A Time to Enter

The season is summer, just seven days in the making and it is hot and humid, as the East Coast promises to be. For this sixth generation California girl whose ancestors pioneered the Napa Valley, just being here is both an act of daring as well as an act of faith.

The small town of Stony Point, NY has about ten thousand residents. It is dotted with structures that echo the charm of old New England, blasphemed now by Wal-Mart, Dunkin’ Donuts, a brand new Walgreen’s and the full complement of mall-type businesses and services. Ultimately it is more contemporary than not.

At the Stony Point Conference Center where I arrived on the afternoon of June 27, 2010, there is an array of structures arranged loosely around a circle of lawn called the Friendship Circle. There is a plaque mounted there that commemorates those who suffered and were lost in the Holocaust along with a Peace Pole installed near the Japanese Garden. These markers proclaim the environment that is devoted to the pursuit and practice of peace, justice and non-violence.

The sprawl of the Center is diminutive, yet gracious. It’s complex of buildings is bordered by Crickettown Road, a name that presumably speaks for itself. The Center is a hodge-podge of architectural forms ranging from 50’s barrack-like cinder block “lodges” to the Victorian elegance of the Gilmore Sloan house, built in 1889 and donated to the Presbyterian Church by the four Gilmour spinster sisters, who as local lore has it, kept a gentleman hidden on the top floor of the mansion. His ghost is said to reside there still. In actuality, the sisters lodged their banker, a frequent visitor, in the nearby carriage house.

Other structures at the Stony Point Center include the Kennedy houses, built in the 70’s, one of which is home to the Center’s co-director’s Rick and Kitty Ufford-Chase. The most recent addition of glass and stone, the Meditation Center, was dedicated in 2001 and is used for daily Morning Prayer and various other devotionals on some evenings. The main building, the Lakota, is situated at the mouth of the property and houses numerous administrative offices, meeting rooms and a spacious dining hall where three meals a day are prepared by regular paid staff and rotating volunteers. In addition, there is a childcare center, a small playhouse and several libraries. All of the structures are connected by a web of pathways and grassy lawns, which residents and guests share with the grazing deer that can be seen at almost anytime of the day.

And so I arrive, to be greeted unceremoniously and in the company of my daughter who has driven me and will help me unpack my shipped boxes before returning to her husband and home in Brooklyn. As she drives away, a gnawing emptiness grabs me and I feel like a child being left for the first time at camp!

During the rest of this first day and evening, showers of names rain down all around me. Jane and Mary and Mary Ann, Carolyn, Kelly and Katie,Varga, Joanna, Will and John. There are many more, both staff and volunteers. The names tumble around in my head and fade. Embarrassingly few of them attach themselves to a face for longer than the introduction. The notable exception to that distressing reality is John, probably because John is one of the few males in this predominantly female community. He is tall, lean, an expectant father and has the distinction of originating from Kashmir. These facts make him immediately memorable. Later I will learn that John was raised Muslim. In telling the story of his faith journey, he is careful to say that he came upon an aspect of his faith that “was not me”. It was neither right nor wrong, it just wasn’t who he was. Departing from a tenet of the faith, according to traditional Islam, was not permitted. Various measures would be taken to bring a deflector back into mainstream doctrinal belief, but if those measures failed to convince, the one who strays “must be killed.” John explained carefully, that it was to save the person from a life of sin. When one such person, a friend and colleague in justice work was one day executed, John knew that he would have to leave Kashmir. Much later, John will become Christian, entering the faith through the Catholic door. Today, John’s faith journey has become an interfaith one, as he lifts up multiple lenses through which to see and understand Divine Reality. I feel an affinity for this affable young man, probably because he is living the questions, as am I.

My first evening at Stony Point is spent attending a Luke 6 gathering. These are members of the Christian community who meet in a small group. It apparently is the third or fourth such gathering to discuss what it means to live in intentional faith community. There is a document, the fruits of former discussions, which begins with this statement: “We are a Christian community dedicated to the study and practice of nonviolence in solidarity with partners of other faith traditions.” Director Rick explains that each person in the Community of Living Traditions strives to be the best, most faithful practitioner of his/her own faith living according to the “best” of ones own tradition. So what does it mean to be the best, most faithful Christian in Christian community? The discussion for a time hovered there. It does not, necessarily involve the discipline of attending the morning chapel. There were those who adamantly clung to the right of option. It might have something to do with being open and honest, about being as authentic a human being as you can be. But that has some risks. For example, it is tricky for a Director supervising volunteers, as one of ours expressed. So can one have professional boundaries and still be “authentic?” The group reached no conclusions. Luke 6 and the Community of Living Traditions is a work in progress. One person expressed it by saying that the path is laid by walking.

And so as I walked back on the now darkened paths, I pondered what being the best of my tradition means to me. Perhaps because I am new, needing to artfully “fit in” to a community already in progress, one thing that it means to me is hospitality. Hospitality is a theme interwoven throughout the Old Testament. It also epitomizes how Christ related to everyone he encountered. I thought about the radical hospitality of Christ. So on the first eve of my one-year stay at Stony Point, living in intentional community will include striving to extend radical hospitality to those who come to stay at the Center, those who lodge in the Gilmour Sloan House where I am the assigned host for the year, but also and especially to those other residents who proceeded me here. One way to walk the Christian path is to live the radical hospitality modeled by Jesus.

This is the season for entry, for beginning, for being new and clueless. May I enter with an open and hospitable heart.