How Do We Say Goodbye?

The Jesuit Center for Spiritual Growth in Wernersville, PA is closing its doors next month. For those of us who have been formed and sustained by this holy place, the closure is cause for weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth. Can there also be peace, gratitude and acceptance?

Here’s the reflection I wrote on my final morning there . . .

June 4, 2021

How do we say goodbye to Wernersville?

For those of us who have been touched and formed by our time at the Jesuit Center—and we number in the thousands—this is not a rhetorical question. August 15th approaches. Waiting lists overflow for every remaining retreat, as people try to get here one last time, each making a personal pilgrimage to our various holy places.

This spring, I’ve been fortunate to offer a program at the Center during four consecutive weeks, giving me ample opportunity to wander the house and meander the grounds. Having made my first retreat at Wernersville as a college student 34 years ago, I find these walkabouts rich with memory. Yet, each step is accompanied by a quiet drumbeat, painfully echoing, it’s the last time . . . the last time . . . the last morning watching the sunrise from the east garden . . . the last walk to the fishpond . . . the last evening curled up in a library nook . . . the last bedtime prayer in the chapel balcony . . . the last contemplation punctuated by a train whistle, urgent as the voice of God. It is excruciating. How do we say goodbye?

One retreatant had an idea. Upon arrival, Elaine announced that, on behalf of friends at a distance unable to make a final visit, she’d be taking home a bag of soil from the property. In the good earth of Wernersville—even transplanted to flowerpots in distant locations—life would continue to flourish. She was sure of it.

Elaine’s idea had solid scriptural roots. In the second book of Kings, we meet Naaman the Syrian, a military commander with leprosy who travels to visit the prophet Elisha at the suggestion of a captive Israelite servant girl. Elisha sends word that Naaman should plunge himself seven times in the river Jordan. Initially put off by the command—such an ordinary act, such an unimpressive river—Naaman relents, goes for a sevenfold dip, and emerges from the water both healed and converted. “Now I know that there is no God in all the earth, except in Israel,” he says. “Please let me have two mule-loads of earth, for your servant will no longer make burnt offerings or sacrifices to any other god except the LORD” (2 Kings 5:15, 17).

Until I started trying to figure out how to say goodbye to Wernersville, Naaman’s request made me chuckle. Having figured out that there was only one God, why wouldn’t he also realize that he could worship that God anywhere—that he didn’t need special dirt to stand on? Scripture commentary notes that Naaman was suffering from “a common ancient misconception that linked and limited a deity to a particular territory.” Ah, yes. Poor Naaman. An ancient misconception.

And yet . . .

Sometimes the dirt matters. As I have been listening to countless people grieving the impending loss of the Jesuit Center, the stories they tell are about such particular spots. This tree. That vista. This corner of the garden. That angle of light in the Holy Spirit chapel. God has been very real for us here, and the house carries the weight of those experiences in its bones.

Praying in the east cloister walk recently, I said to God, “This is the place where I learned to encounter You.” I was thinking of my first retreat, where I had a powerful introduction to imaginative prayer, but also of the many subsequent retreats where God continued to show up in reliably surprising ways. What came to me immediately was this: Please remember that the important word in that sentence is “You,” not “place.”

Oh. Right. Yes.

The holiness of this place—this thin place, where the saints and beloved of God have walked and prayed and wept and laughed for nine decades—has facilitated our encounter with the Divine. But what happened inside these gates always has been for the good of the world beyond them, as generations of Jesuits, spiritual directors, and retreatants have carried that living relationship wherever we went. God has been the one doing the work, and God is everywhere—firmly linked to this place, but never limited to it.

Losing our locus of effortless encounter is painful. But everything important is already on the inside—of each of us. To ease the transition, perhaps we could return to that image of Naaman’s mule-loads of earth. What do we need to take with us, that we may know how to encounter God elsewhere?

More simply: What’s in your mule cart?

I don’t mean the question literally (though coffee cans of dirt might start disappearing, I know). Rather, I’d suggest, this is a propitious time to do an inventory. What are you really taking with you? What’s already inside? What are the gifts of your history here? What insights, what healings, what conversations and conversions, what discovered freedoms or renewed commitments are yours because of this place? What relationships abide, unbound by these walls? All these things are firmly packed in your metaphorical mule-cart.

I am writing this from a comfortable recliner in a third-floor bedroom on the main corridor, looking out over the Grove and Hain’s cemetery beyond. I’m pretty sure I just woke up here for the last time. In a few minutes, I will close my laptop, zip my suitcase, and stand in the doorway trying to absorb as much as I can before I depart for good. I wish I could bottle the smell, mysteriously unchanging over the years.

How do Isay goodbye? With a full heart. Grateful, grateful, grateful to have had this place for such a long time. Thankful for the Ignatian education I received here: a 34-year practicum in the movements of the Spirit. Remembering these words of the First Principle and Foundation: Everything has the potential of calling forth in me a deeper response to my life in God.

Even this?

Even this.

Amen.