A Different Sort of Retirement
By JD Wetterling

Reprinted with permission of The Wall Street Journal
© 2003, Dow Jones & Co., Inc.  All rights reserved. 

A former CEO and Top Gun pilot answers his restless soul.   

My first chore of the day, after rolling out of bed in the most humble abode I’ve ever called home, requires a broom handle with a spike mounted on the end of it, the better to spear any detritus of humanity that defiles my hallowed habitat. The last is checking lights out, doors locked and the gate closed.
    How did it come to this—an MBA with Latin superlatives, a combat veteran and Top Gun fighter pilot, CFO and CEO, at age 59, laboring in such a setting?
    I asked for it, agreeing to live in the small, endearingly seedy older home that was provided, perched on a steep mountainside in deep woods, and even offering to forgo a salary.
   After 22 years as a Northern expatriate on the Suncoast of Florida, I thought I had the best that this life could offer. My wife and I were hooked on sunshine and immersed in the life of our little Presbyterian church in a pasture north of Tampa. The nest was blissfully empty and grandfatherhood fit like my favorite codger hat. A partnership and an enlightened employment policy at my firm, combined with the marvels of modern technology, were allowing me an extended transition into retirement from a home office. Our cup overflowed . . . and yet there was a nagging restlessness in the soul.
    One evening in the spring of 2001, I was casually perusing the classified ads in a magazine. “Wanted: Retiree for resident manager position at Ridge Haven,” the Presbyterian Church in America’s Retreat and Conference Center in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina. I read it aloud to my resolutely change-averse bride of 35 years. She shocked me with, “Cool!” That’s all I needed.
    I applied and was invited for an interview. We were enthralled by the splendor of this wilderness tabernacle—900 acres of beautiful rustic retreat for 400 guests in a near-rainforest mountainside setting. The folks who staff it exude a contagious joy in their work. It seemed like a wonderful way, after a lifetime of selfish getting, to spend the rest of our days in grateful giving, honoring the author of this abundant life. And so it is.
    The new work is less arduous than its title implies, just part-time off-hours and weekend basic guest services for the people who come for “rest, refuge and renewal . . . and nurturing in the truth of God’s Word,” as Ridge Haven’s mission statement reads.
    Servanthood in this lush vineyard is richly rewarding. I’m making new friends every week, a blessing indeed that is enlarging my territory in the manner of Jabez. At day’s end, I ruminate in a back porch rocker, absorbed in the sublime babble of a mountain stream on warm days, a wood fire when it’s cold, consumed by a feeling the hymn writer called peace like a river.
    As to that spiked broom-handle, it’s my scepter as self-appointed keeper-of-the-pristine in this higher realm. I carry it on my sunrise devotional as I walk a narrow road of exhilarating humus-cushioned hiking paths through a towering cathedral of maple, oak, pine and spruce. Scattered about are brilliant-colored remnants of the high sacred season just past, when the divine artist repaints the cathedral in fluorescent fall colors.
    Some mornings the blue sky is so radiant that I squint as I look up at it through the jagged interstices of denuded branches. The avian choir in the spires joyfully sings the Gloria Patria in fortissimo. Other mornings the blue is pale and soft and soggy, shrouding the treetops in silence like the Old Testament glory cloud descended to consecrate this most holy place. Then only the hushed applause of water molecules splashing down the mountainside reminds me that I have ears to hear.
    On the sanctuary floor a multitude of evergreen rhododendrons, mountain laurel and holly congregate so closely that the heavenly host could whisper hosannas in my ear without my seeing them. And the rarefied, rain-scrubbed, pine-scented air I inhale is so intoxicating that it must be the Lord’s own mountain-cooled breath of life.
    If my 17th-century role model, Brother Lawrence, author of that classic gem on servanthood, “The Practice of the Presence of God,” could attend my house of worship, he would find that enjoying the presence of God requires no practice at all.

Mr. Wetterling is the author of “Son of Thunder,” a novel based on his experiences as a combat fighter pilot.