The Official English L'Abri Blog

"The Shelter"

It is these things I have to believe: The fire in front of me fake though it was, burned dark and crisp, that kind of ridiculous heat that comes from a fire source that isn't quite believable. The old man shifted in his chair, stretched out the arms of his sweater and crossed his legs in front of him. Leaning back in his seat, his eyes lifted to the ceiling and he muttered, "mmm...yes, I remember now, that was a time when I felt as though I had nothing left to stand on. I sold everything I had except what could fit inside my car and set out across the channel on a ferry for Switzerland. There I was, pacing up and down the edge of the ferry in a state, tears streaming down my face and in total confusion. Glancing at the sky only long enough to say 'God, what the hell is going on?!' There was nothing that I could be totally certain about, I knew only to trust that the choices I was making were kept safe inside of the hand of God." All of this he said as though it meant much more than I could know. And it seemed that his experience of it gave it depth. For at that moment he existed on the side of the ship, leaving familiar shores for unknown ends.

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His gaze shifted back from the far corners of the room and into my face. The light from the imitation fireplace flickered off the deep lines of flesh that ran along his aging cheek bones. My eyes followed those lines up to his eyes, he stared down into mine with a gentleness like the smoldering embers before me. It was in that moment that I understood he knew. He knew his plight was mine. And like so many other people who sat in front of this fire, held this somewhat aged ornamental tea cup and looked into those eyes, I realized that I was not alone in this universe Nor was I left alone by the next. If we who claim to have honest hearts find that our honesty takes us beyond the confines of cold and pure religion, we should hope it was in search of something grounded more in reality than what we had known before. And if it is the case that we have indeed been honest, then it would be my hope that God would continue to keep a firm grip on us, even when ours grows weak and helpless. That anyway, was what I was counting on through those cold and winter months. He spoke again, "Hang on my dear boy, I believe in you because I know your heart is good. He'll find a place for you." I thought back over a few years, and narrowed my focus into these last few months. Have I wandered too far? Will my wandering somehow get me home, and will I understand better why I left when I reach it?

One night in particular I can remember above many: I left the property as the sun was nearly gone and the night had begun to blow in mist and chill, adding to my agitation. I passed through the stone pillars, crossed the wet road, and jumped a sheep gate that led into the field beyond. The house behind me, a church on my right, and endless fields in front of me, I stopped. I looked up, not hoping this time for a heavenly smile or even a shooting star. Just up, and began to speak. I told God many things that night. I told Him that I couldn't figure why I'd never allowed myself to feel pain, why shame was paralyzing to me, why grief seemed unknown, and how badly the pain hurt. How deeply the pain hurt. I whispered angrily, then I yelled, danced in fear and anger, spun around looking for something to throw down. Then I cried. Not a great flood of tears, but stinging saltwater rolling down free nonetheless. As the wind whipped around behind my ears, and blew the hair into my face, a voice still and thin spoke to me, "You know your life isn't that bad, you have much to be grateful for, be glad you've got something." For the first time it startled me. This voice had spoken to me for years, and I had never taken notice until now. Why is that I wondered. It would seem that I should know that a part of what was intended doesn't count for the entirety of it. Simple math yes, not so simple when you don't believe you have a reason for grief. For the first time I shut the door to that part of my subconscious and spoke my mind. "God," I said in a tone somewhere between a scream and a whisper, "I don't know why you leave us with pain, it doesn't sit right with me. Why would something that is love not reach down here and dry eyes. It wouldn't be that hard to set the broken things. I don't want promises, I want to be physically touched, known, and understood! Why the hell does it hurt so bad, and do you somehow thinks it's funny...god!" My angry words met cold wind and floated away, unattended, so I thought. As I left somewhat wide eyed, I thought to myself that if God had already heard these things before, than at least he was hearing them straight from my mouth. No mediator, no dropping hints. Although in regards to being real, it did seem cruelly ironic that what I had garnered hope or at least release from doing, were not things I was willing to let God do. But still, I had been honest, that had to at least count for something or give the experience a purpose. I dropped out of these thoughts back into my chair with a jolt; my tea cup was being refilled.

