A couple of weeks ago I, in the company of my sister, Barbara, traveled to Laity Lodge, a retreat center generously supported by the Howard Butt Foundation, located in the Texas Hill country outside Kerrville. On this almost two thousand acre ranch are numerous camps which have provided summer experiences for thousands of underprivileged children for more than fifty years, camps used by church and civic groups, and the adult Laity Lodge, which has provided programs, hospitality, and the opportunity for powerful personal sacred experiences for decades. My husband and I have been privileged to be at Laity Lodge many times over the past fifteen or so years, and I took my mother there while she was alive and my sister has now gone with me twice. (You might want to check out their website www.laitylodge.org.)

On the last visit to Laity, I also got to see again dozens of women with whom I have been deeply connected in our commitment to quiet time and prayer for many years. Our retreat together brought back wonderful memories and enlivened our relationships.

As always, I found the place itself—the canyon, the Frio River, the cliffs, the limestone, the gravelly roads, the stubby trees, the dips and rises—as familiar as a person, and as welcoming.

How is it that we connect with a place—and we all have those places—so deeply? What speaks to us that makes a certain location one of “our places?”

I think that part of this answer is that in a place that is like a companion to us, we let ourselves just “be there.” There isn’t anything we put between us and the place. There’s old language about “communing with nature.” It may be something like that.

I think we treat a place that is special to us as something to “talk to,” to “be with.” The place and we are relations. Often, in a place special to us, we are quieter than usual. Often we reflect more than we normally do. Often we spend time by ourselves. We sit. We stare. We glance. We are present. We discover. We remember. We see. We envision. We reverence. The place and we are partners in a deep process of communication.

I came across this morning a couple of quotes from the work of my dear, departed friend, Bill Stafford, the poet. These lines capture for me what it is like to connect and reconnect with a special place. I hope the lines spark you to think about your own special places and remember what you create for yourself when you are there.

“I embrace emerging experience.
I participate in discovery.
I am a butterfly.
I am not a butterfly collector.
I want the experience of the butterfly.”
—William Stafford

“Let the bucket of memory down into the well,
bring it up. Cool, cool minutes. No one
stirring, no plans. Just being there.”
—William Stafford

Have a wonderful spring!

Love,

Dr. Elizabeth Harper Neeld offers wisdom and practical insights to anyone whose life is in a time of transition, change, grief and loss of any kind. As an internationally recognized and accomplished consultant, and author of more than twenty books - including Tough Transitions and Seven Choices: Finding Daylight After Loss Shatters Your World - she is committed to work that helps lift the human spirit.