news-record.com

MEBANE - The Stone House is neither made of stone, nor is it merely a house.

It is a gathering place. A sanctuary. A place for solitude when it's needed.

Visitors go for a walk. Read. Or just sit, eyes closed, in silence.

This 70-acre tract of land in Orange County is a refuge for those working to make their communities more just, peaceful, and cohesive. They work to combat and raise awareness about the environment or economic, racial or social injustices where they live.

Some of them work for nonprofit organizations that serve immigrants, the poor or homeless, the elderly or youth. They work long hours, for little pay. Some of them are volunteers who work just as tirelessly without pay.

Burnout comes with this work.

"There can be such intense peaks and troughs between hope and hopelessness, and between some sense of possibility and despair," says Jesse Maceo Vega-Frey, one of the leaders of the Stone House.

Community organizers and activists learn to become more effective leaders at the Stone House. And for those who come, it is also a haven.

This humble land

It's quiet here.

Just the occasional sound of dogs barking. In winter, the landscape sometimes looks bleak. The trees are just clusters of branches that resemble gray claws reaching toward the ashen sky. Laundry sways from a clothesline. Caramel-colored chickens with ruby red beaks roam near a barn, making low, throaty clucking noises. A lone pig runs oinking toward anyone walking by its pen. Much of the food for the facility is grown or raised here.

Though it wasn't a spectacular landscape, Stone House founders Vega-Frey and Claudia Horwitz knew it was exactly what they were looking for when they first visited the property back in 2007.

This parcel of pasture off Nicks Road near the Alamance County line didn't offer the breathtaking vistas they'd seen at West Coast retreats. But they felt grounded.

"There was just sort of this simplicity and rootedness and down to earth feel ... that just felt so pure," Vega-Frey says.

He calls it a humble piece of land.

It also was already equipped with cabins, a pavilion and other buildings. From that first visit, they could see how it would all come together: a yoga studio in this space. Administrative offices here. Meeting space there.

Horwitz could live in this cabin, and Vega-Frey in that one.

It would be their home, too.

The activist life

The Stone House evolved from the organization Horwitz founded in 1995, stone circles.

She helps people integrate spiritual and reflective practices -- such as yoga or meditation -- into their social justice work. Horwitz started the organization because she knows firsthand how exhausting social justice work can be.

This 42-year-old social activist with a youthful face and a thick mane of gray shoulder-length dreadlocks is known for her compassion, wisdom and knowledge. She wrote a book, published in 2002, titled "The Spiritual Activist." She practices Kripalu yoga and meditates regularly.

A native of Philadelphia, she grew up Jewish and upper-middle class in the suburbs. Horwitz started social justice work and organizing while earning an English degree from the University of Pennsylvania. After a semester in Italy, Horwitz returned to campus distracted and disoriented. She wanted to be back in Italy.

"I didn't really know what to do with myself. I was looking for something to sink my teeth into for the summer because I felt kind of rootless," she says.

Then she stumbled upon a job organizing a hunger awareness and fundraising event. She recruited other college students to volunteer and raise money for it. It was fun, and she was good at it. She learned two things: she didn't need to go elsewhere to help those in need, and hard work can produce success.

The circle begins

Horwitz experienced burnout when she helped found the Philadelphia-based homeless organizing group, Empty the Shelters. It's an 8-week summer volunteer program run by homeless people. It places college students in agencies that aid the homeless and poor. It was a collective that eventually spread to four other cities, and continues today.

In an essay for the journal The Reconstructionist Horwitz later wrote: "Unfortunately the activist lifestyle in which I immersed myself was also one prone to illness, fatigue and burnout. In the midst of 12-hour days and hot dog lunches, it never occurred to me to take better care of myself, and no one ever suggested it. Consumed by purpose and righteousness, I did not notice the slow deterioration of my physical energy and emotional health."

The very nature of social justice work can be as daunting and disappointing as it is rewarding.