I knew there was something waiting at the front of his mind to be said, hiding just behind his tongue, but I spoke this time for I felt my desires and confusion were coming together, "do you think that it is wrong to expect something from God in regards to my pain, some sort of recognition? I mean, if He's what I would like to think He is, surely He would desire to speak sense into this awful mess." Still my mind was wandering as I said this, off this wall then that one, back to a couple of girls waving at me on a bus in Oxford, a page from Kurt Cobain's diary, a street café, a portrait of someone dead and some sentence about time. Finally my memory touched down back to a place a few months earlier where an audience was listening to a girl talk about her experience of suffering, and how God had been near to it. The memory is hazy but I think she cried often, and said rather daringly that God is a God of tears, that He is no stranger to pain. All of us nodded, for this is what we had heard rumors of but weren't sure if we were allowed to believe. A lone woman spoke up with anger. Her words came in long pauses. It had been within the course of a year that her husband had abandoned her and her youngest son succumbed to heart disease. We all knew this. Those of us with less experience of loss cringed. At first her words seemed angry as she protested that to know God is "there for her" in her pain, really doesn't do much to take the searing edge off of it. Any amount of substance could "be there" if she needed it. Not just God. As she spoke, her voice softened and she struggled to continue. All she wanted she said, was some sort of physical reassurance, not a miracle, perhaps just a hand on the shoulder. Does God do that sort of thing? And if not, why not? It couldn't be that hard could it? The woman speaking leaned over the note-stand, failing to blink back the tears that were now pouring down her face. She desperately looked into the eyes of the mother. Choking on the tears she spoke, "I don't know if it can help you or if it could ever be of consolation, but He really is there, and He really does hurt infinitely with you. Your tears are His tears, and the ache you feel in your chest is felt in His, if not much deeper for it exists for your pain, and the loss that caused it. I don't know if that is any comfort to you, but how I wish it could be." Her words hung like candles mounted in the solemnity of a darkened room, flickering with hope. Was there still hope to be found? I had felt hope there, but was it allowed to be mine?

My thoughts continued to wander to a book I had read only a few days before, in which a character has a somewhat bizarre encounter with a spiritual being. Her encounter though sensual, isn't really sex, only the easing of her loneliness by a physical contact that isn't at all human. A blending of soul, a blurring between what hurts and what is unaffected. Isn't that what I really want? Something from outside my human experience to reach out it's hand and put it on the places of my greatest pain and loneliness. My thoughts returned again to earth, for the man sitting across from me was about to speak. His compassionate eyes had darkened and turned soft, but had not lost their piercing love. I'm not sure if I expected Him to reveal some secret or just put his hand on my shoulder, but he did neither. Simply, he leaned forward in his arm chair and said with deep concern, "You're a great kid, you have a great heart. You must decide now, here, wether you will find your comfort in the strength of your hold on God, or the relentlessness of His hold upon you." I spoke to protest, for this didn't seem to answer my original question. But he kept speaking. "You must ask yourself this, and you must hold to it." He leaned closer, "God does not play games with us!" He shook his fist as a tear raced out from his sight and said again more emphatically, "He will not play games with you! You must believe this!" He pounded the edge of the chair as he spoke, his eyes lighting up like a rekindled fire hours after it has waned. I never did get an answer that day as to wether I should expect God to be more present and lend a physical hand. I'm afraid that will have to wait a very long time. Perhaps my own skepticism destroys everything around it, and maybe in time I will learn to be less suspicious of things that require trust. After all, God is the only person or thing in this world that usually seems to be guilty until proven innocent. It was several days later I stumbled over my own far-sight as I read through the ancient prophets. It seems that they were all some sort of mouth piece for a God who was in far too much pain for anything more than poetry to be expressed. As one who, so to speak, was standing in the middle of a field screaming, "what the hell are you doing?!" No, He is not a stranger to pain. I don't think it's that we don't think God can relate, but that we don't want Him to. Wouldn't I much rather be left alone with the angels of suffering and sorrow all to myself? God doesn't have time for our games, but He has enough time to wait until we are finished playing and come crawling back for help. The hope is in the believing I suppose, and there's a lot of pain in hope. Sometimes it leaves a sickness in my stomach. But at least its there to be a found, and in between the then and now, You won't be playing games with me.

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Maggie Curry, a worker at English L’Abri, writes the following.   She grew up as child at the Manor.  After a number of years in Nepal she returned with her family to be a worker. What you will read her is a narrative drawn from interviews with former students.


We stood at the front door of solid oak.  It looked to my eight year old eyes like a church door weighted with all kinds of mystery.  This was to be our new home.  This towering English Manor House with its dark, echoing rooms and empty stairs.  We felt small and inadequate, huddled there on a cold January afternoon; a mum, a dad and three children, waiting for our future to start.  It would be a future that would bring warmth and welcome to hundreds, who like us, turned the heavy handle and went in.

Thirty-four years later, Sarah would be one to turn that heavy handle.  She had arrived at L’Abri carrying that same little bag she had toted around France for the last few months.  The same bag she had packed to leave home right after her eighteenth birthday.  “France was everything I thought I wanted” Sarah told me, “beautiful, no responsibilities.  I could do whatever I wanted.”  However, Sarah’s sister who had always maintained a strong faith and was concerned for her wandering sibling, mentioned L’Abri as a place she could go.  “I was always jealous of my sister”, Sarah says, “I always thought I was not the kind of person who could ever have her kind of faith.  When I showed up in France, I didn’t know whether I was a Christian or not, but I had sort of given up trying to practice my faith.” 

