The Rev. Michael Jarrett, My Fellow American
And my best friend of 35 years
Check out thetrinitymission.org for a use of the Scriptures in a way of daily prayer, as well as for information on upcoming quiet retreats
Had my sister not intervened and paid my way to go on a quiet retreat, I’m ashamed to say that it likely would have been many more opportunities missed to go on this excellently facilitated retreat. The facilitator/officiant of what I will call an intro to silence and solitude as a spiritual discipline, in the context of worship, happened to be my best friend of many years, with whom I helped to catalyze theTrinityMission.org, a daily prayer podcast, in 2012. While I might deserve a head nod for having been there at the beginning, it simply would not exist had it not been for the Rev. Michael Jarrett, who tirelessly has facilitated online prayer for thousands since. I had been the voice of Evening Prayer for a season, but once I joined the Army to be a Chaplain, and especially after I became more permanently disabled by surgeries, I could not keep up the pace, and since my near death experience in 2015 of a pulmonary embolism caused by a couple of unsuccessful surgeries on my ankle, with ensuing major thoracic surgery, he has been the bearer of the torch since.
The “Big House,” at the Oblate La Parra Center
I had once worked on the border between Mexico and the United States in the late 90s early 2000s, going back and forth to Mexico to take groups of Americans, usually teenagers who had never worked a hard day in their life, with Crossroads Missions, a mission that worked to build affordable housing for the poor in Piedras Negras, Mexico. When the Lord called me to be the Director of Hispanic Ministry for Esperanza del Barrio in Chattanooga, Michael replaced me in the role of devotional speaker and worship leader for that effort. Michael met his future wife on one of those trips, and I had the honor of officiating at his wedding. My daughter, Michael’s goddaughter, got to be the flower girl. He later also became an Anglican minister/missioner, and has since planted a ministry and mission in Harlingen, TX called Trinity on the Border, while continuing to maintain theTrinityMission.org. His wife, Erica, is a medical doctor who does medical ministry for Trinity on the Border.
Michael and I go way back to high school, where we attended Brookstone High School in Columbus together. A year behind me, Michael matriculated to the University of the South at Sewanee the same year I transferred from West Point to be a sophomore there. While she didn’t go to high school with us, my wife, Elizabeth, has been a friend of Michael’s almost as long as I have. He and I were both on Young Life staff at the same time, we both worked for the same ministry on the border, and we both found our way toward ordination in the Anglican Church somewhere along the Canterbury Trail. I have been a life-long Episcopanglican, to coin a word, but Michael and my wife are both transplants from the Presbyterian tradition. Sewanee’s rootedness in the Anglican tradition had an impact on all of us. We can all trace our influence back to Growing in Grace, a ministry started by the Rev. Russell Levenson, who at the time served as an ordained Assistant to the Chaplaincy at Sewanee, but has lately been the Rector of St. Martin’s Episcopal Church in Houston. You all may know him better as the preacher at the funerals of President George H.W. and Barbara Bush.
The author and Michael Jarrett, on a road trip in 1995 from California back to the Southeast by way of Laity Lodge in Leakey, TX, where we served as camp counselors.
Fast forward to the present, and I had the distinct privilege on this Quiet Retreat of breathing in the breath of God through Christ in my friend Michael. By reason of knowing him as long as I have, I had some idea of what to expect with respect to the space he would create for us to be more present to God so that God could be more present to us. It is difficult for me to experience anything in the Church without evaluating it, and I was mostly able to push that aside and just enjoy my time with God in the presence of Michael and nearly a dozen other sojourners into the difficult place of being alone with God, with my own thoughts and prayers, in community.
I arrived a day early and got a bit of a tour of what Michael has been doing on the border to establish a worshiping community in the Anglican way of Christian discipleship, reaching out in meaningful mission and ministry in the cross-cultural location of southeast Texas. Getting to know the story, although I knew much of it from our conversations over the phone over the years, in a sensual way, boots on the ground, in the flesh, and getting to have him show and tell me what Jesus has been up to among them and through them counted as a high privilege. Imagine taking a large rough hewn diamond out to examine it carefully as it reflected the light, with portions not so rough hewn anymore, and you’ll have something of an idea of what it was like to see what the Lord had wrought through a dear friend. Michael has received much of the Lord’s own heart for others, for the grieving, for the dying, for the lost, and for those who feel alone. He also happens to serve as a volunteer Chaplain for the Coast Guard in the area, and he spoke of the mourning and beauty of a burial at sea of a veteran the previous week.