"I had a lot of residual sadness and anger. There's so much despair in the work because you don't have any idea whether the work you're doing is going to do any good or not," Horwitz says.

She moved to Durham in 1992 to complete a master's degree in public policy at Duke University. A year into grad school, Horwitz discovered meditation. It changed her life.

Horwitz writes in her book:

"It was the summer I turned 27 when I first learned what a spiritual practice was and began meditating. I had gotten myself into a work commitment that I didn't believe in and probably wasn't qualified for, and the results felt disastrous. Shaken by what I could only see as failure, I realized that I had no idea which values were driving my decisions or how I could find courage when the going got tough. What is my anchor in the world? I wondered."

While visiting friends on a rural Kentucky farm, Horwitz learned about meditation. And tried it.

Just sitting. Silently. With her breath.

It made an immediate difference in how she felt. She worried less about what others thought of her. She was nicer to people, and overreacted less. She got more accomplished.

"Over time, this morning meditation became an act of remembering who I am and who God is in my life."

An idea began to take shape. If this could make such a difference in her life, she could help others.

"I knew so many stressed-out activists," she says.

This idea would become a spark for stone circles.

The first circle

Hez Norton was one of a handful of people Horwitz consulted when she started to formulate the concept for stone circles.

They met through a class at Duke, and later became housemates. Norton considered Horwitz a mentor as she embarked on her own path to community organizing. After college, Norton worked for a youth service program through the governor's office. Norton, who is gay, realized through this job that she wanted to help other gay teens.

At 23, she founded an organization that helped lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered teens develop leadership skills. The work was exhausting, Norton says, because often teens came to her in crisis: their families had thrown them out of the house or church leaders told them homosexuality was wrong.

"It was a round-the-clock job. I definitely needed respite," she says.

Horwitz taught her the importance of incorporating spiritual practice into her work. Norton joined a small group that Horwitz gathered, representing a diverse group of social activists and community organizers from different racial, cultural, socio-economic and faith backgrounds. They discussed their challenges, and learned how to become better leaders.

"So many of us were burned out, but we didn't see it because we were too busy working," Norton says. "It helped me see that 80-hour work weeks may hurt the organization. If I have down time, then come back, I can be a more effective leader."

Before stone circles, Norton didn't have much of a concept of spirituality, or the role it could play in her work as a leader. Now she does.

"Having a deeper well, having this kind of support is going to sustain me in the long haul. And I didn't have a sense that I had access to it until stone circles," Norton says.

The boy with the megaphone

Vega-Frey's parents taught him to care about local and global injustices.

His mother came from a white, upper-middle-class background, with Mennonite influences in Ohio. She worked for the United Farm Workers Union in California and Massachusetts.

His father immigrated from Ecuador at age 5. Often the only Latino student in school, he viewed the world from a working-class, immigrant's perspective.

With their son in tow, Vega-Frey's parents attended anti-war and anti-nuclear rallies. They demonstrated against a waste treatment facility to be built in a low-income neighborhood, and rallied against the city's plans to demolish old buildings, displacing poor residents.

When he was just 3 or 4 years old, Vega-Frey asked for a megaphone for his birthday.

In high school, he organized programs and assemblies to raise awareness of global issues among his peers. At Macalester College, Vega-Frey studied U.S. labor history. His post-college job with The Center for Contemplative Mind in Society led to two life-changing things: meditation and meeting Horwitz.

He met Horwitz through a research project involving people who integrated contemplative practices into their social justice work.

The staff also meditated together for a half hour daily. This practice directed him to further explore Buddhist meditation.

Though he was just starting his own spiritual practice, Horwitz invited Vega-Frey to a retreat with other spiritual activist leaders in 2003. Horwitz just had a gut feeling about his potential.

"He brought both an ease of being and a comfort with his own truth that I felt would be tremendous assets for the gathering," she says.

After that retreat, they started running programs together in Durham and across the country. Vega-Frey also began to ramp up his meditation practice. His annual meditation retreats range from 10 days to three months, which he completed in silence.

