The journey to my first Matt Talbot retreat started long before I ever picked up my first drink. I attended St. Ann Catholic School – now Holy Family School – in Phoenixville PA for my elementary education. I became an altar boy in the fifth grade following in the footsteps of my older brother Kevin.
The time period was pre-Vatican II, so a requirement for being an altar boy was the memorization of all the responses to the priest, in Latin. I have a vivid memory of being in bed, covered from head-to-toe in blankets and repeating the latin phrases over & over from a laminated page illuminated by my Cub Scout flashlight.
I was quickly fascinated by the world that was exposed to me as an altar boy. From all the behind the scene rituals that occurred in the sacristy, to the great solemnity of the latin mass. I felt privileged to be this close to God coming down into the bread and wine, and for the great dependence of the priest on the server to make all this happen, or so I thought.
Since we lived only a block away from the church I dutifully served any mass I was assigned. In those days there was a 6:30 AM and an 8:00 AM mass during the week. I loved the 6:30 AM mass for the exposure to a completely quiet world on the walk to mass, the smell of the priest’s after shave as he entered the sacristy, and having the nuns, my teachers, see me serving the mass that they all attended. I’m sure I scored some extra points with the sisters as they watched me serving on the altar as they all sat in the pews. “Oh he must have a vocation!” I’m sure they whispered to themselves. There was no higher complement for a grade school boy in those days.
One day when I was in the seventh grade we had a visitor come to our class. Our teacher was quite excited to have him there for he was a Franciscan priest in full Franciscan regalia, brown robe, and a white rope around his waist with three knots tied into one of the strands. Apparently this priest had also attended St. Ann School many years ago. He belonged to a Franciscan order call the Friars of the Atonement and his assignment was to a school in Harlem.
He was there to organize a weekend field trip to the headquarters of his order, a place called Graymoor. He invited all the 7th grade boys. There was some nominal charge for the trip and out of about 20 boys only 2 boys did not sign up to go. The plan was we would first travel to Harlem, to the school where he was presently assigned, and pick up some more 7th graders before continuing onto Graymoor. The trip was scheduled to begin on Friday April 5, 1968.
Tragically the day before our trip to Harlem and eventually Graymoor, Dr. Martin Luther King was murdered . After some very quick consultation with parents on the morning of April 5th the decision was made to continue with the trip, including our stop-off in Harlem.
In retrospect I’m not sure it was bravery or naiveté on the part of the parents to give their permission to go. 1968 was a racially volatile year with riots in many urban areas. Having half a bus full of white kids rolling into Harlem the day after Dr. King’s death does not seem wise now. However it proved one of the more memorable and unique parts of the weekend. Harlem was in shock on Friday as we picked up our fellow 7th graders, and it was in mourning when we returned on Sunday to drop them off.
That decision to allow us to go was providential for without that trip I would not have experienced Graymoor or had it reenter my life many years later.
The weekend at Graymoor was life changing as it contributed largely to my life long attraction to the religious life and my subsequent vocation to the diaconate.
Graymoor had a rich and interesting history. The facility was situated on a mountain with the Appalachian trail running through it. A convent, for the Sisters of the Atonement, was at the bottom of the mountain. Close to the top of the mountain was St. Christopher’s Inn, a free rehab for alcoholic men. At the peak of the mountain was the original monastery along with a massive building originally built as a seminary in the late 1950s. By this time however the seminary was being repurposed as a retreat house. There were several floors of bedrooms very spartanly furnished with two single beds, two tables & chairs, sink, mirror, and closet.
The interesting part of the monastery to me however was the old part, the original monastery. It reinvigorated the fascination of this hidden world and closeness to God that was not available to all.
The weekend was a mix of tours, explanation of the history of Graymoor, religious life, and walks throughout the mountain. We hung around with all the friars but our primary guide for the weekend was a short balding man named Brother Joe Marie.
Another foreshadowing of things to come in my life was a fascination with St. Christopher’s Inn and its inhabitants.
We were told that most of the men staying at St. Christopher’s were from New York City, they were men from skid row, street bums, drunks, and drug addicts. If they could make it out to Graymoor, some 40 miles north of Manhattan, they could stay there and dry out for a month.