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In a tiny cement apartment, which had become an oven in the August heat wave, Sarah got talking to a young man.  During their conversation, Jesus was mentioned, and Sarah said, “I don’t really feel Jesus is relevant to myself at all.”  “Well then, the young man promptly remarked, “you can’t call yourself a Christian.”  Stunned, Sarah realized he was right.  “It had never struck me before that the whole Jesus thing was necessary.”  Spontaneously joining a group of British vicars who invited her to take a vacant seat on their tour bus, Sarah wound up with them in London.  The same day she took the train from Waterloo to Liss, and walked from there along the winding country road to L’Abri.

“I’m not sure what I thought I’d accomplish at L’Abri,” Sarah explained, only that I needed to talk to people about God.  I think I wanted to have penetrating conversation without revealing anything of myself.”  Hearing voices drifting through the Manor door, Sarah swung her bag onto her shoulder, gave the door a push, and went in.  Sarah remembers the first time she came to the converted Stables (which was the home I then shared with my husband and four children). Jennifer, another student, was stirring an outsize pot of spaghetti bolognaise on a very small stove, music was playing, people were laughing and Catherine (our youngest) was bouncing around the room.  “I had no idea about anything (at L’Abri),’ Sarah remembers. “What on earth had I come to? Who were all these people?” Whatever she had come to, one thing was obvious; she was in the midst of someone’s home. “L’Abri,” says Susan Schaeffer Macaulay, “is not a job, or a school where we have lessons to teach; it is a life we share together and are totally committed to it.” Our ordinary family homes become the context for this shared life, and doing our mundane duties faithfully, becomes the seedbed for God’s glory.

We should be living witnesses to the fact that Christianity is not esoteric but ordinary,” writes the Anglican M M Claire.  “The world should see the extra-ordinariness of Christianity in family love, the sacrifice, the obedience made incarnate in the Christian community.”

Many have come over the years.  Some have come only for a short stay and some have stayed a lifetime.  For each of us, however, it has been a chance for God to do extraordinary things in the midst of the ordinary.  We have participated in a very simple daily routine of practical work, combined with study. For Amy, a young teacher of emotionally disturbed teenagers, the rhythm of daily work at L’Abri was of great importance right from the very beginning.  It became more than the essential ‘guarantee of normality’, it became the catalyst for Amy to hear God and for His silence to be broken.  Coming to L’Abri would be a last ditch attempt for Amy to salvage a fragmented faith in God. She was desperate to allow God to do something; to speak, to show himself, anything but the silence she had endured for so long. In secular academic circles Amy had always been valued for her quick intelligence and diligent study. She was a good student.  In Christian circles, however, Amy hadn’t felt appreciated.  She just couldn’t make the spiritual mark.  She didn’t lead Bible studies, she never evangelized, and she didn’t pray at meetings and was plagued by doubt.  Yet here at L’Abri, doing small daily tasks to the best of her ability, like cleaning a kitchen or looking after the children, was seen to be just as spiritual an offering as leading worship or preaching.  “It wasn’t like this work wasn’t spiritual enough. What I could contribute was valued.  I myself was valued within a Christian context because what I was bringing to the community was an expression of who I really was.”

“I felt I could be very open about my own position and my own view of Christianity,” Angus, an IT professional told me, as he described his time at L’Abri.  “The fact that my thoughts were just accepted for what they were and also understood made a huge impression.  In a sense I was being met where I was rather than pushed to conform to the norms that you’d find in church. I could be quite vocal in my criticism of Christianity without anyone taking it personally.

Angus came to L’Abri on the recommendation of a friend.  “I remember my first lunch.  It was in Jock and Alison’s home. “ He reminisces, “The conversation was all about the loss of community.  I thought ‘Wow, these people really have their finger on the pulse of society.” I was both emotionally and intellectually stimulated.” A few years before, as a teenager, Angus had become a Christian at school along with a bunch of friends.  This faith, however, was very much compartmentalized.  “It was more about living a moral life than knowing God,” he says. “I was the one person with my Christian friends and another person with others. The impossibility of living a moral life consistently became increasingly difficult to sustain.”  Angus felt trapped in a religion he could neither live out morally nor defend intellectually.

Unable to explain his faith to his cynical, anti-religious parents, Angus’s frustration and hurt came to a head during a humiliating episode when a friend “pretty much wiped the floor with me intellectually.” Angus then decided he’d had enough.  “I said to God, ‘Now its really up to you to find me. I’ve had enough of trying to find you and trying to get things straight in my mind.’  From that time on I didn’t consider myself to be a Christian any more.”


