I started going to Shalom in 1980, and looking back, I can honestly say it was one of the most important decisions of my life.
At the time, I was 32 years old and, by my own description, shut down. My mother had died when I was in high school, and I pretty well shut down at that point. My path became simple: work hard, don’t feel, make money. I was very good at that. I was successful at working hard. I was successful at making money. And I was pretty good at not feeling.
I had certainly done no real inner work on myself.
I first heard about Shalom through an Episcopal priest who had suggested my wife might benefit from a retreat. So I went, honestly, as a tag-along. I had absolutely no idea what I was getting into.
Before the retreat, I called Jerry because I wanted to know practical things. What was the place like? What was going to happen there? Was it air-conditioned? Jerry was not much of a conversationalist on the phone, especially with strangers. His answer was simple:
“Just come. You’ll have a good time.” Click.
That was my orientation.
Thankfully, I went.
And Shalom completely changed my life.
Jerry helped me open my heart. Not overnight. Not with one retreat. It took time, repetition, and a lot of showing up.
I heard Jerry talking about living with an open heart, and I knew immediately, that’s what I’m going to do.
Then I’d leave, go back to my life, and forget.
The next time I went to Shalom, he said it again, and I thought:
“Oh yeah, I forgot — but that’s what I’m going to do.”
That probably happened for five years or more before it finally stuck.
At some point, it became more than an idea.
It became: This is who I am.
Of course, I still forget from time to time. But now it’s kind of my default mode that I always come back to. Living with an open heart became less of a teaching and more of the place I return to.
One of the first things Shalom showed me was something I didn’t even know I was missing.
Touch.
I still laugh when I think about it. My first retreat included sitting around on mattresses on the floor with twenty people, snuggling, cuddling, hugging, and being deeply human together. I remember thinking:
I thought I had died and gone to heaven.
That was the moment I realized something important:
I was touch-deprived.
That awareness alone brought me back. And then once I kept coming back, I started doing more and more of my deep work.
And I came back a lot.
I probably went on at least one retreat every year for the next twenty to twenty-five years. Couples retreats. Advanced retreats. Work weekends. Trainings. I just wanted more.
I fell in love with the mountain.
I fell in love with the people.
I fell in love with this place.
I made friendships there that I still have to this day. I met Fred and Judy Tutiver in 1981, and we’re still very good friends. Shalom didn’t just become a retreat center for me. It became a community. It became family. So many dear friends.
And then there was Jerry.
One of the most endearing memories of my relationship with Jerry is all the times he and I laughed together.
Not when I was lying on the mat, of course.
But outside of that, we laughed a lot, and I loved that.
Jerry was about love. He was about feelings. He was about trying new things and experimenting. Sometimes I’d resist what he was doing and think, Jerry, what the hell were you thinking? But I was always glad I tried what he invited me into. He had this way of expanding people by asking them to trust the process.
He also gave me one of the most unexpected life lessons about flying.
I was a new private pilot back then, and Jerry said to me as if I already knew this, which I didn’t:
“Well, you know, when you’re flying, you don’t want to overcontrol the airplane.”
And I realized in that instant I had been doing exactly that in my training.
Honestly, I had been doing that in my life, too.
Over-controlling. Holding on too tightly. Trying to manage everything.Trying to stay safe by staying in control.
Jerry had a gift for saying one simple thing that would stay with me for decades.
Shalom changed how I carried relationships.
It changed how I carried work.
It changed how I carried pain.
For years, I owned and managed a construction equipment rental business. It was lucrative, but it was a soul-killing industry, cutthroat, competitive, full of toxic dynamics. I had people I felt were enemies. I felt like I had to watch my back.
One of the greatest gifts of Shalom and the principles and skills of loving was this:
I don’t have any enemies anymore.
There are relationships I’ve let go of.
There are toxic dynamics I no longer participate in.
But I wish people well.
That was not who I was before.
