Sometime this spring, a beaver quietly took up residence along the water’s edge on Maryville’s grounds and immediately got to work doing what beavers do best: building, shaping and transforming the landscape with remarkable purpose and industry. A small dam began to form near the lake. Trees along our walking trails showed the telltale signs of a new tenant. The land, in small but noticeable ways, began to change.
And so did we.
The beaver’s arrival sparked something unexpected among the Felician Sisters and staff — not just conversations about the land, but reflection on what it truly means to welcome another. As you might expect, welcoming a beaver looks a little different than welcoming a guest through the front door. It asks something more of you. It asks you to step back, make room and trust that the disruption has a purpose you may not fully see yet.
At Maryville, care for creation is a daily practice rooted in the spirit of Laudato Si’, Pope Francis’ call to receive the earth and all its creatures as a sacred community entrusted to our care. When the beaver arrived, the sisters’ response was the same one they bring to every guest who walks through their doors: openness, patience and a willingness to be inconvenienced for the sake of another’s flourishing.
Ecologists call the beaver a keystone species — one whose quiet, persistent work creates the conditions for an entire community of life to thrive around it. Wetlands form. Water is naturally filtered. New habitats emerge for birds, frogs, fish and wildflowers along the very trails where our guests walk and pray. What first appears as disruption reveals itself, in time, as renewal.
There is a spiritual wisdom in that worth sitting with.
Sometimes the most transformative guests — in nature and in life — are the ones who arrive uninvited, rearrange something we thought was settled and leave the landscape richer for having been there.
As you walk Maryville’s trails this season, look for the signs of our newest resident and then prompt a quiet question: Who in your life might be inviting you toward a little holy inconvenience — and what new life might grow if you said yes?
If that question stirs something in you, we’d love to welcome you to Maryville. Our self-guided and directed retreats offer exactly this kind of unhurried space — to walk, to wonder, to pray and to listen for what creation might be saying to you.
About Maryville Retreat Center
Maryville Retreat Center is a ministry of the Felician Sisters of North America, rooted in the Franciscan values of peace, simplicity and care for creation. Through prayerful gatherings like this, we invite all to encounter God in stillness, beauty and community.
