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“I had no idea how connected you could feel to things divine, there in the great open spaces of the desert. How could the emptiness seem so full? Moon, stars, deep skies, far horizons—God’s hand in creation seemed more immediate to me there than it had ever been in my city church…I now believe that in certain places, and at certain times in one’s life, the connection between earth and heaven becomes absolutely transparent—like the thin places described by the Celtic saints…I had a sense that the Lord was present in this most improbable of places, transfiguring the desert night and the empty sky into a place of desolate grace.” – Anonymous, “Forward Day By Day,” Forward Movement Publications

 

 

Between Marfa and Fort Davis, where the high desert’s gold-green plains and mauve mountains meet, the silence is broken only occasionally by bird arias, coyote choirs, thrummed cricket romances and wind murmuring through shadow-lined sheets of grass. In this quiet setting, a new spiritual retreat house offers a chance to pause and listen, to contemplate life and connect with creation.

This place of prayer was created by The Threshold, a non-profit group of Far West Texans who wanted to share the desert’s solace and Benedictine monastic life with others. Guests at The Threshold’s retreat house, Casa de la Rosa, can participate in the daily prayer and activities of a Benedictine monastery or simply use the tranquil space for private reflection. It doesn’t matter whether guests are Presbyterian, Catholic, Buddhist, or “heathen,” as one founding Threshold member joked.

“When you’re out there, and you don’t have your computer or your TV or whatever, life is simpler. You set aside so many things that are complicating to us every day,” says Aurie West, president of The Threshold’s board. “If you’re there long enough, you have to be faced with yourself. If you can be still long enough, then you have the chance to hear something beyond yourself, something alive and more meaningful. And that gives you a touch of eternity, and therefore peacefulness.”

The desert has a long history of offering refuge and rejuvenation to spiritual seekers. The Old Testament Israelites found transformation in the desert wilderness, and Christian monasticism first flourished in Syrian and Egyptian deserts during the fourth century. Perhaps that’s because in the desert, there is more silence and space for God to reach people, says Reverend Judith Burgess, a Threshold member.

That desert spiritual experience is what The Threshold now hopes to give retreat-house guests. It’s why their vision statement says The Threshold “seeks to be a thin place in the world.”

“The thin place is where heaven and earth almost touch,” Burgess says. “It can be a spiritual place, as well as a geographical place.”

The idea of a thin place goes back to Celtic spirituality, says Tom Graf, director of The Threshold.

“A thin place is one of those experiences you have in life, where you almost forget for a moment you’re in this life. You feel some connection to that other world out there,” Graf says. “That’s the kind of environment we want to create out here, that enables people to have those really deeply personal and contemplative experiences.”

Don Viator, another Threshold member, hopes such experiences will help guests return to their normal, busy lives feeling spiritually re-centered and refocused. “That’s what I would like people to walk away with—a sense of peace,” he says, “a sense of your being part of creation.”

 

 

The idea for The Threshold came out of a discussion at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Marfa a few years ago. A group of church members was studying The Rule of Saint Benedict, which has governed life at Benedictine monastic communities for almost 1,500 years. Two church members, Aurie West and Libi Rhodes, were already associates of a Benedictine community in Santa Barbara, California. They inspired the group to visit Mount Calvary Monastery and Retreat House.

Marfa resident Ken Whitley went on that retreat. When it was over, he didn’t want to leave.

“That’s a measure of how it affected me to go to a monastery,” he says. “It was one of the most enjoyable experiences of my life, not just enjoyable but inspiring. And I guess, if I had been a single man, I wouldn’t have even come home.”

Rev. Burgess was also on that trip. “It got us thinking about what we could do here that would fit our lifestyle, but still provide that kind of opportunity spiritually for people,” she says.

And so The Threshold was created. At first, they considered starting a monastery in the Big Bend area, but a talk with one of the Mount Calvary brothers made them change their minds.

“He said it was probably very unlikely [we] would get monks out here, because there are so few people accepting that vocation any more,” Graf says. “Then he discussed the possibility of a retreat and prayer house.”

