MAY 2022
58
THREE
DAYS OF QUIET AT COMO
Escapes PLANTATION
// 6 2
A
STARS
HOLLOW IN
M E D I TAT I O N
Silence on the River
THE COMO PLANTATION RETREAT OFFERS AN IDYLLIC VENUE FOR SPIRITUAL CONTEMPLATION
Story by Catherine Schoeffler Comeaux • Photos by Glade Bilby
T
he narrow gravel-and-dirt road to Como Plantation outside of St. Francisville ends at a small bridge over a tree-shrouded creek that runs right into the Mississippi River. Signage directed me to park in a grassy field. It was only fitting that I should begin the three-day silent retreat by leaving behind my mini-van—the embodiment of my busy mom existence these days—trusting I would reach 58
M A Y 2 2 // C O U N T R Y R O A D S M A G . C O M
RETREAT
my destination somehow. Before I could grab my bag, two other women arrived as a gentleman rolled up in a little white truck to offer us a ride. The Como Plantation Retreat has been in the works for several years—a vision that has transformed this historic property into a site for spiritual contemplation for Christians of all denominations. After a successful pilot retreat for men in October 2021, I was joining a small
LOUISIANA
W
group of women who were invited to a silent retreat in midwinter of early 2022. The experience promised quiet prayer and meditation, guided by a series of lectures called the “Ten Stepping Stones”. I let my bags take the ride, while I elected to walk the rest of the way to the house, imagining what this place had been like two centuries before as the center of a busy riverboat-landing community. Since then, most of the original acreage that made up Como Plantation has been sold or shifted due to the deltaic nature of the Mississippi River, which quietly churned behind me as I headed up the slight hills towards the two-story main house. A variety of pathways presented themselves: old barely visible ones, newly graveled ones, and emerging foot paths. I took the one past the large sweet olive tree, which led towards the sounds of voices and laughter. A group of smiling women greeted me, as they basked in sunlight on the wide porch off the kitchen. The Como Ambassador, a fellow retreatant familiar with the property, led me through the expansive center hallway and showed me to my room. The recently-renovated, late-1800s house offers the modern comforts of private bathrooms, air conditioning, and electricity. Exchanging welcomes and names, we also verified the origin of the house’s title—not a family name, neither Como nor Comeaux, but instead inspired by Lake Como, Italy as the home’s original owner had thought it the most beautiful place in the world. Afterwards, we toured the expansive property, the loess formations of the Tunica Hills offering various hiking paths before plateauing as they approach the riverbank. We passed five wooden cabins, newly built for the retreat experience, where some of the ladies were staying, each with her own porch for contemplative river gazing. Donations of funding and labor have already been lined up to build ten more of these cabins, and there are hopes to eventually see one hundred of them dotting the wooded hills of the property. We paid a visit to the library; two bouncy recliners inviting retreatants to relax, journal, or read; the walls lined with bookshelves soon to be filled. We stopped for a quiet moment in the chapel, original to the property, where the wooden pews reverberate with over a hundred years of praises given in this rustic space. The moment was graciously interrupted by a retreat leader’s gentle urgings to join them for the setting of the sun, as the fiery oranges and pinks backlit a wintery grey tree line on the far side of the river. A semi-circle of empty chairs awaited us at the blacksmith’s shop, an open-air structure near the riverbank, leftover from when a French movie was filmed on location in the 1970s. A warm fire crackled in a bricked pit and two gentlemen fried fish. We shared brief stories of who we are as we watched the sun disappear in a brilliant intersection of sky, woods, and water. Blessing the food, we broke sweet dinner rolls together, enjoyed hot catfish, and marveled at the coleslaw. “Open the eyes of your heart”: with this focus we officially entered the silence we had come for. Beginning that evening, the quiet would only be broken by daily lessons, bird calls, crunching leaves, and the low-chugging hum of barges moving along the river. We meditated on the “heart” as the life-giving muscle, the feed-
