IN-DEPTH FIRE DETAILS

VIDEO TEXT

Some of you have heard of the terrible fire we had at Little Portion Hermitage about three weeks ago, at this point. I’m in Canada. I was told by the community to go ahead and come to Canada even though we had suffered this devastating loss. It took our entire church, as well as the monastery community center. It took everything. It burned very, very quickly. In a little over an hour the whole place was engulfed in flames. I was the first to see it.

At almost midnight I came around the corner and saw the back of the church completely engulfed in flames. It was a devastating, sinking experience to see. I then went up the hill banging on doors and screaming at the top of my lungs that there was a fire, and we needed help. The community came out and was absolutely heroic. We were able to go into the common center and get a few things.

We lost almost everything. In the community center we lost our kitchen - all of the processing that we do for our free-range chickens was done there. We lost our dining room, the refectory for the common center, and schoolrooms for children of the families at the monastery. We lost all the John Michael Talbot stock that was in our inventory, which was a significant amount. We lost our offices that took care of both our farm outreach and also the ministries that I do with recording, with concertizing and with book writing and speaking.

Probably the saddest thing we lost was the archives of the community, and these are irreplaceable: pictures that my mother had all the way back when I was a little baby, all the early recordings I did with the group Sounds Unlimited and then with Mason Profitt. And for that matter, we lost a lot of our family history in that regard. Most of the history for the last 30 years was gone in the fire. Also a huge loss for us was the loss of our library. We had hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of spiritual books, a wonderful library – small but powerful. Some of that can be replaced; some of it is irreplaceable, out of print, older books. So it was a devastating loss.

The community began trying to fight the fire. There was only so much we could do: the men with the hoses that we had. I know that I was overcome twice. The second time I also lost my sight and some of us suffered from the effects of smoke inhalation. I remember thinking when that happened, that this is the way people die in fires, they pass out and they burn up.

The sisters were running into the far end of the community center and grabbing whatever they could get, which, in the long run, turned out to not be much. The fire companies finally came. We live 30 minutes from the nearest town so they got there after about 40 minutes; four different volunteer fire departments from four different towns. They did an absolutely astounding heroic job at keeping the fire from spreading further. It could have hit our garages where gasoline for our farm machinery is and could also have hit our propane tanks, and that would have been beyond terrible. They saved our prayer garden and the little chapel called the Portiuncula Chapel.

In the days following we went into survival mode, and we took one of the family dwellings that was empty and we are now eating our meals up there together, doing our community meetings up there together. The offices are in the same space. The Troubadour for the Lord Publishing is back up and running. We pray in the little Portiuncula Chapel down by the garden. We’ve cut way back. I believe that God stripped us to the bare essentials so we could get ready for an even better future.

In the history of monasticism in America there seems to be a two-fold progression. One is a community builds with wood, it burns down and then they build a monastery out of stone. There is even a saying that says until a foundation has been founded with stone buildings, it is not yet really founded. So this might be a way, a painful way, but a way nonetheless, that God wants to take us to that second stage because the buildings that we were in had always been understood as being beautiful indeed, but temporary. It is always a good reminder that anything we build is temporary, that here we have no lasting home.

We need your help. After the fire there was a huge outpouring of compassion and love and support from our local community in Eureka Springs and Berryville, Arkansas. Our diocese was very generous, Benedictine communities have been very generous.

We need two things: first we need prayer because that is the greatest, most powerful gift that can be given. So please pray for us as we go through this refounding and rebuilding. It will probably take us over a year to be fully settled again. We also need your money. The insurance - it is not really an insurance company that we are with - we are with a risk pool and trust called Christian Brothers, and they are going to help us out. They are very good people, very compassionate in these kinds of situations. They will help us, but it will not be anywhere near enough to rebuild completely. So, we are asking for donations at this point in time. You can go to the website, to johnmichaeltalbot.com and there is a place there where you can donate. We’ve received a couple of very large donations; we’ve received a kind of medium-level of donations that are very charitable, again, mainly from organizations. The bulk of the donations we are receiving are in the ten to twenty to a hundred dollar to five hundred dollar range and these are not unimportant. We figure we are going to need a couple of million dollars to totally rebuild the way we need to rebuild with present costs in today’s world. But we get there a gift at a time and a prayer at a time, so please help us.

The website also has pictures. You are welcome to look. My experience is that the pictures did not and could not capture the intensity of that fire and the ferocity of it. It was powerful, it was hot and it burned fast.

So thank you very much. We thank you in advance for your help, for your prayers, and for any financial gift you can give.

John Michael Talbot
Founder and Spiritual Director
The Brothers and Sisters of Charity at Little Portion Hermitage