Seeking The Soul: Larry Jay

Seeking the Soul: Larry Jay

By Associate Director, Rev. Michael Reed

Each month in 2024, we spend time “Seeking the Soul,” as Rev. Michael Reed, our Associate Director, shares in-depth conversations with our Rolling Ridge leaders. As we prepare for our upcoming 2024-2025 year of spiritual programs, today’s interview features our Rolling Ridge Executive Director, the Rev. Dr. Lawrence Jay.  As a spiritual director, veteran camping and retreat ministry professional, and former pastor, Larry (as he is more commonly known around here) has served the Ridge for over seven and a half years, leading us through the pandemic shut down, and casting a large vision for our future.  Larry embodies Rolling Ridge’s commitment to contemplative spirituality through connecting with art and the Earth in SoulCare. Read more below!

Questions by Michael Reed are in bold, followed by Larry’s responses in plain text.
 

You’re the Executive Director at Rolling Ridge. Can you share how you came to find us—or how we found you! 

It was June 2016.  I was serving as the Guest Services Director at Redwood Glen Camp and Conference Center in the Santa Cruz mountains of California.  After a decade of guest services, my pastoral heart of over 15 years was reemerging and growing restless as I searched for a new ministry that would allow me to blend my experiences in camp operations with my passion for spiritual programming, especially eco-spirituality.  I remember sitting at my computer in my office in the redwoods when I found the perfect position at a place called, Rolling Ridge.  As I read more and discovered where it was located, I thought to myself, “Massachusetts? I don’t want to go to Massachusetts.”  Yet I was intrigued so I stalked the website and discovered that the retiring director was named “Larry J. Peacock”.  Simply for the fun of it, “Larry Jay” applied.  Fast forward, as the Spirit began to work on my heart, through interviews and other work changes, I decided to make the cross country move and began my call as the Executive Director of Rolling Ridge in January 2017.  Over seven and a half years later, even with a pandemic closure, I’ve never looked back or had regrets. I only give thanks for this opportunity I’ve been given and our growing community.  It’s been a perfect fit.
 
During your time in leadership at the Ridge, you’ve had to help us navigate some immense challenges, especially COVID-19. You’ve also brought about important programming and new growth for our ministry. What comes to mind as you think about your tenure here so far? What have you learned from the obstacles, and what milestones or opportunities are you most excited about?

As awful as COVID-19 was, the pandemic closure pushed our ministry to consider what Rolling Ridge is and what we would be in the future.  With in-person groups canceled, staff laid off, and the house closed for over a year, Rolling Ridge quickly found new life through spiritual programming via zoom.  SoulCare groups, virtual events, and Tuesday videos began to redefine what Rolling Ridge had to offer. When we were finally able to reopen the house to rental groups and relaunch our in-person events, Rolling Ridge was no longer just a historic sacred place on the shore of Lake Cochichewick in North Andover.  We were also a thriving sacred space online.  We had a community of spiritual seekers from all across the country who discovered us during the shut down and who were drawn to our style of contemplative spirituality.  I feel like my legacy at the Ridge will be defined by my leadership as we survived and thrived through the dark moments of COVID and are now living into a reimagined future with retreat ministry in a digital age with both a strong in-person and an online presence.  Rolling Ridge is not so much a “product” as it is a “process” of spirituality, connecting all people, God, and creation.  We’re becoming a sacred community of real people struggling and learning on a spiritual journey together.

What's something about yourself that not many people may know—maybe a hobby or a passion that has nothing to do with Rolling Ridge?

I run so I can eat chocolate cake.  I love chocolate cake and I am in the continual pursuit of the “perfect chocolate cake.”  From all my taste tests in California, New England, and even Europe, believe it or not, Karen’s chocolate cake from the Rolling Ridge kitchen is my consistent favorite and is the standard by which all other chocolate cakes are now compared.  I don’t like a flourless or fudgy chocolate cake, but love a light and fluffy texture with a taste that stands delicious on its own and made better with the right frosting.  I know what I like and run 7 miles to enjoy it.

Tell us about your background: your training in and love for eco-spirituality, and your “Baptiscan” charism, blending a Baptist and Franciscan theology and practice. How does that shape your work at Rolling Ridge?

