• 
  • Upcoming Events
  • Local Events
  • Past Events
• 
  • Ridgeways Archives
  • New Community House
  • Get RidgeMail
  • Quote of the Day
  • Search Quotes
• 
  • Mission Statement
  • Directions
  • Personal Retreat
  • Reflections
  • Slide Shows
  • Partner Groups
  • New Community House
  • Privacy Statement
• 
  • Maps
  • History Loop
• 
•  

A Statement of Mission

During the early 1970s, two Quakers, Henry and Mary Cushing Niles, envisioned that the tract of forested mountain land that they assembled from several holdings south of Harpers Ferry, WV, should be turned into a wilderness preserve in which people of the Washington Metropolitan Region could experience healing and nurture of body and spirit.

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community (RRSRC) is one of several independent lessees by which this vision is being implemented. It is a nonprofit membership association, incorporated in the State of West Virginia as Study Retreat Associates of Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community. Members live primarily in the greater Washington region. The association is governed by a Board of Directors, elected by the members at its annual business meeting. RRSRC cultivates a holistic vision of living in harmony with the earth; maintains a retreat environment for groups and individuals throughout the year; and designs study and retreat occasions in four broad thematic areas: scripture, spirituality, and meditative arts; ecological integrity/environmental appreciation; family and community; and justice, peace, and global issues.

Membership in RRSRC is through election by the Board of Directors and is premised on Christian commitment irrespective of denominational affiliation. In a genuine spirit of ecumenical endeavor the Community engages with interested persons of whatever persuasion in study and retreat endeavors. The agenda and work of RRSRC are conceived and carried out by its members, largely on a volunteer basis, some through ongoing staff responsibilities and others through specific task assignments. The Community motto, Nurturing Persons and Communities, informs both its organizational style and its program-exploring life-giving forms for living on the cusp of the 21st century.

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community has developed partnerships with churches in the Washington region who share in the use and maintenance of the retreat facilities, bringing their own groups and agendas. We are also in dialogue with community and church groups in the local Jefferson County region. For all these purposes the Retreat is to serve as a "safe place" for communities of faith and other moral concern to explore new frontiers. Among such groups "community of communities" may also emerge.

Rolling Ridge Study Retreat Community, as a place on the beautiful slopes of the Blue Ridge above the Shenandoah River, and as a ministry to the discovery and pursuit of new visions for the well being of humankind, is on a course of measured development. In regard to physical development, a limited number of additional retreat houses, hermitages, and resident staff houses are planned. The venture is guided by cooperative vision and resources of its members as well as other individuals and associations that affirm its purposes.