Saturday July 7, 2001

Spent the better part of the afternoon exploring Xenia, a retreat centre on 38 acres between Killarney Lake and Honeymoon Lake.  It is run by a woman called Angelyn, who started it 7 years ago on little more than faith and vision.  Over the years, volunteers, investors and other miracles have jumped out of the woodwork to assist her to make the whole thing a reality.

The centre is located in an old sheep farm, and several of the original buildings have been converted.  The original farmhouse is now a lodge for guests.,  The lambing shed is a writer’s retreat.  The barn is in the process of being converted to a creative art space and a recording studio.  In addition to these facilities, there are cabins and cottages, a yurt for workshops with a reproduction of the Chartres labyrinth and a stone labyrinth in a field that was formerly an Island landfill.  There is also a beautiful meditation building which is free for the community to use.  And to cap it all there is an 1100 year old Douglas Fir that broke the axe blade that was trying to cut it down.  It is remarkable.  It looks nothing like all the second and third growth we normally see.  Great branches emerge from it’s massive trunk, each the size of 80 or 100 year old trees in their own right.  It has a more cylindrical shape than the younger firs and doesn’t taper so much towards the top.  It’s name is Opa.

Angelyn does a little facilitation, is learning Irish harp, used to host a sweat put on by my friend Phil L’hirondelle and is interested in our idea of a learning centre.  In short, this place is almost everything I am interested in at the moment.  One of the volunteers who works there is an older man named Tarla who I know from Ceoltas days in Vancouver.  It’s a remarkable convergence. 

It reeks of something Caitlin has been saying a lot recently, and that is one never knows what opportunities will arise until one makes the leap.  It is not enough to think about the leap, or even plan it out.  One must take the leap and then the myriad possibilities reveal themselves.  There is very little chance I would have ever heard of this place had we never moved here, and I can imagine that it will play a not insignificant part in my life here. 

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