We’re a little older now….
I shadowed him as he prepared everything for the retreat, the soups, the sandwiches, the shopping at HEB, so that everything would be in place for the sojourners arriving the next day. I listened and asked questions, as any good guest of a good host would, but because of shared history and his knowledge of our lives, there were many things to speak of, but they came out, over our time together, in unforced rhythms. It was delightful to get to see Erica and Michael’s daughter, Zenie, again, even though I’ve only seen her in snapshots of her growing up years, and it was a joy to know that my own daughter, Anne Elise, had gotten to be a nanny for her for a time while the family was on vacation—mostly—on South Padre Island a year or so ago.
Trinity on the Border Facilities and Worship Space
Trinity on the Border Facilities and Worship Space
By the time we started driving up to La Parra where the Oblates of St Mary the Immaculate host groups of spiritual wanderers, we had some drive-through Whataburgers in hand. We drove into the Kenedy ranch area of 500,000 original acres where we would find respite from the busy-ness of our souls, if our souls were to allow us. The severity of the landscape of the ranch lands of southeast Texas gave way to a beautiful oasis, where the former mansion of the Kenedy family has been turned into a beautiful spot, in the middle of a desolate place, where an amazingly original local, Pablo, who grew up in the same community called “the Colony” that provided generations of workers into the Cowboy Cemetery, keeps the grounds and maintains the facilities. Pablo’s children have all served or are still serving in the U.S. Armed Forces.
The grove near the Big House has herds of deer grazing quietly most of the time
The oasis of our hosts, the Oblates, is a spectacular stand of oak trees hundreds of years old, with Spanish moss hanging from each, interspersed with several different species of palm trees, a collision between the rugged ranch land of south Texas and the quiet coastal areas of the Texas shoreline along the Gulf of Mexico. The Kenedy mansion, not-too-cleverly called “the Big House,” is a typical basement rancher, except the rancher has three stories and is a Spanish colonial style monstrosity. Built like a fortress, it even sports historic defensive positions in its turrets to ward off any who might have come for reasons other than peace and quiet in yesteryear. Herds of deer graze quietly in the shade of the mighty oaks and palms surrounding the ranch house, and in just about every nook and cranny of the Big House and the Property, there are chapels large and small for quiet times for prayer, communing with God, for confession, and for adoration. After unpacking and settling in, Michael and I drove up for a dinner in a seafood bar and grill on Baffin Bay, as the Oblate La Parra Center sits only four miles from the coast, with a 180 degree view of the vast expanse of the Gulf.
The 1000-yard stare of a true visionary, the Rev. Michael Jarrett.
The following day, guests began arriving to get settled in before an initial gathering at 2:00 p.m., and we spoke to one another about who we were, where we were coming from, a bit about our families, and most of all, what had brought us to this silent retreat. One of our number had just found it on the internet of all places. Some of our number had known Michael for years, even going back to our days when we were camp counselors at Laity Lodge in the mid-1990s, and now were pastors and ministry leaders. Still others had mutual friends of mine and Michael’s and they were drafting on someone’s previous experience who had recommended him and his retreats so highly that they had come. When it came to me, I was ashamed to say that even though Michael was my best friend of over three decades, I was here because my sister had known I needed it, and she had paid my way. Secondly, to be honest about it, I had to admit that even though I loved the spot, and I loved my friend, I was feeling pretty “meh” about the silence part. I would’ve preferred, at that moment perhaps, to just simply drive over to South Padre Island and vacation with my friend, Michael.
