The Retreat….Within!
WellSprings Retreat— Bald Knob, KY + Dr.Gary Straub + Eastertide 2003
We bought the farm. A hill-farm located 8 miles and 80 years out of town from Kentucky’s capital city, in an utterly forsaken corner of Franklin County known as Bald Knob. Hill-farm is mere euphemism—a quaint exaggeration for the fact: nobody raises much but rocks. Our hilltop home off Harp Pike was a bit lonesome until we got some new neighbors. Kentucky’s infamous Iron Horse Motorcycle Gang moved in just down the road. Were they seeking privacy for their various nefarious criminal activities? We just waved ‘howdy’ every evening until the day their abode did explode! Their house was a fast—burn. Our local Sheriff wisely left this mysterious blaze unsolved. Neighbors were only mildly unnerved!
On a happier note, Bald Knob community life consisted of family outings on Sunday afternoon up by the water tower near Bald Knob School. To get there, you start up the hill from the Old Union Store. NOTE: folks in this neck of the woods give directions by old landmarks that used to be but no longer exist. So you sorta had to “be there back when” to navigate the narrow knobs now. Behind the school, ladies socialized while kids ran around and the menfolk filled up from the rusty water tower and trucked their weekly water supply to fill home cisterns. Oddly, our farm obtained the last hookup of county water on Harp Pike. Everyone living ‘further out’ in the boonies beyond us spent Sunday afternoon hauling their water. Gossip circulated about our being the ‘last tap’ of that fine Franklin County water which pumped 2 miles up our gravel driveway. The news locked in our reputation as the ‘downtown preacher and some sorta psychiatric nurse for mental problems.’ But, we got a rep as good neighbors and nice enough… for city folk.
We found out our true fureigner” status our first Election Day. We walked in the firehall. Never showed our IDs. Officials just pointed to the exact line on the ledger and said: “sign here, rev- and here, ma’am.” Everybody knew exactly who we were! We later learned our ‘farming antics’ provided high hilarity up at Wright’s Grocery— where menfolk congregated when they supposedly ‘went to town.’ However, our rep boosted when we gave away our tobacco allotment to the neighbors who bush-hogged our trails. We were still a novelty item, but neighbors gave us half a chance. Still: who gives away a tobacco allotment?
Comparing Jesus’ home-town Nazareth to our remoteness in Bald Knob… both fit the epithet:“can anything good come out of Nazareth?” We met most of our neighbors thru Bogie, our beagle, who ran away and showed up hungry on neighbor’s porches. Retrieving Bogie broke the ice w/ the neighbors.
Our 88 acre odyssey began as we added rooms to our hilltop cabin. Then—we built a guest cabin—a real retreat hermitage—with running water, A/C, cedar furniture and indoor plumbing. ‘City folk’ friendly. We tore a page fromThomas Merton’s dream: to found a string of “houses of prayer” which were hospitable to spirituality across Kentucky— even America. We joined Merton’s illustrious band and called our farm “WellSprings”… a place to relax, reflect, rejuvenate, rekindle, rethink, resurface, resolve, restore… (add any word that means resurrection) After mowing five miles of hiking trails and stocking the ponds and fancying up the cabin for comfort and convenience, we advertised a ‘Grand Opening Ice Cream Social.’ Local folks stayed away in droves. They liked us fine for a city preacher and the only psychiatric nurse in all of Franklin County. I took this super hard . Just felt like a phenomenal flop.
One night, we heard commotion down on Harp Pike at the beat-up trailer — no heat or utilities—which our nearest neighbors called home. (Noise carries something fierce up those hollers) We were just getting to know them and now— they bugged out about midnight and a brand new clan of squatters populated the place. Sobering! A silent sub-culture of serious poverty was eking out a living down near our driveway. We talked to the Unofficial Mayor of Harp Pike and he helped us help them some…. but they wanted NOTHING to do with US! I thought all the Appalachian Poverty was on the eastern side of 1-75. Not so! Denying the culture of dis-repair, despair & disillusionment all around us, we fondly hoped for eight years that the Merton House of Prayer concept would finally “catch on.”……. It didn’t.
We closed our doors; sold our “Good House-Keeping Farm” to a deer-hunting family and retreated to town by a golf course that rained golf balls in our front yard whenever somebody hooked a tee shot off #3. Each morning, I gathered golf balls like Moses gathered manna in the Wilderness. All told, Juniper Hill golfers donated eight 5-gallon bucketfuls to our grandkids & friends. Fungible riches, huh?
Slowly I recovered from the trauma of quitting my dream and the drama of letting Fr. Merton down. Slowly it dawned on me: the serenity I desired for others would not be found in some mystical magical location. The peace and light of Christ emerges from within. To this very day— I still carry Wellsprings Within. I retreat w/in as regularly as Wendell Berry took Sabbath Walks to Journal.
Over the last 25 years, my prayer community became a ‘moveable feast,’ a disbursed monastery—a Chapel within. I still visit often at WellSprings—the Bald Knob Retreat Within. I journey often to our old country place, 8 miles and 80 years out of town. Nothing like watching the fireflies meander across the meadow at dusk. Nothing like reading in a rickety deer stand on the back 40 watching meadow shadows lengthening while listening to turkeys nest. Nothing like a holy listening to the silence of snow falling in cedars. True balm & calm. Nothing else peels back my layers of frailty, fragility, faults, flaws, foibles and finitude like quietude. I often retreat to this god-forsaken country in my mind to find that God always finds me! Once again, I am blessed by the Spirit w/ restoration of my sanity, sobriety and salvation. To this day, I close my eyes and wend my way to WellSprings. It’s one of my sacred ‘places of the heart.’ I also believe WellSprings is one of the world’s ‘thin places’ —where the thin veil between heaven & earth becomes a permeable portal; where we who are yet mortal may commune with the Divine and those gone before. I live in gratitude for Wellsprings, where I learned Inner Retreat whenever I let silence befall me. Silence is an invitation to open the soul fiercely/fully to the Heart of God.
I pray you have an Eastertide Retreat-a Wellsprings Within- a place in God’s Heart you call home.
Postscript: You can find a “REAL” retreat by contacting Rev. Johnny Wray at High Hope Farm in Cedar Bluff, MS — johnnywray17@gmail.com He and Deb would be happy to host you!
Just be sure to tell them Gary and Tom Merton sent you.