Eventually, Shalom became more than something I attended.
It became something I carried forward.
When Jerry sold the Mountain to Joy and Lawrence, I continued to attend individual and couples retreats and eventually enrolled in all the training that Lawrence offered over 6 or 7 years.
I led my first Shalom retreat in 2004, and I’ve been doing that ever since. I had no therapeutic background before this work. Everything started at Shalom. Later, Nance encouraged me to broaden my training, and I completed a four-year Core Energetics certification from 2011 to 2015, which deepened what had already begun there.
Today I continue that work in Colorado.
We moved here about eleven years ago, and I love it. It feels like my heart and soul found their happy place.
But even all these miles away, Shalom is still with me.
We hold potluck gatherings.
We share meals.
We dance.
We talk about the principles and skills of loving.
We keep passing it on.
That feels important.
When I think about everything Shalom has meant to me, one truth rises above all the rest:
Shalom is my spiritual home.
It totally changed my life.
It opened me up.
It changed who I am.
If anyone asked me what the most important thing I’ve ever done in my life was, I would say:
Going to Shalom.
Without hesitation.
I just can’t imagine what my life would have been like if I hadn’t found Shalom.
Thank you, Barbara, for that.
And thank you, Jerry.
For being a guide.
A teacher.
A mentor.
A flight instructor.
And a very dear friend.
Jerry and Elisabeth weren’t my only teachers at Shalom.
They were just my first.
Joy and Lawrence shaped me deeply, too. Nance did too. The community itself did too.
That is what Shalom became for me. Not just a place, not just a retreat, not just one teacher.
A spiritual home.
A community.
A path.
Now I’m blessed to have my wife Cynde share that path with me.
And maybe the greatest thing I can say now, after all these years, is this:
I love who I am.
Scribe’s Reflection
As I listened to Craig share his story, I found myself smiling often.
Partly because of his humor. Partly because of the warmth with which he speaks about the people who have shaped his life. And partly because there is something deeply moving about hearing someone describe a transformation that took place not in a dramatic moment, but through decades of returning.
Again and again throughout our conversation, I heard a man describing the slow work of becoming.
Craig did not arrive at Shalom looking for a spiritual home. He arrived, in his own words, as a “tag-along,” carrying grief he had long ago learned to bury beneath work, success, and self-reliance. Yet what struck me most was not the story of what he found at Shalom. It was the story of how faithfully he kept returning to what he found there.
I was especially touched by the simplicity of the teaching that stayed with him for more than forty years: living with an open heart. Not because he mastered it immediately, but because he didn’t. He heard it, forgot it, remembered it, forgot it again, and eventually became it. There is something profoundly human in that.
I also found myself laughing at the image of Jerry offering what sounded like a lesson about flying airplanes, only for Craig to realize it was really a lesson about life. How many of us are still trying to overcontrol the airplane?
By the end of our conversation, what stayed with me most was not a retreat, a teacher, or even a particular moment. It was Craig’s final reflection:
“I love who I am.”
For me, that may be one of the most beautiful measures of a life well lived. Not perfection. Not achievement. Not success.
Simply arriving at a place where you can look at the person you have become and say, with gratitude and sincerity, I love who I am.
Thank you, Craig, for sharing your story, your laughter, your wisdom, and your open heart.
Jennifer Mark, Scribe
Voices That Matter
Storytelling as legacy. Listening as medicine
This story is part of Voices That Matter: Shalom’s 50th Anniversary
There is no cost to participate. Only a willingness to share a story.
This project, like all community offerings within Voices That Matter – The Scribe Project, is sustained through the support of those who feel called to be part of it, by sharing stories, spreading the word, or contributing to its creation and ongoing life.
If you feel moved, you are welcome to contribute in whatever way feels right.
If you’re part of the Shalom community, this is an open invitation.
Shalom holds 50 years of stories.
I would love to include yours as part of this growing living archive.