He and Horwitz often lead silent meditation programs. They believe silence leads you to the deepest part of yourself.

It leads to "the places where we can kind of see things as they are, gather wisdom and perspective, that can help us at any given moment," Vega-Frey says.

Expanding the circle

For more than a decade, Horwitz operated stone circles from a small Durham office that wasn't large enough to run workshops or retreats.

She organized conferences elsewhere for activists exploring the relationship between faith and social justice. Since her clients represented a broad range of religious and spiritual backgrounds, she needed neutral, nondenominational settings where they would feel comfortable. She also frequently traveled around the country to lead and facilitate programs.

Once Vega-Frey came aboard, they talked more about finding a stable location. Although Horwitz enjoyed exploring new cities, and meeting others on her travels, she longed to be more rooted. The spiritual activist whose job it was to preach rest and reflection was getting tired.

And she really wanted to create a spiritual retreat in the Southeast, where such places are more of a rarity. She envisioned a space that wasn't home or work, where activists of all ages, backgrounds and faiths could find refuge.

They didn't have much money when they found the Mebane property. They raised $280,000 in about five months.

"It was just a mission. All I did for five months was eat, sleep and breathe this particular task," Horwitz says.

With limited fundraising experience, Horwitz turned to everyone she'd worked with since establishing stone circles.

They didn't have a very wealthy donor base, but most of those Horwitz contacted agreed to a five-year commitment to pledge any level that felt significant to them. That meant anywhere from $18 a year, to $50,000, with most contributions averaging about $200 annually.

"It's funny, I definitely had a deep faith that we were going to do it, but I had a lot of anxiety about it," Horwitz says.

When they moved Sept. 24, 2007, they did so expecting their first group of activists in less than 10 days. They had to hit the ground running.

Embracing silence

The Stone House offers what's called Soul Sanctuary to activists from around the country. They must apply, and no more than six are accepted. Grants allow them to stay for free, and meals are provided.

For five days, they can meditate, practice yoga, read, write or create art. Horwitz and Vega-Frey are available for consultation if anyone wants it.

Some participants, such as Zulayka Santiago, prefer to have a silent retreat. They wear a name tag, "In Loving Silence," indicating to others that they aren't speaking during their stay.

"I spend a lot of my waking hours engaged in some sort of dialogue or conversation, whether it be in real time, or e-mail or by phone," Santiago says. "(Silence) is a way to go inward, and a way to just quiet the mind. It's amazing the things that come to the surface when you're not distracted by conversation or small talk or trying to entertain or be entertained."

Santiago, 33, works for the multiracial statewide network, North Carolina Peoples' Coalition for Giving. She's also involved with organizations tackling farmworkers' and immigrant rights.

She's a past recipient of the William C. Friday Fellow for Human Relations, and was the former executive director of the Latino advocacy group El Pueblo. That job was so demanding, she had little time for other interests. Stone circles taught her that work shouldn't consumer her. Since then, she's learned to fire dance and walk on stilts, and she's exploring photography. And she makes time for silent reflection.

"I actually run to the 'In Loving Silence' badge when I do these silent retreats," she says.

Finding balance

While Santiago, Norton and other Soul Sanctuary visitors find this a place of rest, those who work and live here struggle, some days, to balance their own personal needs and professional duties.

"It's hard to draw boundaries around when your work day is finished," Horwitz says. "The level of responsibility is high. You can't walk from one place to another without seeing, like, five things that need to get done."

But Horwitz says it's a privilege to provide the weary and disillusioned a place to rest, so that they can continue to serve others.

The land holds an energy -- of a wide open space that allows people to just get into themselves for a while. A place of ceremony and ritual.

Vega-Frey says there are days when he's walking around and sees the fog rising over the meadows. He takes in the quiet stillness. And he feels lucky to live in such a beautiful place.

Contact Tina Firesheets at 373-3498 or tina.firesheets@news-record.com