When Beauty Does the Preaching
When Beauty Does the Preaching
THE COMPASS | Wanderings | Friday, May 1
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I usually arrive at this page with words already forming. I like writing. I like using words to share something that has moved me. Today I arrive with photographs.
Lorri and I spent the last several days at an Oasis Rest retreat for ourselves before Stillpoint opens its doors in four days to the first wave of weary pastors and a missionary couple coming from Europe. We wanted to rest before we could offer rest to others. We wanted to be filled before we tried to pour anything out.
The location: the Olympic rainforest ecosystem in Northwest Washington five miles south of the Canadian border. The mission: simple. Rest. Receive. Let God’s goodness catch up with us.
Yesterday we walked Haystack Hill.
We weren’t ready for what was waiting.
The trail begins small. The forest offers its gifts close to the ground first as if asking whether you are paying attention. We were.
Pacific Bleeding Heart, trembling on its arching stem. Pacific Forget-Me-Nots, impossibly blue, each one a small stained-glass window held up to the filtered light. They bloom down here in the damp and the shadow, unseen if you’re in a hurry, content to be what they are.
Then the yellows and the pinks begin to show up against the deep greens, refusing not to be noticed.
The trail climbed. And then the trees parted, the sky opened wide, and there they were: the mountains of southern British Columbia. Canada.
You cannot see Canada from most places in the United States. From the top of Haystack Hill, five miles away, you can. We lingered, thinking of friends in Canada.
On the descent, the rhodos were waiting.
They were extravagant. There is no other word. These were not timid offeirngs. They were boisterous, high-spirited, as if the shrubs knew now was the time to break out in dance and song.
“Beauty will save the world” Dostoevsky wrote in the late 1860s. Walking Haystack Hill, I agree. There is something in the encounter with genuine beauty that reorders a person, quiets the noise, stops the shouting, loosens the grip of anxiety, and whispers something true about the character of the One who made all of this.
And then I turned around.
Lorri had her face buried in a cluster of lilacs growing wild along the trail. Every sense she had was leaning in. Her heart was being filled with every breath.
There was one more gift before we left. I spent unhurried time in conversation with our Oasis Rest host, a pastor and friend I receive as a spiritual guide. We talked about the work ahead, about the weight of it, and about the grace of it. He spoke into my life with the same gentle authority the lilacs spoke into Lorri’s. By the time we said our goodbyes and pointed the car back toward Glacier Country, something had settled in both of us.
Our hearts are ready. We are ready for guests.
And here is what I believe will happen in the weeks ahead: pastors who have been running on fumes will come to Stillpoint and find the same thing Lorri and I found on Haystack Hill. They will slow down long enough to look close to the ground. They will find bleeding hearts and forget-me-nots. They will look up and see mountains. And they will remember that the God they have been laboring to serve has never stopped being beautiful, and that beauty, given time and space, will restore what exhaustion has taken.
They will go home renewed. And they will bring something back with them - the beauty, goodness, and mercy of God into communities and places aching from the ugliness of division, noise, and social disintegration. That is Stillpoint’s quiet wager: that a rested pastor carries healing in a way a depleted one simply cannot.
If you are a pastor, a ministry leader, or missionary reading this, I want you to know there is a place for you. Stillpoint exists precisely for those who pour out and need to be poured into. Penn Cottage sits near Glacier National Park, surrounded by the kind of beauty that has been doing its quiet work for centuries. Oasis Rest retreats are unhurried, safe, encouraging. You simply come. You rest. You walk. You breathe. You remember.
If this stirs something in you, I would love to hear from you. You can learn more and inquire about a stay at oasisrest.org.
A Note for Those Drawn to the Beauty You’ve Seen Here
Something stirred in me on Haystack Hill beyond the simple pleasure of the walk. Standing among those flowers, inside that cathedral forest, looking north into British Columbia, I found myself thinking: this is exactly the kind of place where spiritual formation happens without trying.
And so I asked.
The answer was yes.
The Cohort 3 residency retreat for the Certificate Program in Spiritual Direction will be held in this same retreat center near the Canadian border in late September or early October. If you can get to Seattle, WA, or Bellingham, WA, or Vancouver, British Columbia, you can get there. The border crossing is minutes away. The beauty is waiting.
The Certificate Program in Spiritual Direction is for those who sense a calling to walk alongside others in their interior journey with God and help them discover a more beautiful, attentive life with Jesus. We read. We practice. We meet in community. And we retreat together into places like this, where the land itself becomes a teacher.
Finally, here is my invitation to you. Wherever you are: go for a walk this week. Take your phone. Take some photos. Look close to the ground and then look up at the sky. Then share what you find with your family, your Bible study group, your coffee shop table, your coworkers. Beauty is not a luxury. It is a language. And the world is starving to hear it spoken.
IHG,
— Gene
I just went out for no other reason but to behold and smell the pink roses growing beside the bakery in a neighboring village.