That’s when Graf and Viator started thinking about opening up their 10-acre residence in Mano Prieto Estates between Marfa and Fort Davis for a lay-led, non-denominational retreat house. The group agreed to the idea. Graf started framing the southwestern-style buildings in November 2006, and construction was completed this past July.

Now Casa de la Rosa consists of three double-occupancy bedrooms and a small communal kitchen area. From the comfy beds and reading chairs, to the drawings of regional flora that adorn the walls, every furnishing was a gift from a Threshold supporter.

Inside Graf and Viator’s home, the shelves of a modest library are lined with donated books about Benedictine spirituality. Simple, delicious meals are served in their kitchen and eaten on their screened-in porch, which overlooks a rose garden surrounded by a stone wall. Beyond the wall, walking paths, a labyrinth and several small statues of saints are tucked among the grasses, mesquite and cholla.

At the heart of Casa de la Rosa is a humble, uniquely designed chapel, with windows overlooking the mountains. Here, four times a day, Graf and Viator—both are now associates of Mount Calvary—and other Threshold members lead the Praying of the Hours.

The Praying of the Hours, more formally known as the Liturgy of the Hours, is an integral rhythm of Benedictine monastic life, which seeks to balance work, rest and study with prayer. “Physical work is important, but prayer is most important,” Burgess explains.

Most monks leave whatever they are doing to pray seven times a day, from Lauds at dawn to Vespers at sunset and Compline at bedtime. Some also rise from sleep in the middle of the night to celebrate Vigils.

“We’re not quite that heavy duty,” Graf says. At The Threshold retreat house, the bell rings only for Lauds, Noonday, Vespers and Compline. “If people are staying here and want to participate, we certainly hope they do,” he says. “But we don’t take attendance.”

Besides the Praying of the Hours, another basic Benedictine tenet practiced at The Threshold retreat house is hospitality. Saint Benedict’s Rule teaches monks that “All guests who present themselves are to be welcomed as Christ.”

“He really felt that Christ was in all of us and we’re all children of God,” Burgess says of Benedict. “What we would at least attempt to do at The Threshold is to practice that kind of hospitality here and receive whoever comes in that way.”

Doing so is not always easy, Graf says, but trying to has changed his life. “It’s about love, not judging, not condemning,” he says. “I told Aurie that when we master that one, we’ll move on to something else. I have a feeling we’re going to be there awhile. But it’s an important message for people to remember that we’re not here to judge.”

West agrees. Volunteering to care for, cook for, and welcome guests to The Threshold is, to her, a spiritual gift. “It’s a great gift to be able to do that,” she says. “We probably get more out of it than the people who come.”

 

 

In my own one-day stay at The Threshold’s retreat house, I most looked forward to experiencing the Great Silence, another cornerstone of Benedictine life.

Saint Benedict’s name derives from a Latin word meaning “to say well,” and the man knew words’ weight. In his Rule, he urges monks to speak deliberately: “Prefer moderation in speech and speak no foolish chatter…Never give a hollow greeting of peace…Speak the truth with heart and tongue.”

Not speaking was also vital to Benedict, who recognized silence as a spiritual tool. “Monastics should diligently cultivate silence at all times, but especially at night,” he wrote, instructing monks to be silent from evening prayer until after breakfast the next morning.

Those Threshold members who first experienced this 12-hour period, known as the Great Silence, at the Californian monastery found it to be a very powerful experience, Graf says. The chance to consciously enter into such silence is one of the experiences he hopes to give Threshold guests.

“I think they’ll find out how hard it is at first, and how meaningful it is in the end,” he says.

The Threshold’s Quiet Days—held the first Saturday of each month at the retreat house—offer a regular opportunity for silence, and the Great Silence is practiced nightly at Casa de la Rosa.

As members of The Threshold will testify, being silent for 12 hours does not come easily but is well worth the effort.

Ken Whitley says his first Great Silence at the California monastery was horrible.

“I do two things real well—I talk a lot and I forget what I said,” he says. “It took me the whole time I was [at Mount Calvary] to get acclimated to abject silence. That’s hard to do. Quiet, that’s one thing. But silence is another.”