Sarah, Amy and Angus.  Three very different people yet each with a complicated mix of personal problems and difficult questions that needed to be untangled and thought through carefully.


People come to L’Abri for all sorts of different reasons and by many different routes.  A few come with a definite purpose and a long list of questions in hand.  Much more often these days they are like Sarah and sort of drift in and are held for a while, like a leaf in an eddy of a fast flowing stream.  In that first experience of stillness their questions rise to the surface.  

Sarah thought everything was going really well that first month at L’Abri. “I was having a great time,” she says.  Sarah’s ‘great time’ however, quickly turned into a bit of a nightmare.  Her sleep became more and more disturbed and in the end she stopped sleeping altogether. “The first weeks” she tells us “I could maintain a pretense, but living with people, you can’t maintain false ideas about yourself for long, not even in your own head.  I started having myself revealed to myself.” Sarah began to feel and think about things in a new way.  “I didn’t care (about others) so much and I’d find myself getting angry when I realized I was longing to care.  Not so much to receive love but to give and make a difference.  But I realized I couldn’t even have a real conversation with anybody.  How could I get to the point of being able to trust and love anybody, let alone God?”  Sarah was now living like a creature peeled of its skin, in unbearable pain.  “It was terrible, really terrible.: she says.

John (a worker in training) was the person whose humble offering of ‘horizontal’ love for her was made powerfully effective through his ‘vertical’ love to God.  Sarah was assigned to work alongside him in the garden every afternoon.  “I was so mean to him.  I would make him cry.”  However, “he just loved me back.”  Here was a man unafraid to be himself before her and willing to cry.  He did not try to preach but instead transparently lived out his utter dependence on God.  In the garden amongst the moist soil and drifting rain she listened to John talk and had to respect his deep sincerity. This man actually believed that what he was saying was true.  True not just for him but for everyone.

“Sometimes he used the most clichéd, sappy language but would mean it, and mean it for me.”  Sarah laughs. “He was the first person I wanted to be able to care for.” She started to live as every human being is made it live – in relationship; first with John, then later with God.  “I learned that, despite myself, you could come to depend on people and love them.” Sarah concludes, “this helped me understand the reality of my need: how much I need people and how much I need God.”  Sarah’s transformation from angry independence to dependence on God was without a doubt the work of God.  His supernatural power made visible.

Andrew Fellows was the one to listen to Amy as she sat in the leather armchair in his study.  Rain streaked the windows outside as tears streaked the face of this fragile looking girl before him.  What were the hidden questions in her heart and how should he answer?
For Amy, God was silent.  She decided to “live as though God was not there.” Living as if God was not there, however, was too confusing.

As difficult as it was, she knew within weeks of coming to L’Abri that she wanted to stay a long time. Tramping the woods and country lanes every day, taking delight in making the house beautiful, looking after the kids, her short stay quickly turned into months.  Amy gradually began to turn towards God.  A God who would accept her, as she was, creative, hard working and passionate. To be spiritual for Him meant nothing more than to be fully herself before him. What was important was not what she could do but what God could do in her.  However, seeing God more clearly, not as a taskmaster with impossible requirements but as a tender lover, made Amy see herself more clearly for the first time and it was not a pretty sight.  Her hidden underbelly was exposed. She was forced to look into the ‘basement of her soul’ that had wrapped itself up in layers of deception.  Now this self began to die and it felt pretty bad.  “Confession hurts” writes Bonhoffer, “it cuts a man down, it is a dreadful blow to the pride.  We cannot find the cross of Jesus if we shrink from going to the place where it is to be found – the public death of a sinner.”  

“I had to repent of how I had acted out on other people because of how I had been wounded. Because I had been so fragile before, I’d never seen that.  Looking at my own sin was really a shock and very hard to do.  But I did.  And I did weep over my sin.” Amy confesses.

All these years Amy had felt that there was something hidden from her heart that meant she couldn’t feel, see or hear God.  Maybe God was, at heart, uninterested and unloving.  Now she understood.  She had ‘put herself, rather than God at the center of the universe,” and “then was constantly turning inward (to self) instead of outward (to God).  This was the essence of her rebellion against God.  The reason why God seemed silent was because “when she turned inward, there was no one to communicate with except herself.  “It is not because there is no one to speak with that men are lonely but because they are cut off from the one who can fulfill their loneliness.’ says Francis Schaeffer.

“Before, I couldn’t quite see what ‘sins’ were but neither could I see the love of God.  God seemed to love everyone else but me.  My repentance unleashed a deep understanding of God’s love for me.” Amy says.  The silent God was now speaking because Amy had chosen repentant obedience.   She was experiencing resurrection.

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