I am an ordained American Baptist pastor, who graduated from a Southern Baptist seminary and a Catholic seminary, now serving at a United Methodist retreat center.  My background screams “ecumenical” as I hold the theological and spiritual tensions that the diversity of these traditions represent. I understand both the evangelical and progressive Christian perspectives, along with the Protestant and Catholic divide.  I’ve been a bridge person in my ministry over the last few decades.  As American-born Chinese, I also navigate those racial and ethnic boundaries and have lived all of my life at the intersections of two worlds.  It’s a familiar place for me.  While I was at the Franciscan School of Theology for a second masters degree in Franciscan eco-spirituality, I was the only Protestant amid a bunch of Catholics.  Because of my deep love for St. Francis of Assisi, Father Kenon Osbourne called me a “Baptiscan,” a Baptist with a Franciscan heart.  I love that!  I continue to live in that spiritual and theological identity today. It is the core of how I approach my ministry at Rolling Ridge with Franciscan friar Richard Rohr being my key spiritual guru.  For me, living in kinship with all creation as St. Francis did is the key to hospitality, inclusion, and welcome.  It’s all about love, even for those with whom we may disagree.    

How would you define contemplative spirituality? 

For me, contemplative spirituality is being “wholly present to the Holy Presence in everyone and everything.”  It is opening our whole being to the fullness of God, Spirit, the Divine, however you understand that which is beyond yourself, and recognizing that connectedness, that unity, that oneness, that love within ourselves, other people, and all of creation. Contemplative spirituality is how we live in love, to bring healing and peace to our broken world, even amid political, racial, spiritual, and theological differences.  Contemplative spirituality is at the core of who I am and how I approach ministry programming at Rolling Ridge. I learned it from studying St. Francis and reading Rohr.  As we embrace our Christian contemplative tradition and build on our Methodist heritage, Rolling Ridge recognizes the importance of an embodied spirituality as the incarnation of Jesus shows us that spirit and flesh, Divine and human, contemplation and action can be united in us.

Rolling Ridge has a lot of “SoulCare” groups. Can you please tell us what SoulCare is, and about various “SoulCare” groups that meet virtually through the Ridge?

SoulCare is foundational to contemplative spirituality as it is a way for us to tend to that space within where we commune with God in the temples of our bodies.  We use a spiritual prompt for prayer and reflection, followed by sharing as we learn to listen to ourselves, the Divine, and others.  Our SoulCare groups are monthly online drop-in sessions that nurture the contemplative life together in community.  They are open to any seeker on the journey, and have become a source of encouragement for those in our growing network.  Our specialized groups for artists, clergy, spiritual directors, and those in the LGBTQ community add another layer of spiritual connection. Since 2018, I’ve been leading our Richard Rohr group at the Ridge, which is in essence a SoulCare group.  We began in person, pivoted online with the pandemic, and over the past 6 years, have built beautiful connections, with tears and laughs, spiritual breakthroughs and questions, as we continue to draw people on Sunday afternoons.  We meet this Sunday, August 11th if anyone is interested!  It’s been a new way of doing “church” and being community for many.  In essence, our SoulCare groups remind us that we are not alone on the journey of Divine Union with God.  

You’ve been developing a larger vision for Rolling Ridge in the coming three years. Can you tell us a bit more about that? How does that vision connect with the “SoulCare Summit” this September, as well as some of the other programs this fall?

