Leaving Peace Ledge

We are moving. Not very far, mind you. It’s only a 14-mile move that will bring us closer to the city of Concord, New Hampshire, and into a more manageable living space. Reasons? The pursuit of a down-sized lifestyle, less home maintenance, and shorter driving distances to church, shopping, and (most of all) good friends.

The home we are leaving (we’ve called it Peace Ledge) has been ours for almost 35 years. Originally, it was built as a getaway place where my wife, Gail, and I might find quietness to pursue a more vigorous spiritual life and for me to do my weekly sermon study. All of my books have been written at Peace Ledge in a writing space that measures eight by eight feet. Ten years ago, when I resigned from institutional leadership, we enlarged this home and made it our permanent residence. Now it is about to pass into the hands of new owners.

In 1978 I took a three-month leave of absence from my church and participated in the building of the home at Peace Ledge. I was there when the foundation was poured (black fly season). I was there during the framing sequence of the construction. And I was there during the days when the finish carpenters and the tradesmen did the molding, the wiring, and the plumbing. I sweated out the drilling of the well (300 feet down) and the building of the septic system (no small thing to do up in the woods).

I know every nook and cranny of this house we are leaving. I can guide you to every bent nail, every joint not perfectly mitered, every tiny stain in the plaster where a mid-winter ice-dam caused a temporary leak in the ceiling.

Peace Ledge has been the place where we have experienced our highest “highs” in life and our lowest “lows.” Our family has gathered at the dining table in the great room for every Thanksgiving in the last 33 years. We have celebrated every Christmas there. When life fell apart for Gail and me 25 years ago, we ran to Peace Ledge and found it to be a place where we could hear God speak graciously into our lives and help us to put things back together again.

Over the years, many men and women whose names are equated with Christian leadership around the world have come to Peace Ledge to visit. Some of them arrived in total exhaustion, spiritually drained, in marital trouble. Others came while in the midst of great life-changing decisions or while struggling with faith-threatening thoughts. Many came just to relax, to try out one of my kayaks on a New England river, or merely to walk in the woods. (I have loved guiding some people to a place not far from Peace Ledge where the pathway divides. I’ve asked them to stop and listen. Then I step a few feet away and begin to quote Robert Frost: “Two roads diverged in a yellowed wood … and” … (then its familiar ending) “I took the road less-traveled by … and that has made all the difference.”

Peace Ledge was once a farm where draft horses were bred and trained. The topsoil barely covered the rock ledge (6 inches down), and so its 18th and 19th century farmers could barely scratch out a living. Their only crop was pasture grass. What was once clear-cut land in the 19th century has all returned to timber (a 100-year growth). Stone walls lace the acreage, and you occasionally stumble across rusting farm implements that were abandoned more than a century ago.

One family—the Findleys—owned the farm for almost 100 years. Town records show that on several occasions they were delinquent in their taxes and the farm was put up for public auction. But for reasons unexplained, the Findleys always managed to hold on to the land. Old timers in our area refer to Peace Ledge as the Findley place (which makes me wonder if new old-timers will someday refer to Peace Ledge as the MacDonald place).

Here and there in the forest are small, annually maintained grave yards that mark the final resting place of early New England farming families. It is not uncommon to find the graves of a man and his two or three wives. Nearby: the graves of children. People were much more accustomed to death in those days.

Perhaps it is my imagination, but I have found Peace Ledge to be, well, a place of peace. It has always seemed to me that when I drove on to the property, I entered something like a spiritual enclosure—a place of tranquility and restoration. Perhaps I sound a bit over the top when I say that I have never left the house at Peace Ledge without thanking God one more time that he has allowed Gail and me to live there. Even in the midst of the worst New England blizzards when the power went out (we’ve had several this year), I have never lost my love for this place.

As the son of a pastor, I had no notion whatsoever of “home.” I grew up in houses owned by churches and was constantly reminded that our “home” belonged to someone else. We were not free to paint our own choice of colors nor alter the property without approval from some Board of Trustees. Moving from place to place, congregation to congregation, left me with an unformed view of both “place” and “friendship.”

Peace Ledge ended all that. It became home in every sense of the word. At Peace Ledge, I began to appreciate the words of another of Frost’s poems (and I paraphrase): “Home is the place where they have to take you in …”

When it comes time in a few weeks for us to leave Peace Ledge, I imagine that Gail and I will walk through the empty house and try to remember one special thing that happened in each room. Perhaps, we’ll recall tucking our two children into their beds at night, the games and puzzles that challenged us in the family room, the groups of younger men and women we’ve mentored in the great room, the things we learned in our personal study spaces, the many nights we drifted off to sleep entwined in each other’s arms in the master bedroom.

There will be tears when we make that last room-by-room tour. And there will be prayers of gratitude.

Then I imagine that the tears will turn to anticipation as we drive to our new condo. Even now—weeks before the move—Gail is thinking about where she’ll put various pieces of our furniture. She already knows where the family pictures will hang, what color the bathroom will be, what “discardables” will end up at the Salvation Army thrift store. And me? All I want to know is what my new study space will be like.

Perhaps this anticipated day of moving is not unlike getting ready for the ultimate day when we move to Heaven. I am listening to the new swirling debate on heaven and hell and take note that most of the voices are those of younger generation people. Wait until they reach my age and the stunning awareness that Heaven, and whatever hell is, are just over the horizon (and there’s no detour). Eternity is not a doctrinal construct to me. It is an emerging reality. Like so many of my friends before me, I am headed into it in the not-too-distant future.

I take Jesus’ comment, “I go to prepare a place for you,” seriously. Of course I am tempted to want to ask, “Lord, how many square feet? Is there a basement? AC? Hard water or soft? How about taxes? Bookshelves?”

I hope that when that ultimate “moving day” comes, it will parallel the more immediate one I’m anticipating right now. Packing up, shedding the unnecessary and unneedful, gathering grateful memories, and anticipating the new place down the road. As I said at the beginning, this move is about simplifying and being closer to our friends. That final move will be about eternal discovery and being with Jesus and his friends.

Gordon MacDonald is editor at large of Leadership Journal and lives in New Hampshire.