, and unapologetic. To witness and be witnessed in this way felt deliciously freeing. It reminded me of Sonya Renee Taylor’s invitation in The Body Is Not an Apology: that radical self-love begins with honouring the body as it is, right now.

A Spontaneous Ritual

On the night of the black moon, a ritual spontaneously emerged. It wasn’t planned, but it was powerful—an improvised ceremony that left me deeply moved. It reminded me that ritual doesn’t need choreography; it needs presence.

From Doing to Being

Perhaps the deepest shift was moving from doing to simply being. Without an agenda, something surprising, nourishing, and profoundly human was able to emerge.

For this, I feel immense gratitude to my friend—for holding space for this experiment in openness, and for inviting us into his home and land. I’m already looking forward to the next “no agenda” gathering.

Sometimes, the absence of structure is the most generous container of all.

PS: the above picture is from the orchard in the farm where we spend glorious time sunbathing and nibbling on lunch.