We are hosting our first SoulCare Summit this year to kick-off a three year focus on contemplative spirituality.  Given how we define contemplative spirituality, our hope is to deep dive and help people discover more fully how to “Be Wholly Present” (this year, 2024-2025), to “See the Holy Presence” (next year, 2025-2026), so to “Delight in Everyone and Everything” (during the third year, 2026-2027).  I believe that contemplative spirituality is not so much “taught” as it is “caught” as we experiment and experience the challenges in community, in-person and online.  This year’s SoulCare Summits launch on Thursday, September 5th with an in-person full day retreat where we will spend the day being “wholly present” together, with two shorter online summits on Sunday, September 8th at 3 pm eastern, and Monday, September 9th at 7 pm eastern.  If someone is curious in exploring contemplative spirituality for themself, I hope they will join us.  Each summit will highlight how we can be more present with our whole being, offering an embodied spiritual practice for our community this year, and highlighting how this year’s retreats and events will build on the theme “Being Wholly Present.”  My vision is that the Ridge will become a thriving community of spiritual seekers that is growing together in contemplative spirituality.  Our monthly SoulCare groups will be key in nurturing that focus through the year, with our SoulCare Summits becoming an annual gathering point for the community on the journey.  That is the three year vision.  If someone is looking for other people who also desire to go spiritually deeper, I hope that they will join us for one of our summits and consider a SoulCare group this year.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about a line from Psalm 11:3—“When the foundations are being destroyed, what can the righteous do?” It feels that we are living in a time when many of the foundations of our political, environmental, and religious life are being degraded or destroyed. The old certainties no longer feel sure. Rather than “fleeing to the mountains,” the Psalmist chooses to seek God’s face, meditating on God’s righteousness and justice. I wonder what being “wholly present” looks like in a time like this? How can contemplation help us in such moments of instability and anxiety?

That is a good question and something that we’ll explore during the in-person summit on September 5th.  I believe that when we pay attention to how our bodies experience stress and triggers, we will be able to be wholly present to situations that disturb us and to other people who hold different views and values from our own.  It is not easy to see God’s presence in difficult situations and challenging people. That is why faith falters.  Contemplative spirituality can help when it feels like the world as we know it is falling away.  Personal spiritual practices with a trusted community are the foundations from which we can build our life when politics, the environment, and the church fail us.  Contemplative spirituality helps us see that even in the darkest moments we are never alone.

Can you tell us about an “aha” moment you witnessed or were part of through your work at Rolling Ridge? When did you see someone “get it,” and what happened as a result?

The moments are so numerous.  I am reminded of the pastor near burnout who had an “aha moment” when reaching the center of our outdoor labyrinth and left knowing what needed to be done upon returning home.  I think of the group that was having a closing grief circle as our eaglet crashed into a tree but then freed itself to fly and soar again giving a message of hope.  I think of Eileen who had a God-encounter while contemplating a tree at Point of Pines that moved her to tears.  I think of the artists I meet with monthly online during our SoulCare with Artists as their creative responses to my art prompts always moves us to deeper levels of sharing.  I think of the Rohr people I meet with regularly in book study and small group as we challenge each other to move beyond dualism and embrace the beautiful mystery of "the coincidence of opposites."  I am reminded of the young mother just last week down at Point of Pines during Worship with the Woods nature contemplation who stared at the vast depths of Lake Cochichewick and felt the Spirit inviting her to go spiritually deeper.  The Holy Presence of God meets countless people at the Ridge who are wholly present and learning to connect with the Spirit here.  It is sacred work we do and I am blessed to be part of it.

As you look ahead to the future for Rolling Ridge, what are you most excited about? What do you see on the horizon for us?

Rolling Ridge celebrated 75 years of ministry in 2023. The focus for our future is continuing to connect all people, God, and creation in the Christian contemplative tradition as we embrace a ministry of HEARTH & HOME – helping people to HEAR their HEART through ART and EARTH (HEARTH) with Hospitality Our Main Event (H-O-M-E).  It’s contemplative spirituality with an art and Earth focus, as we continue to be a vital in-person and virtual retreat ministry of hospitality.  To help us with our HEARTH & HOME focus, our Listening Collective has launched to resource spiritual directors and those with the vocation of listening to be companions for the journey.  Our Artist Collaborative is building as we explore that divine intersection of art and spirituality and prepare to host our third annual Artist Week this upcoming spring.  Finally, our Earth Center is slowly forming with our eco-partners actively offering programming at the Ridge and our naturalist consultant laying the groundwork for more environmental education and eco-spiritual opportunities to connect with the natural world.  The future is bright at the Ridge as we have moved beyond the pandemic stronger and more focused on how our ministry will be a blessing for the generations yet to come.  I don't know if I'll be at the Ridge in 2048 for our 100th anniversary; I know at the least I won't be the director, but I am confident that the ministry will be stronger than ever.  I am doing what I can to make sure that we will be thriving into the future.  As Robert Browning has written, “The best is yet to be” as the Ridge rolls on.