I always listen for the pileated woodpecker as I walk the winding trails at St. Francis Springs Prayer Center in Stoneville.

I’ve returned to this place often as I grapple with embracing the crone that I am and seek to understand this season of life. My home, an old cabin in Germanton, sits unhurried now, after years of holding a houseful of children and the energy their activities entailed. My husband retired, so I did, too, from the part-time job I’d held for several years. I’d looked in the mirror and realized that what I thought were sun-kissed highlights in my hair were actually threads of gray from six decades of living.

My mind sang, Are you running out of time?, snippets from the musical Hamilton. And I wondered, What do I do now?

The prayer center has welcomed around 125,000 guests, many of whom stop outside the lodge to gaze upon the statue of St. Francis embracing the leper. photograph by Joey Seawell

Probing this answer is what brought me to St. Francis Springs, a 155-acre wooded retreat in Rockingham County that’s welcomed thousands of guests each year for day trips and retreats. Here, the resonating message is that I don’t have to “do” anything. Rather, the space urges, just be.

Trees whisper with movement and join their branches in an arch above me. A stump flicks its ears, and I realize it’s really a docile deer resting in mottled light. We watch each other patiently as a crow calls and a dainty white butterfly dances over the creek.

It’s clear I’m in a sacred space.

• • •

On this particular visit, I’ve come to St. Francis Springs for an overnight stay. Alone. The rich smell of leaf decay reminds me of my childhood, and I follow the creek, miss my turn, talk to a turtle, and admire petite red chanterelles squeezing through leaf mulch. A red-shouldered hawk calls, and while I inadvertently walk the Stations of the Cross in reverse, the messages of peace still resonate, no matter where I start. A bulbous bacterial crown gall shows me that imperfection can be beautiful.

Its mission of hospitality, justice, and contemplation permeates the prayer center. Before the lodge kneels a statue of St. Francis embracing the leper, a reminder to care for the vulnerable. Guests can stay in the cherry-paneled lodge, group cottages, or single hermitages. There are spaces for gatherings and nooks for quiet contemplation. Volunteers assist with cleaning rooms, cooking meals, washing dishes, cutting grass, mailing letters, building carpenter bee catchers, and more. Meanwhile, the friar in residence, Friar Bob Menard, O.F.M., offers daily prayer times, Sunday Mass, and spiritual direction for those who seek it. He also washes dishes several times a week.

Friar Bob Menard, O.F.M., provides spiritual care for visitors. photograph by Joey Seawell

At mealtimes, some enjoy fellowship in the dining room, but I prefer to sit alone outside, watching a wren fly back and forth as she feeds her brood. Afterward, I visit the bookstore and its vast selection from diverse authors, browsing topics like justice and peace, prayer and contemplation, creativity, gender and sexuality, grief, environmental studies, and more. Nearby, the Library of the Disinherited holds about 2,000 books by African American, Native American, and women authors and includes a banned book section. Intentionality permeates this place, even down to the bamboo toilet paper.

• • •

I’m grateful Friar Louis Canino, O.F.M. — whom everyone knows as “Father Louie” — didn’t give up after he first felt called to create an interfaith contemplative prayer center while serving in Pennsylvania in the early 1980s. He waited to implement his vision as he spent three years in Boston as rector of a massive urban ministry center with a breakneck schedule. Each year when he took his required weeklong retreat, Father Louie almost always chose to spend his time in silence.

Friar Louis Canino Photography courtesy of St. Francis Springs

“I really believe God speaks to us profoundly through silence,” he says, calling the practice “transformational.”

In 1989, Father Louie received a sabbatical to study spirituality in Pittsburgh. He proposed his idea of a prayer center again, but his superior asked him to relocate to North Carolina to lead the Franciscan Center, a new storefront ministry in downtown Greensboro.

“Even though I didn’t want to do this, I came,” Father Louie says as he recalls honoring his vow of obedience. The desire for a prayer center continued to tug, and, fortunately, the move to Greensboro connected him to a network of helpers.

“God used me, but it’s really God’s idea,” he says.

The author says she affirmed her connection to the divine while on a weekend retreat. photograph by Joey Seawell

In 1998, Father Louie proposed the concept once more, and this time received a green light. Along with a steering committee, he sought land near Greensboro that would be far enough for guests to feel away from their daily responsibilities, but close enough not to preclude taking time away. The site in Stoneville has trails and streams and an 80-foot elevation change. The land embodies St. Francis of Assisi’s connection to nature and commitment to contemplation.

“We believe nature reveals to us the beauty of God, and God speaks to us in nature,” Father Louie says. “I wanted to have a haven where we could get together to praise our God and also realize we are all connected.”

• • •

Back outdoors, I try to tread silently, stepping over damp tulip poplar petals atop the gravel path as I spot wordless life lessons everywhere: Seedlings sprout from decaying stumps while toppled trees nourish yellow patches and artist’s bracket fungi. I walk the labyrinth, though I’m not sure I’m doing it right, then remember imperfection is inescapable. The San Damiano Chapel provides respite from a loud world that calls for action as I’m surrounded by wall-size windows framing nature up close. This morning, no one is here but me.

“Some people want a deeply contemplative experience,” says St. Francis Springs Director Steve Swayne, who first came here for a retreat in 2012. “Others want rest. Others want to heal.”

Since its inception, the prayer center has welcomed guests from more than 40 states and nine countries, each on different paths in their spiritual journeys. About a third of guests seek solace as individuals. “I hope that silence will speak to them of what they need to be in their life,” Father Louie says.

Though it sounds simple, for me, finding silence takes intention and commitment. And practice. It’s why I return here again and again, seeking — and receiving — this profound connection to the divine.

• • •

Swayne says that the silence offered at the prayer center provides time to listen to God and to yourself — “to practically understand how to live this life.

“In our society, oftentimes people ask, ‘What do you do?’ Not ‘Who are you?’ Not ‘What do you want to be?’” he says. “This place asks, ‘Who do you want to be?’ And that can be incredibly jarring. You’ve got to be still so you can really start to understand who you are. That’s what this place is: It offers the opportunity for people to become.”

Guests at St. Francis Springs can take a moment for themselves at the Celestial Waterfall Garden. photograph by Joey Seawell

I’m only 40 minutes from home when I venture to this sacred place, and yet I feel a world away from the chores of my daily life. Boulder faces watch me loop through the woods yet again. I move a wet worm off the dry path and listen to water tumble in the Celestial Waterfall Garden.

Twenty-five years ago, on a cold Sunday morning in April before the prayer center began serving guests, Father Louie led a Eucharistic Celebration with the steering committee at an aged rock formation now named Carceri Grotto. Resurrection fern finds a foothold there in crevices that have captured decayed debris, a living lesson in resilience and rebirth.

It’s so quiet here, with so much to hear.

For more information, visit stfrancis.today.