Drunks and skid row ‘bums’ always fascinated me when we made family trips into Philadelphia as they were a constant presence in the waiting rooms of Reading Terminal Station.
Graymoor and the work of the friars was a perfect storm of the things that interested me as a 12 year old. I left Graymoor, the holy mountain as it is known, with a renewed idea of what I wanted to do with my life. I recall telling my mom when I returned that I wanted to be a priest and work with alcoholics. This is a perfect example of ‘watch what you pray for’, as I would achieve part of this wish, but with a hell of an on-the-job training program!
My vocation desire faded as I entered High School and our culture entered the height of the ’60s revolution, and all that came with it. But Graymoor remained in my mind as a exceedingly pleasant memory and longing for years to come.
Fast forward two decades, twenty very tough years, to my early 30’s. I was several years into a very active life in recovery and renewed interest in spirituality. At three years of sobriety I started working for my sponsor; not the best idea in retrospect however it did enable me to establish a career that has served me well throughout my life.
One weekend we had an out-going commitment to a group in Tarrytown, NY. At the meeting, while making small talk with a guy, he mentioned that he was going on a retreat to Graymoor the next weekend. Graymoor! That’s were I went when I was in grade school I thought! I had actually searched for Graymoor on maps several times but never found it since that was the name of the mountain, not the town where it was located. He told me it was a Matt Talbot retreat for men in AA. I’d never heard of Matt Talbot or any kind of retreat for recovering people.
The following Monday I called Graymoor to sign up for the next retreat. Unfortunaltely the next retreat was five months away, in September, but I reserved a spot and eagerly marked my calendar.
During the subsequent weeks my working relationship with my sponsor started to deteriorate. He wasn’t the best teacher of his trade, and I wasn’t the best student at the time. We mutually agreed that parting ways would the best thing for me to continue in my new profession. He didn’t want to put too much pressure on me so he picked up his Daytimer planner and flipped forward five months to September and picked the second Friday of that month to be my last working day. He thought that would give me ample time to find another job.
Being somewhat in shock from my firing I didn’t notice that my last day of work would be the day I was scheduled to leave for the retreat.
September rolled around and not having found another job I worked until the second Friday of September. I cleaned out my desk, got into my ’84 Subaru and headed out to Garrison New York, the home of Graymoor.
After having made that trip dozens of times now I know that there is not a worse time to start the trip than 5:00 PM on a Friday afternoon. My first solo drive to Graymoor, using gas station maps as my only guide, took around 5 hours.
I arrived at Graymoor and uncomfortably found my way around to register, get a room and find the first conference already in progress. I was quickly overcome with multiple waves of good feelings. One set was a sort of home coming to this place that I had fondly remembered and longed for over the years. On another level I had entered into community of my brethren, fellow recovering men, all speaking my language. They seemed to me to be a collection of the creme of the crop of all their home groups. Eloquent, knowledgeable, some very rough around the edges, but all very serious about the spirituality of their program.
Leading the workshop that first night was a short balding friar in a brown robe named Brother Joe Marie. The same brother that had been my host years ago was still there and was to reintroduce me to Graymoor, and explain how to do a retreat.
The weekend flew by and I truly did not want to leave on Sunday afternoon. I received my Matt Talbot medallion on Saturday night and experienced an additional sense of belonging as I had experienced when I entered the fellowship.
But as Brother Joe told us on Sunday morning, “Reality starts at the bottom of the mountain fellas”. While it was great to retreat from the world and focus on the relationship with our Higher Power, we weren’t to stay on the mountain.
I returned home, got another job, and quickly become a retreat junkie. For the next years 10 years I would make all of the four retreats that my group had at Graymoor. I also started to drag men from my home group to the Holy Mountain. None of them had the history I had with the location or the depth of experience I initially had, but almost all of them enjoyed the retreats and grew spiritually because of them.
While I now serve as retreat master for Matt Talbot retreats I still make an effort every year to make a retreat for myself, in addition to the ones I must make as a member of the clergy. The desire I expressed to my mother many years ago had indeed been fulfilled. I had become a member of the clergy – a deacon not a priest – and I do work with alcoholics through the 12th step.
