There’s a moment before something begins
when you don’t yet know that your life is about to shift.
A story told by someone you trust.
A change in them you can’t quite explain.
Something in you leans in, even as another part pulls back.
That’s how it was for me.
I first came to Shalom in 1987. I was 37 years old.
My sister Barbara found Shalom from a high school girlfriend. She went a few times before I ever considered it. After her first retreat, she came to my house and said, “I went to this great place. Do you want to hear the audio recording of my experience?” (At that time, the mat work was recorded on cassette.)
So I listened. And what I heard was her screaming, cursing and crying. In my mind, I’m thinking, this sounds like an insane asylum. So when she asked if I wanted to go with her next time, I said ‘No”.
But I started to notice how she started to change. She was different. Lighter. Happier than I had ever seen her. She walked differently. She talked differently. She moved differently. There was an aliveness in her.
I didn’t have words for it then, but I knew she had something I wanted.
That’s what made me decide to go.
At the time, Jerry Jud offered an extra day. You could come in on Wednesday. There were about six or seven of us on that first day.
We gathered in the meditation room, and he guided us into a process of Progoff journal writing while he played high-intensity music. It was powerful.
I remember bonding quickly with those people, and by the end of it, I didn’t want anyone new coming in.
But on Thursday, when the larger group arrived, Jerry did something really smart. He moved us into a new space: the Shalom room. We never went back to the meditation room as a larger group after that.
Looking back, I can see the brilliance of it. The meditation room became our sacred space for that smaller group. And then a new sacred space was created for everyone together.
Jerry understood something about that.
He also had an incredible amount of energy. He would go late, sometimes midnight, whenever he wanted. And people stayed with him.
Back then, Shalom was led by Jerry and his wife, Be. I’m one of the few retreat leaders left who actually worked with Jerry. He was unlike anyone I had ever met.
He lived with this kind of insistence: “Live your life. Go for it.”
I had never met anyone so adamant about that. Not just saying it, but embodying it. Bea had her own presence. She was open, playful, and frisky in a fun way. Just a joy to be around.
I’ll never forget witnessing my first mat trip.
The woman looked closed, contracted, and angry when I first met her. By the end of her mat trip, she was a completely different person from the one I met the night before. I remember thinking,” What did I just witness?”
It was beautiful. It was astounding. And I felt something open in me emotionally that I don’t think I had ever felt before. And, then it was my turn to get on the mat…
That first time on the mat was vulnerable and intense.
One moment in particular stands out. A kind of deep emotional experience connected to my relationship with my mother. It brought me into contact with something I hadn’t ever touched before. Not just intellectually, but physically, emotionally. It profoundly moved through my body.
Jerry put a rope around my waist, and he was on the other end.
We were in this kind of tug-of-war, and it got very physical.
At one point, I actually shoved him. That shocked me.
I had never been physical like that with another adult before.
I remember afterward feeling this incredible sense of freedom, like something had finally moved.
And then, later, I went into the meditation room and opened up with another retreatant. A woman. It was about my sexuality. It felt like the next thing I needed to face. But afterward, I shut it back down. I wasn’t ready.
Still… I knew it was there.
At that point, Jerry was the only one leading mat trips, so they were booked months in advance. I would go and then book the next available weekend.
I did that for years because something in me was opening. And I could feel it. I remember feeling this incredible sense of aliveness afterward. And, I kept wanting more.
In those early years, there was a sense of play and a lot of affection. Shalom felt like a house church. Loose. Alive. Personal.
People were sprawled out, leaning on each other, holding each other.
There was an openness, physically and emotionally, that you don’t see in the same way now.
It was lovely. Heart-connected. It was also a different time in the world.
Jerry was there for about the first four or five years I was involved and then he left. His leaving at the time felt very abrupt.
Joy Davey and Lawrence Stibbards, who had their own house church community in Canada, had agreed to buy Shalom Mountain from Jerry and continue the work he had started.
I first met Lawrence at a work weekend, not quite sure if I should stay at Shalom or follow Jerry to a new place, Timshel, which he started in Pennsylvania. I was standing in the Shalom Room in front of the music system. He introduced himself, and I greeted him in return.
I had this gut feeling as soon as I saw him and looked into his eyes.
Oh… he’s a brother.
Jerry had always felt like a father figure and very much an archetypal King.
But Lawrence…There was something different about him. Something I needed to be a part of. I knew I needed to stay and learn from him. The transition was easy.
Attendance at Shalom dropped precipitously. People were used to Jerry. Loyal to Jerry. Many people followed him in his work at Timshel.
The beginning time with Joy and Lawrence was tough to sustain due to low attendance. So the leadership training programs began, in part, to create sustainability.
Joy and Lawrence brought more structure. More boundaries. A more sober tone. And I understood why. It made Shalom more sustainable.
A few years later, I started leading retreats, and everything changed for me again, because when I became a leader, I gave up the place where I came to do my own work. We had leader retreats for a while, where we could still process. But it got complicated. There was hesitation about being vulnerable in front of other leaders.
Now, I’ve been connected to Shalom for 39 years.
My role has changed. I really think my work now is to mentor and support the new leaders coming forward. I want to help them come into their own leadership, to step aside, and make room for them. It isn’t always easy. But it is necessary.
If someone were new to Shalom, I would say this:
It is one of the most unique transformational experiences I’ve ever encountered. Even if you only do it once, it’s worth it.
There’s something initiatory about it.
You come into contact with your embodied experience in a way that’s hard to find anywhere else. I honestly think there are so few places in the world that do work at this level.
If I could say anything to Jerry now, I would say:
Thank you. For creating a place and a feeling that led me back to myself over and over. For creating something that has impacted thousands of people.
The fact that Shalom is still here, 50 years later, says something about the transformational power of what he and Elizabeth Jud created.
Scribe Reflection
What stays with me in John’s telling is not only the story of Shalom, but the story of what happens when something in us recognizes itself before we have language for it.
He did not arrive looking for transformation. He arrived because he saw it in someone he loved.
He saw it in the way his sister moved. In the way she carried herself. In the aliveness that had returned to her. Before he understood the process, before he trusted the place, he recognized the evidence of something real. Something had shifted in her. And some part of him knew he wanted to find his way closer to whatever had made that possible.
There is something deeply honest in that kind of beginning.
Not certainty. Not devotion.
Not belief. Recognition.
John’s story is, in many ways, a story about what it means to be changed by proximity. By being close enough to witness what is possible. Close enough to feel something stir. Close enough to let yourself be altered by what you cannot yet explain.
What he found at Shalom was not just a retreat center, or a teacher, or even a process.
He found a threshold.
A place where something could be confronted, moved, and made newly available. A place where the body could tell the truth before the mind had caught up. A place where something long held could finally begin to loosen.
And over time, as it so often does, the place changed. The leadership changed. The form changed. The edges became clearer. The structure is more defined. Some things were gained. Some things were lost. This, too, is part of every living thing. What begins in rawness rarely remains there. What survives must evolve.
And still, beneath all of it, something essential endured.
Not just the process.
Not just the mountain.
But the invitation.
To come into contact with yourself.
To feel what is true in your own body.
To risk being changed by what you find there.
That may be what lives at the center of John’s story.
Not nostalgia.
Not reverence for what was.
But gratitude for what opened.
And for the rare places in life that do not simply ask us to reflect on who we are.
But ask us to meet ourselves there.
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.