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Donna
Hardy |
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The Therapist’s Journey by Donna Hardy
THE BAD INN LASTS ONLY A NIGHT
I read this bit of Theresa of Avilla's wisdom from a book lying open to her words on the breakfast table at the Desert House of Prayer near Tucson. A good inn. I copied the quotation into my journal.
"On the other hand," I think as I pull the words up now for your pondering, "I'll bet the bad inns you have known live in your memory as vividly as any good inn you may have happened upon over the years."
Let me tell you about waking up in Chartres to discover we were the only two people left in the lively hotel we had gone to sleep in eight hours earlier. Not that we were the only guests; we were the only people. There was no desk clerk, no host, no cook, no breakfast, no housekeeper. It was creepy. We threw our luggage in the car and fled.
Years later we awoke in a Northern Ireland hotel and looked out at the guest parking lot and saw ours was the only car there. We went downstairs and greeted the woman at the desk, who directed us to the breakfast room. We padded through soft-carpeted corridors and found the right door. The proper British desk person was there to welcome us to the very large dining room, where one table was set for breakfast. When it was time to order, our desk person who had become our dining room hostess came to take our order and in due time brought us our breakfast, which I assume she had cooked.
That was not a bad inn, just a reminder of a bad inn. We had a bad inn last summer in Navan, Ireland. The details aren't entertaining. You had to be there. But we couldn't wait to shake the dust of Navan from our sandals and were glad to leave, to drive over to the town of Slane. The Hill of Slane is where St. Patrick lit the first Pascal fire, a blatant challenge to the tribal king's fire at the Hill of Tara. We parked the car at the foot of the hill and, eager for the view from the top, went to the trunk to get our jackets.
Our jackets. We got in the car and drove back to Navan. Back to that failed inn, where we, in our haste to get out of there, had neglected to check the wardrobe closet. "The bad inn lasts only a night," we said, "if you don't forget your jacket."
The good inn, on the other hand, is one of life's great pleasures. Do you remember? We have a guest house in Dublin that makes us smile every time we think of it. A place where the architecture is authentic, the rooms artistic, clean, and quiet, the food delicious and generous, the service quiet, non-intrusive. I remember in the Italian lake country a palatial room on a patio filled with azaleas where the German Shepherd dog slept right outside the door of our high-ceilinged room and where our silent hostess served great chunks of salami and cheese with our breakfast hard rolls. I could have moved in. We recently enjoyed a night at The Grey Whale in Fort Bragg because a friend had described it so fondly.
Consider the Desert House. Simple food. Rooms with desert out the window, desert out the door, desert everywhere. Paintings, sculptures, a chapel visually open to the wilderness that surrounds it. A library filled with history, biography, religion, literature, poetry. An inn of the beginning, an inn for the soul. It's easy to remember.
Of course, I'm leading up to wanting to rave about Angela Center, the inn for group gatherings. People like it here, indoors and out. I modestly could say no more, except that the food is very good and hardly anyone stays only one night. Theresa of Avilla would surely settle in for a fortnight at least.
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