The room to which I was shown was small and bare, with walls and beams reminding me of the convent cell it once had been. A wooden crucifix and prayer desk were the room's only furnishings. Arched casement windows looked out onto a corner of garden bright in the afternoon sunshine, and, on the other side, toward fields stretching to the sky.

The first time I visited Pleshey, I was on pilgrimage, consciously on pilgrimage. I had known this place for years without ever having seen it. Pleshey is where Evelyn Underhill conducted her long procession of retreats and quiet days in the '30s and early '40s. The name itself has become as familiar to two generations of readers as it was to her first retreatants. In my own mind, it had become important to me to be there.

I knew at once I would not be disappointed. Caught in the spell of a past suddenly very close, I walked down several flights of worn wooden stairs and out into the walkway connecting the House of Retreat to the chapel. When I opened the door entryway, I caught my breath. On the table before me was a prayer, hand-copied. Of course I thought of Underhill's long habit of writing out a prayer for each retreat or quiet day and leaving it outside the chapel door. This new prayer was simple: "Give me strength, O Lord, to walk in the ways where you lead me. Help me to remember the love of Christ and to accept the new life and love and freedom which he offers me." I read the words through tears.

The chapel itself is small, the altar setting quiet and peaceful to the eye. A bouquet of flowers stood to one side, overflowing, abundant as if a whole section of garden had been scooped up and brought inside. A plain archway frames the altar, with a lamp burning in the center. Tall, clear windows line the west wall. On this day, wooden chairs looked as if they had not been long vacated, with books and notepads still marking place. Prayer hung in the air about me, strong, embracing.

Archbishop Robert Runcie has said: "In every life God raises up certain holy places where he intends for us to find him." Surely Pleshey is one of those places. This tiny village has been a center for prayer and the life of grace for nearly 600 years. In 1399, it was chosen by Thomas Duke of Gloucester as home for a newly founded College of Augustinian Canons. Through the centuries, a house of religion has maintained faithful vigil in Pleshey, regardless of crisis in church or state.

The present House of Retreat was built for a sisterhood of Anglican nuns nearly a century ago, young by English measure, old by ours. During World War I, the house was purchased by the Diocese of Chelmsford and established as a retreat center.

The witness of Pleshey is the witness of time. Here real people, some with names we know, have "run with patience the race set before them," have faced doubt and grief, known discouragement and loss. And here real people have found glory and peace in their day, and in the small ways we know and share.

A mysterious alchemy is at work in holy places. We stand at the juncture of past and present, where years gone by overshadow our own lives, set them within a larger vision. Pleshey is old. It has endured. Its silence resonates one certainty: God is.

The present Bishop of Chelmsford calls Pleshey "the heart of the diocese," but Pleshey's influence reaches well beyond Chelmsford. More than 300 men and women from England and other places in the Anglican Communion comprise an active and prayerful group, calling themselves simply "The Friends of Pleshey." This is the group that kept all-night vigil when the chapel was rededicated in 1993 after renovation. This is the group that had kept all-night vigil for the present chapel's dedication 60 years earlier.

This is also the group that supports the variety of quiet days and silent retreats offered throughout the year, as well as other offerings which bring the peace of Pleshey into a wider frame: days set aside for painting or needlework in the secluded garden or occasional late spring or early fall walkabouts -10 miles a day with pub lunches.

On my first visit, I realized that at Pleshey no clear division exists between secular and sacred. Across "The Street" from the House of Retreat is a 300-year-old pub, bearing the familiar White Horse sign. It was to this pub the warden invited us on the last night of the retreat. I remember dark beams and rough timber, a fire burning on a chilly summer night, a big brown and white dog asleep on the hearth rug. Just so would this pub have welcomed our company had the year been 1600.

Even though it is less than a half-hour's train ride from London's busy Liverpool Station, Pleshey could be a world apart. It is one of the few partially moated villages remaining in England. A deep park area borders the moat's clear waters, and along "The Street" thatched roofed cottages bear their own witness to time.

One evening, just before twilight, I followed the footpath to "the castle" built during the Norman Conquest and then on beyond the village where I stood on the edge of fields, alive and stirring before me like waves in the soft breeze. Again, the silence - a hush that is deep, expectant.

Later, in the cool of Pleshey's garden, I found that same stillness seeping into the secret places of mind and spirit where "one deep calleth to another." I thought of Wordsworth's familiar line, "It is a beauteous evening, calm and free/ the holy time is quiet as a nun, breathless with adoration."

Another alchemy is also at work in holy places. They become part of who we are, inseparable to our soul's journey. I had come to Pleshey numbed by grief. In the silence, thoughts began once more to move beyond thought to the goodness of God, the wholeness of life, the beauty of holiness.

Across the garden, I could see the faint outline of a weathered cross, pale and strangely luminous in the gathering dark. "Take your shoes from off your feet. The ground on which you stand is holy ground." q