In the first part of this series, we had just arrived at Timber Creek Retreat House, set on 80 spectacular wooded acres in Drexel, Mo., just an hour from downtown Kansas City.
This awe-inspiring, 10,800 square-foot place of rest and reflection, with seven comfortable guest rooms, each evoking a rustic log-cabin feel, truly lives up to its mission: renew, refresh, return to life.
Its founders/directors, Tom and Beth Jacobs, spent almost two decades laying the groundwork for this contemplative home.
A fundamental distinction between this place and a retreat center is essential to its core heartbeat and in its name—Timber Creek Retreat House.
“Retreat centers have multiple rooms and conduct conferences and multiple workshops,” Tom explains. “Timber Creek was designed and placed in nature to emphasize an environment that’s intimate, cozy, private and quiet.”
AN ATTITUDE OF GRATITUDE
The Jacobs’ attitude of gratitude delves deeper than a simple “be-happy-with-what-you’ve-got” mantra. Their gratitude is for the love, wisdom, grace, abundance and consciousness that comes to and flows from them, with every guest experience.
It goes back to the early framing of the structure in 2011, when they stood in what would become the dining room, only vertical posts around them, and nothing but blue sky above. It was there that they set a plywood-topped sawhorse “Thanksgiving table,” on which to share a special lunch with the talented artisans and craftsman working side-by-side to bring their dream to fruition.
In today’s dining room, wholesome, gourmet family style meals, part of the retreat package, that nourish the body and soul are prepared by Executive Chef Patti Lowry, Tom’s younger sister. She and husband Jeff left successful careers in Breckenridge to join Tom and Beth in 2011.
“Patty infuses a lot of love into every meal she creates, and loves how that generates joy,” Tom says. Patty gently shifts the praise to how she lives her life. “We have to hold the vibration for everyone who comes here who needs it,” she says with a warm smile.
Guests are served at two stunning, nine-foot long trestle-style tables handcrafted and created by a family friend from oak trees severely damaged by northeast Missouri’s 2001 ice storm. “We wanted the tree to be able to tell the story,” Tom recalls. “So they were harvested and sat for several years in our next door neighbor’s barn, until their life could live on as our dining room table.”
Jeff’s talents as a former luxury homebuilder are evident everywhere you look. “Jeff loves the wisdom of nature and invests his creativity into the care of the building and the land,” Beth explains. “The amazing bridge in the woods crossing our creek is but one example of his artistry.”
If the comments in the guestbook are any indication, folks from across the country, and as far away as The Netherlands and England, are being transformed:
Thank you so much for dreaming this dream and making it continue. I am so full of gratitude.
I’ve been blessed to have experienced the renewal of purpose within me.
We felt so at ease, so nurtured and soothed after visiting your retreat house. It delivered the great respite that we needed!
You both are the most gracious, loving and talented of all hosts. … It was a truly divine and God-inspired weekend.
My favorite moments were every moment, and the space in between.
One guest even shared her journal entry with the Jacobs’ during a visit in 2013:
“There is so much love in this home, and it really does feel like one. From the immense thought put into how to gracefully meld the structure into the natural Missouri landscape, to the grand arching windows in the meditation room overlooking the pond and walking trail, to the family style dinner tables that aptly invite conversation and sharing amongst new and old friends.”
It’s obvious that every detail underwent deep, prayerful consideration of how to meld mind, body and spirit into an ambience that permits, and naturally entices, one to get away from it all, and at the same time reconnects you with your true essence. The spirit within. Our divine birthright. Whatever you call your one power and presence. There’s no need to name it or claim it if you haven’t already done so in your own personal and/or spiritual life before you come here, because it will find you.
“Beth and I have observed the high pace, and the stress and deadlines in people’s lives. And we have created a place and a space for people to experience a quality, rest-stop, from the hectic pace,” says Tom. “The retreat environment is meant to better equip them to return to their lives, conscious of their purpose and to help enhance the world.”
Beth adds, “There’s nothing wrong with go-go-go, but if you don’t stop-stop-stop, you burn-burn-burn. We also are very into practical spirituality in the sense of teaching people practices they can rely on in the nitty gritty of life’s challenges. To ‘retreat’ actually means to take a step back, pause, listen deeply, and realign with a greater consciousness.”
That is, after all, what a retreat house is supposed to do: welcome you “home to you.”
Timber Creek Retreat House, 816-619-3399, http://TimberCreekRetreat.org
Lysa Allman is a freelance writer and the publisher and editor of Amazing Escapades: Adventures for the Mind, Bod and Belly (www.amazingescapades.com). She can be reached at editor@amazingescapades.com.