Play Music — Sarah MacLaughlin

Played: 1861 | Download | Duration: 00:02:01

Written Saturday, June 13, 2009


W. CLARKSVILLE, N.Y. — Many of the best places are hidden from plain view.  Such is the case with Mt. Iranaeus, a mountaintop Franciscan retreat in West Clarksville.  That description does not serve justice, nor can any one-line description or a single photograph.  When the world at large becomes too fierce, too fast or too godless, Mt. Iranaeus, for me, heals all ills and allows me to get a fix on my spiritual compass.

Its buildings rose out of pines and rubble with the sweat and toil of dedicated friars seeking to deliver a true Franciscan experience, complete with rustic accoutrements, harmony with nature and the peacefulness of a sunlit day or a starlit night.  It's a place where multi-colored wildflowers dance in the mountain breezes, and God is an action verb celebrated in a stone and oaken glass-walled chapel at the top of the garden path.  For the most part, one long road scales the mountain's east side, and delivers you back.  Trespassers are welcomed.

As you walk the grounds, you either own the space or do not.  You are the caretaker.  In America, ownership is the ideal.  Ownership carries an aura of machismo, of power, of might.  In the world, most people seek to own and possess, whether it be a plot of land, a house, a car... or a relationship.

Caretaking is far more rewarding, and is the way of the Mountain, if you choose.  It requires active participation, where mere possession does not.  It requires attention, and effort on a daily basis.  It requires an appreciation for all that is right and good.  It asks us to nurture, and in the process, to grow.  Caretaking is not for everyone; ownership is far more easy.

As in life, you may nurture your relationships in many ways, just like the grasses on these hillside slopes.  Some are tended respectfully and regularly.  Some are trampled underfoot, their potential squandered for the sake of temporary passage.  Others are left to be free, let alone to provide refuge for others of God's creation.

Nurturing is a Franciscan value.  It makes this place imperfectly perfect for healing, growing and for becoming alive and reborn with passion.  Whether you cry tears of joy or sorrow, they are soaked into the earth and somehow contribute to the history of the place.   The air pauses for laughter.  Especially the laughter of Dan Riley, O.F.M., one of God's Architects for The Mountain.  Anyone who ever heard the unbridled glee of his laughter knows there is no escaping to urge to join with it. 

The slope beyond the porch-wrapped retreat house levels at a point to permit a round pond, encircled by random pink and purple and yellow and orange and white wildflowers, deceptively dainty yet stubborn.  Hundreds of differently tuned birds are players in the Master Gardener's orchestra, accompanied in measure by belching frogs, the splashing of water creatures and percussion by the wind through the trees.  Peeling bells.  And, of course, the laughter.
Its caretakers thought to erect a short deck with wooden benches for sitting to watch the clouds reflecting in the water.  Appropriately, there is a flotation device and a lifeline for those who feel like they are drowning.  Dragonflies flit above the water, and a bluebird circles above.  Not your nasty, beautifully aggressive blue jay, but honest-to-goodness bluebirds of the happiness variety.

In the morning light, it dawns on you what God's perfect peace is.  God's voice does not preach only on Sunday television, which, by the way, is a device not found here.  He does not necessarily shout from mountains, or pulpits, or on street corners.

Simply explained, God's voice is that which you hear at precisely the moment you need to hear it.

It may resound in the myriad songs of the many different birds, or the laughter of a child, or even a phone call or email message from the one special person who fills you with strength and courage and hope — which I did, indeed, receive.  Sometimes, it speaks through the silence, the quiet moment, the peaceful bliss.

Before the sun sets tonight, I will leave this place of peace having found something inside myself that was missing, and, I hope, giving back in return.  I'll travel the one long road feeling better equipped to be the caretaker of my own life, a bit wiser, and a lot more cognizant of God's abundance.

***
The Prayer of St. Francis of Assisi

Lord, make me an instrument of your peace.
Where there is hatred, let me sow love,
Where there is injury, pardon
Where there is doubt, faith
Where there is despair, hope
Where there is darkness, light
Where there is sadness, joy.
Oh, Divine Master, grant that I may not seek
So much to be consoled, as to console
To be understood, as to understand
To be loved, as to love.
For it is in giving that we receive
It is in pardoning that we are pardoned
It is in dying that we are born to eternal life.

And so it is true.