But move into silence we did. Now, I have to pause here to say that one of the reasons I am wary of silence and solitude is because I’ve done it before. Many times. In fact, while I was a pastor in Knoxville, I had a spiritual director in common with many other pastors named Buddy Odom, whose ministry “Echo Resources” was primarily provided by Terry Douglass of PET Scan notoriety and founder of the Provision Foundation. One of my mentors who has been “Jesus with skin on” to me has been this extraordinary man Buddy Odom, whose wife Kathie Odom is a wonderful artist. He is the one who first introduced me to silence and solitude, and he, for years, took us up into the mountains of North Carolina once a month to be by ourselves with God… in community.
So whenever I am now going on a silent or quiet retreat, by myself or especially with others with a set schedule, I experience some inner turmoil because I know that the Lord is going to do some business with me and in me, also, especially, if I haven’t been in awhile. In Mark 6, before the feeding of the 5000, which in very timely fashion my Bible Study feasted on this morning, Jesus calls his disciples after a very busy time for them in ministry to a desolate place to be by themselves with him, “as people were coming and going and they didn’t even have time to eat. I have been in “full-time ministry” for a long time, nearly 30 years, with the last 10 or so as an Army Chaplain. It had been awhile since I was going to be this attentive to my own soul’s inner turmoil. Those closest to us, when we’ve been sent out by the Lord for a long stretch of being “keeper’s of the vineyards” without being attentive to keeping our own, we can say with the bride in Song of Solomon 1, “but my own vineyard, I have not kept, and we will know when it’s time for us to go to a desolate place to commune with the Lord.
The library at La Parra once had 30,000 volumes, but through a donation to a seminary, it has been reduced to 3000 volumes available for guests.
Michael, knowing this about all of us because he spent so much of his time getting to know himself, as he has devoted himself almost singularly to prayer while many of the rest of us have busied ourselves with an unsustainable pace in life and ministry, had a more gentle way of leading us into the unforced rhythms of buttressing our days with prayer services, or “offices” as they are called in the tradition of the Church. Thomas Cranmer, the founder of our Anglican feast, instituted a use of the Scriptures in a way of prayer for all people, lay and ordained, monastics and the normative, because he understood that the Scriptures are God breathed, and they are food for our desperate souls which we have been starving when we distance ourselves from the daily ingestion of God’s Word. So Cranmer broke the biblically saturated prayer services out of the monastic communities solely and into the rhythm and Rule of Life for every parish, everywhere, for everyman. With a compassion reminiscent of his Savior, who sees us all like sheep in need of a Shepherd, Michael led us gently and without legalism into spiritual disciplines that we might carry back into our daily lives, rather than an expectation of “something happening,” or a mountaintop experience. He simply led us, explained to us, demonstrated to us, and coaxed us into actually believing that it was good to be us, here, in the presence of God.
One of the many spaces at La Parra set aside for reflection, contemplation, and prayer.
It was this prayer he suggested that I sat with throughout my time at La Parra: “Lord, it is good to be me, here, with you.” We occasionally broke silence once a day to give space to debrief, rather than simply enforcing an austere and legalistic monastic silence all the way through. Not everybody needed to speak, but there are those of us who are external processors of information who will just simply burst if we aren’t given that opportunity, especially in an introduction to silence. One of our number got stuck in the same place I did: “Lord, it is good to be me….” I didn’t have a problem with the rest. “It IS good to be here, as it is beautiful, peaceful, and restful. And it IS good to be with the Lord in a desolate place,” I thought. “But can I honestly say, with integrity, that I believe that it has been good to be ME?”
I have to admit that part caught me. I am grateful for all the Lord has done for us. For His faithfulness to us. “For our creation, preservation, and all the blessings of this life,” as the Prayer of General Thanksgiving says, which we recited every day in the prayer service, “and above all for your immeasurable love in the redemption of the world, and for the means of grace, and for the hope of glory.” To all that I can say “Amen.” But somewhere along the line I lost my gratitude to Him for being ME… in particular. I will be processing this revelation for some time. I can theologically assent to knowing that I have been God-breathed into existence, and it is a high privilege for Him to have breathed His Spirit into my particular jar of clay a deposit of the treasures of the Kingdom; however, I know that there is some distance between what I know in my head and having that travel the distance down to my heart.