LUCINDA M. VARDEY’S PASTORAL JOURNEY
Lucinda has loved nature since she moved from London with her parents to the English countryside at the age of five. Because she only knew red buses and traffic and city life, a 50-foot cedar tree in the park at the end of the garden caused her recurring bad dreams. She imagined it as a giant on its way to capture her!
It took a few weeks for her vivid imagination to shift to a more joyful place and after that she was out in the fields as much as possible. It was in this environment that she began to pray, to learn of the desire for God. In the wild grasses she also composed stories of adventurous girls and scribbled them in notebooks for her school friends and siblings. She learned about gardening from her father, an artist, who loved the land and conjured up all sorts of unique projects for them to work on together. He would also take his sketchbook on family walks in the surrounding woods and commons of southern England, and Lucinda remembers fondly searching for primroses in thickets while her father painted puddles and trees and old sodden gates and broken fences and the occasional cow.
After school and working in publishing in London, Lucinda emigrated to Canada in 1970 in search of space and opportunity. She found both and fell in love with the rustic life of northern Ontario after renting a primitive cabin on Georgian Bay during the summer months. Here she would spend a few weeks at a time experimenting with living off the land and from the lake, and found solace in solitude. Canoeing into the wilderness she discovered the beauty of natural gardens ¾ tall bulrushes growing from mossy beds, fir trees bent from the wind, wild blueberries pushing out from between rocks, mini ponds of water lilies, clumps of small cedars and families of fluttering monarch butterflies. It was this natural environment that nourished her soul.
Many years later and after planting a few city gardens, Lucinda was called to Italy to create a retreat house in Tuscany near the Umbrian border, not far from Assisi, where the Patron of Ecology St. Francis had lived and taught his way of loving and serving God through living simply ¾ and unencumbered ¾ within nature. Migliara was the result of this desire, not so much of personal need but of the Divine’s need for renovating a small part of the natural world which had been previously abandoned, unloved and violated. Migliara was already special to the heavens, and soon became special to Lucinda and her husband, John Dalla Costa and every person who came to visit, stay, pray and transform their lives.
The renovation was clearly that of bringing Migliara to who she originally was and what she was to become. In the Etruscan times there had been a special, sacred place for pilgrims on her land, a stop on their way to a sun worship area in the mountains behind. In the Christian times it was an inn for pilgrims on their way to Rome. During St. Francis’ time (l3th century), he passed by this land on the ancient Roman road leading to it as he travelled from La Verna to Rimini on the coast. Lucinda felt all these energies powerfully when first viewing the abandoned house and overgrown field. She felt her soul soar on hearing the rushing stream around the property; but more than all she knew that this was her home when finding primroses under the oak trees and hearing a cuckoo call from the distant woods.
For the last l5 years, Migliara has become a haven for many. With the practice of non-violence and living prayer, animals and birds recognize its safety and its sacredness and live within the property with security and respect. Its land has yielded all sorts of miraculous, healing plants ¾ there are 29 healing herbs growing wild in its field including two types of mint, camomile, plantain, afalfa, lavender and oregano. The stream is the embrace of God’s voice, the labyrinth has been created by stones from the field ¾ water comes from a spring on the property and its quality is renowned among the people of the valley. The wild flowers and the fruit including elderberry, blackberry, cherry, plums and strawberries abound throughout the land, and with the friendship of lizards, ants, bees, frogs and some snakes, Migliara holds its own eco system ¾ one of love, non-violence, peace, grace and natural creativity.
Gazing at a night sky at Migliara is recognizing how small she is in the great scheme of things: yet in her smallness she is still a light that reflects God’s goodness. She has been here much longer than its present owners, who really are just tending her after helping in her healing, and she will, with God’s continued grace, be a friend of souls and wildlife for centuries to come.
For more information and to view Migliara click here |
