Dear Friends,

There are many ways to tell a story. This one begins with a young mother who looked out the window of her child's bedroom into a sky filled with stars and was captured by an experience of the Numinous. Nan Merrill wrote of it years later:

As Mechtild of Magdeburg said, "The day of my spiritual awakening was the day I saw -- and knew I saw -- all things in God and God in all things." Everything else suddenly fell into perspective in the light of this awareness. In time, I was to discover that once Life had found me, once Love had taken me by the hand, there was no way I could stop the inner pilgrimage... There was no turning back... To choose Life with deep conviction and commitment is one of the greatest gifts we can give ourselves, our families, our global neighbors, as well as the planet and ourselves. ~ from Journey Into Love

There was indeed no turning back. In the 1980s in Detroit Nan was a lay volunteer in a Detroit parish. There she joined a small group of seekers and pilgrims who had been called together by the priest to pray for peace in that violence-ravaged city. Nan found herself tending that small and ever-growing community, sending many personal notes of encouragement to those who could not attend the weekly meetings. But when it was suggested that she begin a regular monthly newsletter, she wondered how to write, with words, about silence. It came to her to compile a treasure trove of quotes about the depth, breadth, and power of Silence and the infinite ways it infuses the wisdom of the world. Thus the Friends of Silence Letter came into being. It went out each month to anyone who asked, bearing Nan's love in the quotations she noted and in the thoughts she copied from her journal. It continues today.

Nan's experience of the Holy as a "Loving Companion Presence" permeated her writing and inspired many. The Friends of Silence Letter spread hand to hand and name by name, all added freely to the mailing list, which soon numbered in the hundreds. In 1996 she published Psalms for Praying: An Invitation to Wholeness, which was read and loved around the world. The first and best known of her five books, it brought even more people to Friends of Silence. The modest Letter had become a ministry linking thousands in the reverence of Silence and the awareness of Divine Love, and reaching into prisons, businesses, churches, and urban centers everywhere. In Nan's vision, the practice of Silence and faith in the power of Divine Love radiated ever outward, bringing blessing and healing to a wounded world.

In 2006 Nan was diagnosed with cancer. She continued her ministry and her writing, publishing Journey Into Love in 2007, which included these words:

Awakening is an ongoing journey. To begin to see and to turn our lives around is only the beginning...This road humbles us and gives us strength to repent, to ask forgiveness, to simplify and discard all that is not Life-giving, and to abandon ourselves into Love's hands...I've learned to love and to trust the Mystery not needing to know the future. I no longer take Grace for granted-it is pure gift... My essential course of action is simply to be in the Eternal Now, ready to follow the small, still voice heard in the Silence.

Nan passed away in 2010. Now her ministry and vision is carried on in our hearts and by the work of a few of us who are part of a retreat community in West Virginia, where once Nan considered establishing her dream of a retreat home for Friends of Silence. It didn't happen in her lifetime, but it has now. Still Point Mountain Retreat sits atop a rise halfway up the side of a small mountain overlooking the Shenandoah River and the valley beyond. It nestles against the Rolling Ridge nature preserve, 1,600 acres of wild forest, crossed by mountain streams. People come here to be quiet, to pray, to be renewed, to re-gain their vision.

And so we carry on with Nan's ministry, her "baby", as she called it. The baby has grown, as living things do, and includes a website, an electronic version of the Letter, a searchable database of quotations from Friends of Silence, a blog about silence and life on the mountain, and a robust retreat ministry.

It has been 30 years since those early days in Detroit. We intend a yearlong celebration honoring those years and Nan's vision, culminating in a festival day at Still Point on October 21, 2017. You are invited. We'll tell you the details as they develop.

During this year, we hope to publish a liturgical resource based on Nan's writings and quotations from the Letter, organized by season and theme, with beautiful graphics and introductions by those of us on the current Friends of Silence staff. We intend to break ground for a simple, round stone structure, a meditation shelter for seekers of Silence. Most of all, we commit ourselves to continuing the wonderful work of the Letter and to nurturing the deepening community of those linked in the Silence, in heart-prayer, and in friendship. We pledge to keep the Letter coming for the next 30 years and beyond.

We welcome your help. We have already asked that you send us your stories and memories of Nan, her work, and how it has touched your life; as well as copies of any correspondence. Many of you have responded. Please continue, and thank you!

We know that the Letter is sustained solely by donations; amounts that you give freely and generously from all that you have. We cannot ask more.

But we can ask that you speak with others: one, or two, or three people you know personally, those whom you might approach in your own communities when seeking support. Ask whether they might be able to sustain FOS by a donation in the spring of at least $300, or $3,000, or more! If they say yes, call us and tell us about your conversation. We or a member of our Board will follow up with you and with them personally.

Above all, we ask that you continue to pray, to be present, to be filled with joy and the knowledge of an Inner Presence, and to