Saturday, June 20, 1998

To retreat and reflect

By MARIE MONTGOMERY / Raleigh News and Observer

DURHAM, N.C. -- As she drives into a secluded world of fragrant greenery, JoAnna Reilly starts shedding the everyday cares and pent-up tensions.

She knows what awaits her on her regular trips to Avila Retreat Center in North Durham: long contemplative walks around the wooded grounds; sustained solitude at a favorite bench; prayers before a giant stone crucifix; journal writing or reading in the library; good meals eaten in silent companionship with others who share her need for peace and comfort.

"It's absolute and utter peace, almost impossible to describe," said Reilly, a Durham resident who has depended upon Avila as a source of solace since her husband's death five years ago. "No matter what's going on in your life, when you come into the parking lot, you can already begin to feel it. I started going there during the worst period of my life, and it's a very special place to me."

Catholics like Reilly have turned to retreats and monasteries to renew their faith and refresh their spirit since the Middle Ages. But in recent years, Avila and other centers throughout the South have begun serving an increasing number of Protestants seeking the same intense, introspective communion with God. Jews also have found solace in retreats.

"Some of our members go to monasteries; some go to retreat centers," said the Rev. Mahan Siler, pastor at Pullen Memorial Baptist Church in Raleigh, N.C. "There's been quite an upsurge among our congregation in taking retreats."

So much so, in fact, that many retreat centers have long waiting lists for admittance. Siler's colleague at Pullen Baptist, John Hilpert, has taken a sabbatical to create a new retreat center near Rocky Ford, N.C., about an hour's drive from Raleigh.

"Our Catholic brothers and sisters have maintained traditions that Protestants have abandoned until about 10 or 20 years ago," Hilpert said.

Hilpert and others who direct retreats have witnessed a growing number of Christians who have abandoned more traditional family sightseeing vacations in favor of soul-searching in restful settings.

"In this busy world, you need to pull back to get a perspective of where you're going to go," Hilpert said.

Families can and do go on retreats together, although the retreats that cater to families with young children have more of an emphasis on recreation. The Kanuga Conference Center in the western mountain region of Hendersonville, N.C., a 70-year-old mainstay of the Episcopal Church, sometimes houses several generations of the same family for a summer vacation that also serves as a family reunion and uplifting spiritual experience.

"Some of the people we see each year who are now grandparents and great-grandparents came in their childhood," said Frank Ballard, Kanuga's marketing director. "It's not unusual to have three and four generations of a family coming together from all over the country each year. This is oftentimes a place where they will go to reconnect."

Martha Bee Anderson and her husband Allen are loyal 25-year patrons at Kanuga, which she calls "made to order for us."

"There are couples that we see every year, and you go there and you just pick up where you left off," said Anderson, a resident of Hampton, S.C., who loves Kanuga's setting and its proximity to her son, daughter-in-law and grandchildren. "We keep up if anybody's sick, and we send Christmas cards to each other. That's the beauty of this retreat."

At Kanuga, visitors can come simply as guests during eight weeks of the summer, Thanksgiving and Christmas, and participate in a loosely structured retreat that provides lots of time for outdoor recreation and art classes along with daily religious services. Or they can come with their local churches on scheduled retreats that have more structured programs.

For those who really want to get away from it all, some retreat centers provide hermitages, which are simply small rooms with no running water or electricity. Avila Retreat Center offers a hermitage experience, and Hilpert built his own on his property in Franklin County several years ago.

Sister Damian Marie Jackson runs the 51-acre Avila center and serves as its spiritual director, offering personalized retreats to those who want to come alone and reflect upon a particular issue or problem.

"There's enough room here that people can be away, yet come together for meals and group events," Jackson said. "People are finding that it's much more productive for them to come away for some quiet time rather than taking a normal vacation."

Avila, which once served as a center for an order of contemplative nuns, has been steadily growing over the past 15 years since Jackson "rescued" the property, she said.

"Adrian Van Kaam, a Dutch priest, said that every civilization needs a value-radiating or value-communicating center, and if it does not have it, it will die," Jackson said. "I think Avila is one of those value-radiating centers."

Jackson's focus has made Avila an ecumenical center welcoming people from all denominations. "Baptists and Methodists come regularly," she said. "They'll say to me, 'Sister, teach us how to meditate,' and I'll say, 'Yes, if you teach us how to do some more spontaneous prayer.' We're coming to a realization that we have so much to share with each other."

The Rev. Wallace Kirby, a retired Methodist minister and the denomination's former Durham district superintendent, is a regular at Avila. He said his frequent interludes at the center gave him the focus to write a book.

"I was very busy as a superintendent, but I guarded my days at Avila very carefully -- I'd block them out in my appointment book," said Kirby.

For Reilly, who spent 25 years traveling the world with her husband in the U.S. Air Force before settling in Raleigh, one of many small miracles that she treasures at Avila is the nonverbal communication during silent retreats.

"You realize how much you miss at meals when you talk," she said. "When you're silent, you are very conscious of all the people at the table and if they needed something, you would immediately know it. In a strange way, you focus on people more deeply than you would with conversation."

Because of the general shoestring budgets and donations, costs for retreats hover on the low side compared to hotel accommodations. A week at Kanuga runs about $450 per person with double occupancy, and that includes all meals. A weekend at Avila costs about $100 per person.

The more structured retreats don't suit every person's style or taste, and retreat leaders said they have found that people tend to value the retreat experience more as they get into their 30s and older.

"The people I provide spiritual guidance for tend to be in their late 30s or older," said Pullen Baptist's Hilpert. "That's when they start asking the deeper questions about where's the meaning, where's the purpose in their lives. They've usually achieved what they want to in their careers and they're saying, 'Is that all there is?' "

Some retreats are quite a bit of work, such as a series of lectures designed to stimulate discussions of important issues. The Jewish organization, B'Nai B'rith, holds annual retreats featuring distinguished authors and scholars at the Wildacres Retreat Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A group of rabbis also hosts an annual interfaith conference at Wildacres, inviting clergy from Christian denominations to participate. Representatives from the Jewish, Catholic, Lutheran and African Methodist faiths, along with a professor of divinity from the University of Chicago, will present this year's program on defining spirituality, said retreat organizer Leo Hoffman, a retired rabbi.

"The idea is to get people to realize how much more we have in common than what divides us," said Hoffman, a Charlotte resident. "We've come a long way."

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service.)