His first night at Mount Calvary, he started into an argument with his wife, who reminded him that it was time to be silent. “I almost went into shock,” he says.

The next morning, he and his wife went to breakfast. “Everybody’s in there nodding and smiling at each other. Nobody’s saying a word,” he says. “I’m watching my watch the whole time. And come 8:30 or so, somebody said something and I just went to talking. And I was talking to her. I was trying to finish where we left off.”

Others were discomfited by their first Great Silence, particularly during breakfast. But enduring the mealtime silence, West says, builds a bond between people. “You learn to be much more sensitive to other people’s needs,” she says, “because they can’t say, “Hey, pass the salt.’”

Even Shere Whitley, who describes herself as a naturally quiet person, agreed that learning to eat in silence took effort.

“It made me want to pick up my bowl and go somewhere else,” Whitley says of her first silent breakfast at Mount Calvary. “It’s hard, even for a quiet person. It’s hard to still that inner self.”

Stilling that inner self is the point.

“You can be silent outside and this”—West says, gesturing to her head— “be going 90 miles an hour.”

“But to learn to just be still and be silent, to where you can hear the crickets, you can hear the voice of God. You can hear something besides your own motor going all the time. That is what I think is gained by continually working at that. You’re more and more able to be silent inwardly,” she says. “It’s a process, a lifelong process.”

 

 

For me too, the Great Silence was disquieting at first. But it was also the most transformative part of my stay at Casa de la Rosa.

After Compline, the last prayer service of the day, I left the chapel and returned to my room to read. When I buried my nose in a book, I realized I was cheating; even written words interrupt inward silence.

So, I forced myself back outside. Under the gazebo, Don was watching the sun tow the sky’s evening color off behind the Davis Mountains. I felt words—“Mind if I join you? Pretty chilly tonight. Mosquitoes, even out here?”—rise in my throat as I took a seat beside him.

I was absorbed in restraining that urge to chat for several minutes. Unarmed with the social lubrication of speech, I avoided looking at Don. The only interruptions to the awkward quiet were embarrassed groans from his rocking porch swing. My legs’ restlessness crept inward. I wondered why I was there, and whether my breathing was abnormally loud. I felt lonely.

It was the crickets who intervened first. I noticed their sweetly percussive odes align with the porch swing’s steady squeak. I heard sparrows whoosh and whirr overhead. Then the wind joined in, a hushed sigh, and cactus-wren melodies punctuated the sunset symphony.

My outward quiet seeped inside. I noticed the comfort of my chair, the peace in Don’s face, the miracle of rocks laid in the garden wall. I was able to attend to the stars’ first whispered radiance and the sun’s final glow, as it drained from hints of cirrus clouds and thickening mountain silhouettes. I contemplated distant car headlights skating across the watery-dark plain and a line of ants working in the shadows.

Transfixed by the night’s grace, I felt connected to the life humming around me, grateful for Don sitting next to me, and mindful of the calm rising within me. I thought about how silence can be broken or shattered, or cut through by noise. Our expressions acknowledge silence’s substance and imply sadness that this golden thing can be destroyed. But we are so used to splintered quiet that we’ve learned to fill the gaps by talking to someone, watching TV, checking email, turning on the radio or reading a book. Simply letting silence be is difficult. Leaving it alone, though, and even cultivating it, opens our ears to whatever else speaks to us in the world and in ourselves.

That night I recalled an ancient saying that Benedictine oblate and writer Joan Chittister relays in “The Rule of Benedict: Insights for the Ages.”

“Once upon a time a disciple asked the elder, ‘How shall I experience my oneness with creation?’ And the elder answered, ‘By listening.’ The disciple pressed the point: ‘But how am I to listen?’ And the elder taught, ‘Become an ear that pays attention to every single thing the universe is saying. The moment you hear something you yourself are saying, stop.’”

More on The Threshold and Casa de la Rosa can be found online at www.thethreshold.org. Quiet Days are held the first Saturday of every month from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m., at no charge. Overnight retreats are available Wednesday through Sunday morning for a suggested donation of $75 for individuals and $125 for two. The retreat house is also open for day use, but visitors are asked to contact The Threshold in advance.

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